Hercules began life in a part of Greece that was known as the valley of Nemea. It was a place of olive orchards and fruit trees and fields of grain, but the terror of the place was the Nemean lion who lived close by in the fastness of the hills. There had never been known so huge a lion, with such wide, blood thirsty jaws. Eurystheus ordered Hercules to bring him the tawny hide of this monster. "How shall I slay the Nemean lion?" Hercules asked. "With your arrows and your club," Eurystheus replied carelessly, but he knew that no arrows in all Greece could pierce the lion's skin and that Hercules' club, made of a stout young tree, would also be powerless against the beast. "Hercules will never return," the people of the valley said to each other as they watched the young hero start out boldly toward the hills. But he returned the next day, as fresh and untroubled as when he had started, with the hide of the Nemean lion slung over his shoulder. "Are yours magic arrows, and is your club charmed as well?" the youths who were Hercules' friends asked, crowding around him. "I killed the lion with my hands alone, grasping him about his throat," Hercules explained to them. Eurystheus, listening on the edge of the crowd, frowned at these words. "I must plan a greater labor for him," he thought. There was a rich and beautiful city of Greece named Argos, but a fearful monster called the Hydra infested a swamp just outside it and one never knew when it would descend upon the well that supplied the people with pure water. It had nine heads and one of these was immortal, so the rumor went. "Go to Argos and kill the Hydra," Eurystheus commanded Hercules. Hercules was ready to dare this adventure. He started out again with no other arms than he had carried before and when he came to the well of Argos which kept the country from drought, he found the Hydra stationed there. Going up to it, Hercules struck off one of its heads with his club. What was his surprise to see two heads grow in the place of this one! It was going to be a task to destroy this creature, Hercules understood, as he laid on with his club against the menacing and increasing heads, hitting right and left and with no time between his telling blows. He struck off all of the Hydra's heads at last except the undying one. Finally Hercules thought of a plan for destroying this. He wrenched it off with his mighty hands and buried it deeply underneath a rock. "Hercules shall be put to a task he will not like so well as encountering wild beasts," Eurystheus decided then. "He shall clean the Augean stables. We will see if a son of the gods has the will to accomplish that labor."