Lake Stymfalia in the eastern Peloponnese is still a magical place of marsh, woods and mists. It is easy to see how a heavyweight like Heracles might have trouble tracking down birds hidden in these woods, and tramping through the wet ground.
A COLONY of birds once sought refuge from wolves by settling in marshy woods around Lake Stymphalia. Artemis took them for pets, and bred them to be ferocious, with bronze beaks and poisonous dung, and sharp quills they could shoot like darts. Now they ravaged crops, carried off beasts, and devoured townspeople.
Hoping his cousin might come to some harm, Eurystheus sent Heracles to deal with them.
At first, Heracles was confounded. The marshy ground of the lakeside wood was too soft for his weight, and the trees concealed the birds from his arrows tipped with venomous hydra blood. But then came a tap on his shoulder.
It was Athene, laden with an enormous pair of brazen castanets, fashioned specially for him by Hephaestus. A grateful Hercules seized the castanets, and rattled them noisily. The terrified birds rocketed into the air, and as they flew off towards the Black Sea, never to return, the hero picked some off with his poisoned arrows, to show to Eurystheus.*
The Argonauts met the birds in their new home on the Black Sea, and drove them away once more, this time with dazzling light flashing from burnished shields and helmets.
Précis
When Heracles was sent to deal with the man-eating birds of Lake Stymphalia, he found he could not approach their nests because of marshy ground, nor shoot them down because of the thick woods. However, Athene was on hand to lend him a set of noisy castanets, which Heracles used to scare the birds into abandoning their lakeside colony for ever. (61 / 60 words)
