Herakles’ 6th Labor: The Stymphalian Birds - II
For the sixth Labor, Hercules was to drive away an enormous flock of birds which gathered at a lake near the town of Stymphalos. The Stymphalian Birds were man-eating birds with beaks of bronze, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and poisonous dung. According to Pausanias, Description of Greece, 8.22.5:
“These fly against those who come to hunt them, wounding and killing them with their beaks. All armor of bronze or iron that men wear is pierced by the birds; but if they weave a garment of thick cork, the beaks of the Stymphalian birds are caught in the cork garment... These birds are of the size of a crane, and are like the ibis, but their beaks are more powerful, and not crooked like that of the ibis.”
The amphora decoration shows Herakles using a sling against the Stymphalian birds (swans). On the left Herakles stands to right, in a short purple chiton with lion's skin over head and body, quiver slung at back; the swans are sixteen in number, of which one flies away behind him, five forming a lowermost row have not risen the remaining ten fly about in confusion.
CAV / CAVI @ www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/
Source: www.perseus.tufts.edu
Attic black figured amphora
Height : 40,6 cm.
Attributed to “Group E”
Ca. 540 BC
From Vulci, Viterbo
London, The British Museum, Inv. No. 1843,1103.40
Herakles’ 6th Labor: The Stymphalian Birds - II
For the sixth Labor, Hercules was to drive away an enormous flock of birds which gathered at a lake near the town of Stymphalos. The Stymphalian Birds were man-eating birds with beaks of bronze, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and poisonous dung. According to Pausanias, Description of Greece, 8.22.5:
“These fly against those who come to hunt them, wounding and killing them with their beaks. All armor of bronze or iron that men wear is pierced by the birds; but if they weave a garment of thick cork, the beaks of the Stymphalian birds are caught in the cork garment... These birds are of the size of a crane, and are like the ibis, but their beaks are more powerful, and not crooked like that of the ibis.”
The amphora decoration shows Herakles using a sling against the Stymphalian birds (swans). On the left Herakles stands to right, in a short purple chiton with lion's skin over head and body, quiver slung at back; the swans are sixteen in number, of which one flies away behind him, five forming a lowermost row have not risen the remaining ten fly about in confusion.
CAV / CAVI @ www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/
Source: www.perseus.tufts.edu
Attic black figured amphora
Height : 40,6 cm.
Attributed to “Group E”
Ca. 540 BC
From Vulci, Viterbo
London, The British Museum, Inv. No. 1843,1103.40