LP0029 The Augean Stables w/ extras

Legendary Passages #0029 - The Augean Stables - The fifth labor of Heracles from The Idylls of Theocritus.     In our very first episode, The Little Heracles, two serpents attack baby Heracles in the cradle. We continue that Idyll here, and hear about the many instructors he had as a boy.     In our fourth episode, The Nemean Lion, Heracles recounts his first labor. This passage is the beginning of that Idyll, and describes the endless pastures and herds of Augeus. The Augean Stables, a Legendary Passage, from The Idylls of Theocritus, trans. by J. M. Edmonds. IDYLL XXIV. THE LITTLE HERACLES     Letters learned he of a sleepless guardian, a Hero, son of Apollo, aged Linus; and to bend a bow and shoot arrows at the mark, of one that was born to wealth of great domains, Eurytus; and he that made of him a singer and shaped his hand to the box-wood lyre, was Eumolpus, the son of Philammon.     Aye, and all the tricks and falls both of the cross-buttockers of Argos, and of boxers skilly with the hand-strap, and eke all the cunning inventions of the catch-as-catch-can men that roll upon the ground, all these learnt he at the feet of a son of Hermes, Harpalycus of Phanotè, who no man could abide confidently in the ring even so much as to look upon him from aloof, so dread and horrible was the frown that sat on his grim visage.     But to drive horses in a chariot and guide the nave of his wheel safely about the turnpost, that did Amphitryon in all kindness teach his son himself; for he had carried off a multitude of precious things from swift races in the Argive grazing-land of steeds, and Time alone had loosed the harness from his chariots, seeing he kept them ever unbroken. And how to abide the cut and thrust of the sword or to lunge lance in rest and shield swung over back, how to marshal a company, measure an advancing squadron of the foe, or give the word to a troop of horse – all such lore had he of horseman Castor, when he came an outlaw from Argos, where Tydeus had received the land of horsemen from Adrastus and held all Castor’s estate and his great vineyard. And till such time as age had worn away his youth, Castor had no equal in war among all the demigods.     While Heracles’ dear mother thus ordered his upbringing, the lad’s bed was made him hard by his father’s, and a lion-skin it was and gave him great delight; for meals, his breakfast was roast flesh, and in his basket he carried a great Dorian loaf such as might surely satisfy a delving man, but after the day’s work he would make his supper sparely and without fire; and for his clothing he wore plain and simple attire that fell but a little below the knee . . . IDYLL XXV. HOW HERACLES SLEW THE LION     This Epic poem comprises three distinct parts, one of which still bears its separate title. It is not really a fragment, but pretends by a literary convention to be three “books” taken from an Odyssey, or rather Heracleia, in little.     The first part, which bears the traditional stage-direction Heracles to the Husbandman, is concerned first with a description of the great farm of Augeias or Augeas, king of the Epeians of Elis – the same whose stables Heracles at another time cleaned out – put into the mouth of a garrulous old ploughman of whom Heracles has asked where he can find the king; then the old man undertakes to show the mysterious stranger the way, and as they draw near the homestead they have a Homeric meeting with the barking dogs.     The second part bears the title The Visitation. In it we are told how the enormous herd of cattle given by the Sun to his child Aegeas returned in the evening from pasture, how the king and his son Phyleus took Heracles to see the busy scene in the farmyard, and how Heracles encountered the finest bull in the whole herd.     In the third part, which has not traditional title, H