Stymphalian birds: the sixth labor of Heracles explained

The Stymphalian birds were vast flocks of birds that Heracles drove from a wooded lake in Arcadia as one of his twelve labors, the sixth in Apollodorus’ list. There were too many of them, too well hidden, to deal with by bow alone, so Heracles used a pair of bronze rattles that Athena had received from Hephaestus: the din flushed the birds into the open, and he shot them down. Later tradition made them far more dangerous. Pausanias calls them man-eaters, and in Apollonius of Rhodes their feathers fly like arrows at the Argonauts. It is the one labor that is won by making noise rather than by strength.

A monster with no face

Unlike the Nemean lion or the Lernaean Hydra, the Stymphalian birds are not a single beast. They are a nameless crowd, with no individual names and no family tree: no ancient source gives them parents. The challenge, then, is not to kill something invulnerable but to get a swarm out of dense cover. The sixth labor is a test of ingenuity.

That is also why they do not appear on the Greek family tree. Most of Heracles’ opponents descend from Typhon and Echidna; the birds of Stymphalus come from nowhere in particular.

Where was Lake Stymphalus?

Stymphalus was a town in northeastern Arcadia, below Mount Cyllene, on the borders of Argolis and Corinthia. Its lake is fed by a spring and drains through underground sinkholes. Pausanias (8.22.3) says the water vanishes below ground and reappears in Argolis as the river Erasinus. Apollodorus describes the lake as “embosomed in a deep wood”, which explains the problem Heracles faced: under the trees the birds could not be seen.

Why were there so many birds there in the first place? Apollodorus gives a strikingly down-to-earth answer: they had flocked to the lake for refuge, afraid of being eaten by wolves.

The sixth labor of Heracles

Apollodorus’ account

The standard version of the labors of Heracles comes from Apollodorus (Library, 2.5.6). Eurystheus orders Heracles to drive out the birds, and Heracles cannot think how to get them out of the wood. Athena then gives him bronze krotala, metal clappers that she had been given by Hephaestus. Standing on a mountain above the lake, Heracles clashes them together. The birds cannot stand the sound and fly up in fright, and Heracles shoots them.

The division of labor is clear. The smith god makes the tool, the goddess of practical intelligence hands it over, and the hero’s bow, useless against a hidden flock, becomes decisive once the birds are in the open.

Diodorus: an early labor

Diodorus Siculus (4.13.2) tells the same story more briefly. He describes a multitude of birds that were destroying the crops of the region, and stresses the cleverness of the solution: a bronze rattle whose racket drove them off. In his sequence it is the fifth labor, after the Ceryneian hind and before the Augean stables; in Apollodorus it comes sixth, after the stables. The order of the labors was never completely fixed.

Author	What the birds are	Method	Outcome
Apollonius (2.1052-1057)	birds of the lake	bronze rattle shaken on a height	driven far away
Diodorus (4.13.2)	a multitude ruining the crops	bronze rattle	driven off, then killed
Apollodorus (2.5.6)	birds sheltering from wolves	Hephaestus’ clappers, given by Athena	shot down
Pausanias (8.22.4)	man-eating birds	arrows	shot down
Hyginus (Fabulae 20 and 30)	birds that shoot their feathers	arrows	killed on the island of Mars

How the birds became man-eaters

Pausanias’ report

Writing in the second century CE, Pausanias (8.22.4) reports the tradition that these birds ate human flesh. He then adds a piece of natural history. In the Arabian desert, he says, there were still birds called “Stymphalides”, as savage toward people as lions or leopards. They swooped on hunters and wounded them with their beaks, which could pierce bronze and iron. The Arabs protected themselves with thick clothes of bark, in which the beaks got stuck. These birds were the size of a crane and looked like ibises, but with stronger, straight beaks. Pausanias wonders whether they had anything to do with the Arcadian birds, but leaves the question open.

Apollonius and the arrow feathers

Apollonius of Rhodes (Argonautica, 2.1030-1089) gives the birds their most famous weapon. On the way to Colchis, the Argonauts pass the island of Ares in the Black Sea, home to birds that drop sharp feathers on them like darts; one wounds Oileus in the shoulder. Amphidamas, an Arcadian, then recalls how even Heracles could not drive off the birds of Stymphalus with his bow, but succeeded by shaking a bronze rattle on a high peak. The Argonauts follow suit: they put on their crested helmets, bang their shields together and shout, and the birds flee.

Apollonius does not say outright that the island birds are the birds of Stymphalus. Hyginus (Fabulae 20 and 30) makes the link: the Stymphalides of the island of Mars, which shot their feathers like javelins, are the birds Heracles killed with his arrows. The episode ties the Heracles cycle to Jason and the Golden Fleece, a voyage Heracles himself had joined at the start.

Why the image changed

The shift is easy to trace: from a nuisance flock in Apollodorus and Diodorus, to man-killers with piercing beaks, to birds that shoot arrows. The modern picture of birds with “bronze beaks, claws and feathers” combines these later features; no single ancient text describes them that way. Along the way the birds joined the other dangerous winged creatures of Greek myth, such as the Harpies, whom the same Argonauts chase from the table of Phineus, or the Sirens.

Cult and art

The temple of Artemis Stymphalia

Pausanias (8.22.7) describes an old temple of Artemis Stymphalia at Stymphalus. Under its roof were carvings of the Stymphalian birds; he could not tell for certain whether they were wood or plaster, but thought they were wood. Behind the temple stood statues of maidens in white marble with the legs of birds. These bird-women recall the iconography of the Sirens and show that the birds were part of the town’s religious identity.

The birds in Greek art

Sixth-century BCE Athenian vase painters liked the scene: Heracles taking aim at a flock of birds, perched or in flight. A black-figure amphora in the British Museum shows him using not a bow but a sling, a variant unknown to the written sources. One of the twelve metopes of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, from around 460 BCE, shows Heracles presenting the dead birds to Athena, who sits on a rock; its fragments are now divided between the Olympia museum and the Louvre. The scene places the labor under the patronage of the goddess who supplied the solution.

What the myth means

The sixth labor is the only one solved with sound. Heracles, who strangles the lion and crushes the Hydra, has to give up on force, and even on his bow, as long as the enemy is hidden. First he has to change the terms of the fight and drive the enemy into the open. Clashing bronze was also a ritual tool: across the Greek world, the clang of metal was used to scare off harmful powers. The episode shows a hero who knows how to use a divine instrument and wins through practical cunning, the Greek mētis, as much as through muscle.

What the ancient sources say

• Apollonius of Rhodes (Argonautica, 2.1030-1089): Heracles’ rattle at Stymphalus, and the arrow-feathered birds of the island of Ares.
• Diodorus (4.13.2): a multitude ruining the crops, driven off with a bronze rattle; the fifth labor.
• Apollodorus (2.5.6): the sixth labor, birds sheltering from wolves, clappers made by Hephaestus and given by Athena.
• Pausanias (8.22.4-7): man-eating birds, the Arabian Stymphalides, the temple of Artemis Stymphalia and its bird-legged maidens.
• Hyginus (Fabulae 20 and 30): identifies the birds of the island of Mars with those of Stymphalus.
• Ovid (Metamorphoses, 9.187): the dying Heracles recalls Stymphalus among his deeds.

Further reading

To place this labor in the full cycle, read the labors of Heracles and the Heracles profile. Athena and Hephaestus explain where the clappers came from, and Jason and the Golden Fleece picks up the episode on the island of Ares. For other opponents of Heracles, see the Nemean lion, the Lernaean Hydra and the Cretan Bull. The wider picture is on the Greek mythology hub.