When Eurystheus bad looked upon them
the boar was slain, but the deer was loosed and she fled back to
the Mountain Artemision.
King Eurystheus sat hidden in the great jar, and he thought of
more terrible labors he would make Heracles engage in. Now he
would send him oversea and make him strive with fierce tribes and
more dread monsters. When he had it all thought out he had
Heracles brought before him and he told him of these other
labors.
He was to go to savage Thrace and there destroy the man-eating
horses of King Diomedes; afterward he was to go amongst the dread
women, the Amazons, daughters of Ares, the god of war, and take
from their queen, Hippolyte, the girdle that Ares had given her;
then he was to go to Crete and take from the keeping of King
Minos the beautiful bull that Poseidon had given him; afterward
he was to go to the Island of Erytheia and take away from
Geryoneus, the monster that had three bodies instead of one, the
herd of red cattle that the two-headed hound Orthus kept guard
over; then he was to go to the Garden of the Hesperides, and from
that garden he was to take the golden apples that Zeus had given
to Hera for a marriage gift--where the Garden of the Hesperides
was no mortal knew.
So Heracles set out on a long and perilous quest. First he went
to Thrace, that savage land that was ruled over by Diomedes, son
of Ares, the war god. Heracles broke into the stable where the
horses were; he caught three of them by their heads, and although
they kicked and bit and trampled he forced them out of the stable
and down to the seashore, where his companion, Abderus, waited
for him.
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