The Stymphalian birds are man-eating birds with beaks ofbronze, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and poisonous dung.
These fly against those who come to hunt them, wounding and killing them with their beaks. All armour of bronze or iron that men wear is pierced by the birds; but if they weave a garment of thick cork, the beaks of the Stymphalian birds are caught in the cork garment, just as the wings of small birds stick in bird-lime. These birds are of the size of a crane, and are like the ibis, but their beaks are more powerful, and not crooked like that of the ibis.
These birds were pets ofArtemis, the goddess of the hunt; or had been brought up byAres, the god of war.[4] They migrated to a marsh inArcadia to escape a pack ofwolves. There they bred quickly and swarmed over the countryside, destroying crops, fruit trees, and townspeople.
The Stymphalian birds were defeated byHeracles (Hercules) in hissixth labour forEurystheus.[5][6] Heracles could not go into the marsh to reach the nests of the birds, as the ground would not support his weight.Athena, noticing the hero's plight, gave Heracles a rattle calledkrotala, whichHephaestus had made especially for the occasion. Heracles shook the krotala (similar tocastanets) on a certain mountain that overhung the lake and thus frightening the birds into the air.[7] Heracles then shot many of them with feathered arrows tipped with poisonous blood from the slainHydra. In some versions of this story this labour was discounted because of the help ofAthena.[citation needed] The rest flew far away, never to plague Arcadia again. Heracles brought some of the slain birds to Eurystheus as proof of his success.[8][9][10]
The surviving birds made a new home on the island of Aretias in theEuxine Sea. TheArgonauts later encountered them there.
According toMnaseas,[11] they were not birds, but women and daughters ofStymphalus and Ornis, and were killed by Heracles because they did not receive him hospitably. In the temple of the Stymphalian Artemis, however, they were represented as birds, and behind the temple, there were white marble statues of maidens with birds' feet.[12]
Chronological listing of the main classical literature sources for the Stymphalian birds (not comprehensive):
Sophocles,The Philoctetes, 1092 ff with the Scholiast (trans. Jebb) (Greek tragedy 5th century BC)
Regarding the Sophocles source,Jebb[13] saysBrunck[14] reads "πτωκάδες" as "πλωάδες" which is an epithet given by Apollonius Rhodius to the Stymphalian birds inArgonautica 2. 1054.
^"Appendix".Sophocles the Plays and Fragments. Vol. 4. Translated by Jebb, Sir Richard C. Cambridge: The University Press. 1908. p. 248. ark:/13960/t3tt4qq2x.
^"Philoctetes, 1061".Sophoclis Dramata. Translated by Brvnkii, Rich. Franc. Phil. Lipsiae. 1806. p. 652. ark:/13960/t78s5n03b.
Tzetzes, John,Histories or Chiliades unedited translation by Ana Untila (Book I), Gary Berkowitz (II-IV), Konstantinos Ramiotis (V-VI), Vasiliki Dogani (VII-VIII), Jonathan Alexander (IX-X), Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman (XI), and Nikolaos Giallousis (XII-XIII), with translation adjustments by Brady Kiesling affecting about 15 percent of the total . These translations are based on the 1826 Greek edition of Theophilus Kiesslingius.Online version at the Topos Text Project.
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