Stymphalian Birds
The birds at Stymphalus in Apollodorus’s account
A vast flock sheltering in woodland beside an Arcadian lake, frightened into the air by Heracles during his sixth labour.
Quick answer
In Apollodorus’s Library, the Stymphalian Birds are the flock Heracles must drive away in his sixth labour. Athena supplies bronze castanets received from Hephaestus. Their clatter frightens the birds out of the woodland, allowing Heracles to shoot them as they fly.[1]
Quick facts
| Record type | Collective creature record: a flock in Greek mythography |
|---|---|
| Source | Apollodorus, Library 2.5.6, translated by Frazer (1921) |
| Source realm | Stymphalus in the Greek mythic world |
| Local setting | A lake surrounded by deep woodland, at Stymphalus in Arcadia |
| Number | Described as countless; no numerical total |
| Reason for gathering | Refuge from wolves |
| Response to sound | Frightened into flight by the castanets |
| Outcome | Heracles shoots the birds after startling them into the air; no number killed is given |
Account details follow Library 2.5.6.[1]
What the source says
Eurystheus’s sixth command is to chase the Stymphalian Birds away. The account introduces a lake at Stymphalus in Arcadia, enclosed by deep woodland. Birds have gathered there in immense numbers because they fear becoming prey for wolves.[1]
Heracles cannot work out how to drive them out of the wood. Athena gives him the bronze castanets she has received from Hephaestus. Standing on an unnamed mountain overlooking the lake, Heracles clashes the instruments together. The birds cannot bear the noise and rise in alarm; he then shoots them.[1]
Description and behaviour
The flock is defined by its numbers, refuge, flight, and fear of the clattering instruments. The passage supplies no colour, measurements, species identification, or unusual anatomy. In particular, the bronze belongs to Heracles’s equipment, not to the birds.[1]
Frazer calls the instruments “brazen castanets”; this profile renders the material as bronze while retaining his name for the instruments. His translation calls the hero Hercules; the prose here uses Heracles. “Stymphalian” identifies the birds through Stymphalus, the place named in the account, rather than establishing a biological classification.[1]
Source realm: Stymphalus in Arcadia
The lake, surrounding wood, and overlooking mountain form the episode’s setting. The text names the city and region but leaves the mountain unnamed. These locations belong to this Greek mythographic account; the record does not turn them into a general habitat for supernatural birds.[1]
The birds are catalogued collectively under creatures because the source follows a flock in a particular encounter, without naming individual members or defining a dragon type.
Role in the labour
The episode moves from Heracles’s uncertainty to a solution supplied by Athena: sound brings the birds out of cover, and shooting follows. This is an editorial reading of the narrated sequence, not a universal symbolic meaning assigned to the flock.[1]
Book and reference
- 1The Library
Apollodorus (conventionally Pseudo-Apollodorus); with an English translation by Sir James George Frazer. Volume I, Loeb Classical Library 121. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1921. Book 2, chapter 5, section 6 (2.5.6). Public-domain translation; Theoi transcription.
Read Book 2; locate [2.5.6] ↗Edition and authorship note ↗. The ancient compiler’s identity and exact date remain uncertain; the traditional attribution does not establish authorship by the second-century BCE scholar Apollodorus.