The language of any people, despite all the connections between them and their origin from one root, is unique. By the richness of the vocabulary, one can judge the cultural development of a particular society or state, by the speech of each person one can judge how fully he uses the cultural traditions of his people.
In order to more fully and figuratively express their thoughts, phraseological phrases are actively used in the language. They are already established (stable) phrases, with the help of which a person can display the whole complex gamut of his experiences - irony, mockery, love, sarcasm.
Many phraseological units have already become so firmly entrenched in the everyday life of people that they don’t even think about their origin, and after all, many of them have very interesting facts and stories. An example is the idiom of "Augean stables", the origin of which is associated with one of the famous exploits of Hercules.
As one of the ancient Greek myths tells us, the famous ruler of the country - Tsar Augeus - was famous for his passion for horses, the number of which reached three thousand. However, the love of these noble animals was very poorly combined with his reluctance to clean their stalls, which over thirty years were overgrown with selective manure on the roof. Thus, on the one hand, the “Augean stables” are a symbol of neglect, pollution, neglect of draft, but no less important work.
The famous hero Hercules, whom the ruler ordered to clean the stables, was able to cope with the problem of Tsar Avgius, since, in his opinion, not a single mortal could do such a volume of work. The meaning of the phraseology “Augean stables” is largely due to the way the famous strongman decided to use: realizing that in the traditional way it is almost impossible to cover the entire front of work, Hercules changed the riverbed. And the stormy stream literally in a few hours brilliantly coped with the task.
Proceeding from this, the meaning of the phraseology “Augean stables” implies an absolute mess in affairs, which can be dealt with only if some non-trivial solution is applied. Moreover, most often this expression is used not with respect to any particular person, but about the state of affairs of the whole society as a whole.
Recently, however, another meaning of the phraseological unit “Augean stables” has appeared. By it people began to understand the clogging of the inner world of a person when he lost almost all moral guidelines in life and turned into an ordinary consumer who lives solely in order to eat and sleep sweetly. “To clear the Augean stables” means to understand oneself, to return those basic guidelines that illuminated the life of many generations of people.
The fact that the meaning of phraseology “Augean stables” has several meanings emphasizes the richness of the Russian language, its flexibility, continuous improvement and development along with the development of society and the state itself.
