What the ancient writers actually said about the birds

The picture of the Stymphalian Birds most people know today, with bronze beaks, feathers shot like arrows and poisonous droppings, is put together from several sources written centuries apart. Most of it is not in the oldest accounts. Apollodorus gives the plain mythographic version. The birds had taken refuge in the thickly wooded marsh at Stymphalus out of fear of wolves. Heracles could not get at them, so Athena gave him bronze clappers (krotala) made by Hephaestus. He stood on a mountain beside the lake and clashed them, and when the startled birds rose he shot them. Diodorus tells much the same story but puts more weight on the noise: the clashing rattle drove the birds away and freed the farmland they had been ruining.

Arrow-like feathers belong to a different story, the voyage of the Argo. In Apollonius of Rhodes, the Argonauts land on the Island of Ares off the southern Black Sea coast. There, birds attack by dropping sharp feathers that wound like darts. Advised by the prophet Phineus, the heroes put on helmets, lock their shields into a roof and shout and clash their weapons until the flock flies off. Later writers linked these birds with the ones Heracles drove from Arcadia, and that link is the source of the idea that the survivors of the sixth labour fled to the Black Sea. The birds' connection with Ares comes from this island setting, not from the Arcadian story.

Pausanias, who visited Stymphalus in the second century AD, adds another layer. He says there were birds in the Arabian desert also called Stymphalian, as big as cranes and shaped like ibises, with beaks strong enough to pierce bronze or iron armour. He suggests that the birds Heracles fought may have been of this kind. He also says the Arcadian birds were man-eaters.

Stymphalus: the place behind the myth

Lake Stymphalia lies in a closed mountain basin in north-eastern Arcadia, under Mount Kyllene. Its water drains through a natural sinkhole, and Pausanias reports the local belief that it reappeared far to the south-east as the river Erasinos in the Argolid. A marsh with no visible outlet, reed beds and huge numbers of waterbirds makes a natural setting for a story about a flock that could not be reached on foot. The lake still floods and shrinks with the seasons and is an important wetland for migratory birds.

The town honoured the story in its religion. Pausanias describes a temple of Stymphalian Artemis whose roof was decorated with carved figures of the birds. Behind the temple stood statues of maidens with the legs of birds, which modern readers have compared to sirens. He also notes that the Roman emperor Hadrian later piped water from the Stymphalian springs to Corinth.

The labour in Greek art

Artists showed the episode much less often than the Lion or the Hydra, but a few important images survive. An Attic black-figure amphora of the mid-sixth century BC in the British Museum shows Heracles attacking a flock of birds with a sling, not a bow. This suggests the choice of weapon was not fixed early on. The best-known image is one of the twelve metopes of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (c. 460 BC), where Heracles presents the dead birds to a seated Athena. This version puts the goddess's support at the centre and shows the labour already finished, not the fight.

The rattle often gets less attention than it deserves. In both Apollodorus and Diodorus the problem is reaching the birds, not overpowering them, and the solution is a divine tool for making noise, given by Athena and made by Hephaestus. Like the Augean stables, the labour is about cleverness and help from the gods more than strength. Real bronze krotala were used in ancient Greek music and ritual, so an ancient audience would have pictured something familiar.

Ancient sources

• Apollodorus, Library 2.5.6: the birds shelter in the wooded lake for fear of wolves, Athena gives Heracles bronze clappers made by Hephaestus, and he shoots the birds from a nearby mountain.
• Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.13: tells how Heracles drove the birds off with a bronze rattle, freeing the countryside they had laid waste.
• Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 2: the Argonauts on the Island of Ares fend off birds that shoot sharp feathers, using a roof of shields and loud noise.
• Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.22: describes Stymphalus, the lake's underground outflow, the man-eating birds, the Arabian "Stymphalian" birds, and the temple of Artemis with bird figures and bird-legged maidens.

Frequently asked questions

Did Heracles kill all the Stymphalian Birds?

Sources differ. Apollodorus has him shoot them, while Diodorus and others put more weight on driving them away. Later tradition combined the two: some birds were killed and the rest fled, eventually to the Island of Ares, where the Argonauts met them.

Were the birds' feathers really made of bronze?

The oldest accounts do not say so. Feathers used as darts first appear clearly in Apollonius's Argonaut episode, and the bronze-piercing beaks come from Pausanias. The fully metallic bird is a later and especially modern combination of these details.

Which labour was the Stymphalian Birds?

Apollodorus counts it as the sixth, after the Augean stables and before the Cretan Bull. Other ancient lists order the twelve labours differently, but the episode usually falls among the six labours set in the Peloponnese.

Where is Lake Stymphalia today?

In the Corinthia regional unit of the Peloponnese, near the village of Stymfalia. The site of the ancient town and an environment museum about the wetland can both be visited.