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The Fourth Labor: The Erymanthian Boar

            For Hercules' forth labor, King Eurystheus commanded Hercules to bring him the Erymanthian Boar. A boar is basically a huge wild pig that is bad tempered and dangerous because it has long, sharp tusks coming out of its mouth. This boar lived on a mountain called Erymanthus, which was not too far from King Eurystheus' house in Mycenae.

People were scared of this boar because the boar would terrorize the people on a daily basis, attacking and destroying everything in sight.

So Hercules set off to capture the boar. On the way, he became hungry and decided to stop at his friend Pholus' house, which was a cave near Mount Erymanthus. Pholus was a centaur, which is a creature with the body of a horse, and the torso and head of a man. Pholus was glad to see Hercules and was happy to cook him some meat, even though he ate he ate his own meat raw.

Then Hercules grew thirsty and asked for some wine, but Pholus was afraid to give him any because the wine belonged to all of the centaurs. But Hercules was thirsty, so he told Pholus that he would open it himself. Unfortunately, the rest of the centaurs smelled the wine and grew angry that someone was drinking their wine. They came to Pholus' cave armed with rocks and tree branches. When two of them dared to come into the cave, Hercules threw burning logs from the fire at them. Then he started chasing them and shooting them with the arrows that had been dipped in the blood of the Hydra.

He chased them for almost twenty miles, but most of the centaurs got away. The rest of the centaurs fled in different directions. While Hercules was still chasing the centaurs, Pholus pulled an arrow from a dead Centaur and wondered how it could have killed the Centaur. Unfortunately, he accidentally dropped the arrow onto his foot and he died instantly.

When Hercules came back, he found that his friend had been killed and buried him. Hercules had no choice but to continue hunting the boar. He found him easily enough; he could hear the animal crashing around the underbrush looking for food. So Hercules chased the boar around until he found him hiding in the grass.

Hercules poked at the boar until he came out then threw a net over him and carried him back to King Eurystheus. The king was so frightened of Hercules and his powers, that he hid himself away in a huge earthenware urn.