Greek PantheonLake
Lake Stymphalus
The Arcadian lake and marsh of the Stymphalian birds, which Heracles startled into flight with a bronze rattle from Athena and shot down in his sixth labour.
About Lake Stymphalus
Birds off the water
Apollodorus 2.5.6: the sixth labor is the Stymphalian birds, man-eating (or at least brazen) waterfowl in an Arcadian marsh. Athena gives a bronze rattle; Heracles flushes them and shoots. The lake is real. There is no bird-goddess cult required by Apollodorus. The labor is a wetland pest-control with a borrowed instrument. Pausanias later saw Stymphalos as a town with a temple of Artemis.
On the map
Lake Stymphalus among other places of the Greek Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Apollodorus, Library 2.5.6
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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