Stymphalian Birds
The sixth labour of Heracles: driving away man-eating birds with bronze beaks from Lake Stymphalos in Arcadia.
The Meaning of Stymphalian Birds
Their feathers were bronze arrows — they could shoot them like a porcupine shoots quills. The Stymphalian Birds were sacred to Ares and had colonized Lake Stymphalos, destroying crops and killing livestock with their metallic feathers. Heracles could not enter the dense marsh. Athena gave him a bronze rattle (krotala) forged by Hephaestus, and the noise drove the birds into the air. Heracles then shot them with arrows dipped in the Hydra's venom. Surviving birds fled to the Isle of Ares in the Black Sea, where the Argonauts later encountered them. The labour shows Heracles using intelligence rather than brute force — Athena's solution was acoustic, not violent.
Symbols
Fun Fact
The bronze rattle Athena gave Heracles was forged by Hephaestus — the gods collaborated on the solution.
Explore Further
Stymphalian Birds
🐉 creaturelabour, avian
Man-eating birds with bronze beaks and metallic feathers they could launch as arrows, inhabiting the marshes of Stymphalos in Arcadia.
Stymphalian Birds
🐉 creatureMan-eating birds with bronze beaks
The Stymphalian Birds were a flock of man-eating birds with beaks of bronze and toxic dung, inhabiting the marshes around Lake Stymphalia in Arcadia.
Apples of the Hesperides
💭 conceptlabour
The eleventh labour of Heracles: obtaining the golden apples from the garden at the edge of the world, guarded by the dragon Ladon.
Cattle of Geryon
💭 conceptlabour
The tenth labour of Heracles: stealing the red cattle of the three-bodied giant Geryon from the island of Erytheia at the western edge of the world.
Stymphalian Cranes
🐉 creaturebirds
War-birds sacred to Ares on the Isle of Ares that attacked the Argonauts with bronze feather-darts
Cerberus
💭 conceptlabour
The twelfth and final labour of Heracles: descending to the Underworld and bringing back Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog, without weapons.
Girdle of Hippolyta
💭 conceptlabour
The ninth labour of Heracles: obtaining the war belt of the Amazon queen Hippolyta, a gift from her father Ares.
Augean Stables
💭 conceptlabour
The fifth labour of Heracles: cleaning the stables of King Augeas, which held 3,000 cattle and had not been cleaned in thirty years.
The Twelve Labours
💭 conceptHeroism, endurance, redemption
Twelve impossible tasks imposed on Heracles by King Eurystheus as penance for killing his own family in a madness sent by Hera.
Cretan Bull
💭 conceptlabour
The seventh labour of Heracles: capturing the monstrous bull of Crete, either the one Poseidon sent or the father of the Minotaur.
Stymphalus
🏛 placeGeography
A lake and region in Arcadia where Heracles defeated the man-eating Stymphalian Birds as his sixth labour
Birds
💭 conceptLiterature
Aristophanes' comedy in which two Athenians found a utopian city in the sky among the birds