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Stymphalian and Other birds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

J. K. Anderson
J. K. Anderson
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

Miss Sylvia Benton, in a recent note, identifies the bird which appears on some of the coins of Stymphalos ‘rising above the leaves of a Water Plantain … with a Fritillary on either side… The bird wears ear-flaps, and for me a marsh bird with earflaps must be meant for the Great Crested Grebe’.

This identification seems to me convincing, though the bill as represented on the coins is perhaps rather short and thick. On April 29th and May 23rd 1974 I visited Stymphalos, in company with my family, in the hope of confirming that the Lake is still within the Grebe's range. This we were unable to do, and I am delighted to learn from Mr Buxton's note that ‘the bird breeds now on the Stymphalian lake’.

The Lake certainly offers in its extensive reed-beds a most suitable breeding-ground for Grebes, which build partly floating platforms of marsh vegetation to serve as nests. Adult birds sleep on the water and are fish-eaters. Grebes cannot therefore have suggested the different literary variants of this Labour of Herakles.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 96 , November 1976 , pp. 146
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1976

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References

1 Benton, Sylvia, ‘Note on Sea Birds’, JHS xcii (1972) 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Compare Imhoof-Blumer, F. W. and Gardner, Percy, A Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias (2nd ed. revised by Al. N. Oikonomides; Chicago, 1964) pl. T xiGoogle Scholar. The ear-flaps appear more clearly on pl. T x, where the head is shown without vegetation.

3 Buxton, John, ‘A Further Note on Sea Birds’, JHS xciv (1974) 170CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 The scholiasts reject the tale of Mnaseas that the ‘birds’ were princesses killed by Herakles for entertaining his enemies the Molione.

5 Roscher, W. H., Lexicon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie iv Col. 1563 s.v. ‘Stymphalische Vogel’Google Scholar.

6 Called either κρόταλον or πλαταγή, apparently indifferently. Et sonitu terrebis aves, says Virgil (Georgics i 156), without saying precisely how the noise is to be made.

7 Levi, Peter, Pausanias: Guide to Greece (Harmondsworth, 1971) ii 423Google Scholar, fig. 13.

8 Mathews, Downs, ‘Volunteers rescue injured wildfowl’, Smithsonian Magazine v no. 5 (August 1974) 31Google Scholar.

9 Anderson, J. K., Θρᾳξ, Δυτῑνος, Καταρράκτης, JHS xcii (1972) 172Google Scholar.