The stables of Augeas, King of Elis, in Greece. In these
stables he had kept 3,000 oxen, and the stalls had not been cleansed
for thirty years. When Hercules was appointed to cleanse these stables,
he caused two rivers to run through them.
To cleanse the Augean stables.
To clear away an accumulated mass of corruption, moral, religious,
physical, or legal. To reform wrongs almost past the power of man to
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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