But the wit of the hero was equal to the occasion.  With his great strength he diverted the flow of two rivers that ran their courses near the stables and made them flow right through the stables themselves, and lo! the nuisance that had been growing for thirty years was no more!  Such was the fifth labor of Hercules.

On an island in a lake near Stymphalus, in Arcadia, there nested in those days some remarkable and terrible birds—­remarkable because their claws, wings and beaks were brazen, and terrible because they fed on human flesh and attacked with their terrible beaks and claws all who came near the lake.  To kill these dreadful birds was the sixth labor.

Minerva supplied Hercules with a brazen rattle with which he roused the birds from their nests, and then slew them with his poisoned arrows while they were on the wing.

This victory made Hercules popular throughout the whole of Greece, and Eurystheus saw that nothing he could devise was too hard for the hero to accomplish.

The seventh labor was to capture a mad bull that the Sea-god Neptune had let loose in the island of Crete, of which island Minos was at that time King.

This ferocious creature breathed out from his nostrils a whirlwind of flaming fire.  But Hercules was, as you no doubt have guessed, too much for the brazen bull.

He not only caught the monster, but tamed him, and bore him aloft on his shoulders, into the presence of the affrighted Eurystheus, who was at a loss to find a task impossible for Hercules to perform.

The taking of the mares of Diomedes was the eighth labor.  These horses were not ordinary horses, living on corn.  They were flesh eaters, and moreover, they devoured human beings, and so were hateful to mankind.

On this occasion Hercules was not alone.  He organised a hunt and, by the help of a few friends, caught the horses and led them to Eurystheus.  The scene of this labor was Thrace, an extensive region lying between the AEgean Sea, the Euxine or Black Sea, and the Danube.

Seizing the girdle of Hippolyte was the next feat set for the hero.  This labor was due to the desire of the daughter of Eurystheus for the girdle of Hippolyte, Queen of the Amazons—­a tribe of female warriors.  It is said that the girls had their right breasts cut off in order that they might use the bow with greater ease in battle!  This, indeed, is the meaning of the term Amazon, which signifies “breastless.”

After a troublesome journey Hercules arrived safely at the Court of Hippolyte, who received him kindly; and this labor might, perchance, have been a bloodless one had not his old enemy Juno stirred up the female warriors against him.

In the fight that followed, Hercules killed Hippolyte—­a feat scarcely to be proud of—­and carried off her girdle, and thus the vanity of the daughter of Eurystheus was gratified.

To capture the oxen of Geryon was the tenth labor of Hercules.  In the person of Geryon we meet another of those strange beings in which the makers of myths and fairy tales seem to revel.  Geryon was a three-bodied monster whose cattle were kept by a giant and a two-headed dog!