The River Pinios bubbles along its rocky bed, dappled by sunlight. The Pinios is one of the principal rivers of Elis, a region of the western Peloponnese, the peninsula at the southern end of the Greek mainland. It was one of the two rivers which Heracles employed so ingeniously to complete his daunting task in less than a day.
AUGEAS, King of Elis, had kept three thousand high-spirited cattle in an enclosure near his palace for thirty years without once mucking them out, even though they were of divine race and produced mountains of potent dung.
Nonetheless, on surveying the ghastly scene Heracles undertook to clear the stables in a day, in exchange for a tenth of the herd. Augeas agreed, unaware that this was supposed to be one of Heracles’s Labours of repentance, not a business transaction.
Heracles seized a mattock, and began excavating a trench. Soon two mighty rivers of Elis, the Alpheus and the Peneus, were flushing the stables out, and Heracles, well satisfied, stumped off to collect his three hundred head of cattle.
By this time, however, Augeas knew about the Labours, and withheld payment. In a rage, Heracles slew him, but Eurystheus, noting that Nature had done most of the work, voided the labour anyway, and sent Heracles to Stymphalia to deal with the man-eating birds of the marshes.
Précis
Heracles cleaned up the vast cattle-pens of King Augeas, which nobody had mucked out for thirty years, in less than a day by diverting two rivers through them. But Augeas refused to pay the fee they had agreed after learning it should have been done for free, and Eurystheus disqualified the labour after hearing how Heracles had used water power. (60 / 60 words)
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