Though Lake Stymfalia is best known through ancient Greek mythology as one of the locations linked to the Labours of Hercules, its modern-day significance, as the southernmost mountain wetland in the Balkans, remains largely unknown.
According to ancient Greek mythology, Hercules reached the lake in the mountainous Corinthia region to perform the sixth of his twelve labours, for which he encountered the Stymphalian birds, man-eating birds with copper beaks, claws and wings, hidden amid the dense lakeside vegetation, to the terror of locals and their herds. Hercules, with precious help from the goddess Athena, prevailed in his battle with the Stymphalian birds, but did not manage to exterminate the entire lot with his arrows as some birds escaped to the island Aretias, Turkey’s modern-day Giresun, in the Black Sea.
This legend may have been shaped by the historical existence of the northern bald ibis (Geronticus Eremita) in the region, a bird species no longer found in Greece but which appears to have existed in Greek territory until the 2nd millennium BC.
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