By the Gods!

The Sixth Labour of Heracles

Much like the fifth labour with the stables, Heracles’ next task also sounds like ordinary chores for a farmhand. This time around King Eurystheus told Heracles to get rid of the birds nested around the town of Stympholos. Of course there’s always a catch for poor Heracles, and the reason the Stymphalian people couldn’t just rely on some scarecrows was that the Stymphalian birds were able to shoot their feathers like spears, making them fairly proficient at murder.

Athena really gets the M.V.P. award on this labour, though. She saw that Heracles was in a jam and being a goddess of wisdom, she thought “Know what he needs? Magic castanets.” Mortals like you or I may wonder how that would help with a flock of man-eating, spear-feathered birds, but obviously that’s why no one ever made us gods/goddesses of anything.

Using the bronze krotala (castanets) forged by Hephaestus himself, Heracles scared the Stymphalian birds from their roosts, and from his safe vantage point he shot them down with his hydra-arrows. There’s no authority on what Heracles did with the flock of dead birds, but I bet the results were delicious.