Heracles came to the marshes of Stymphalus. The growth of jungle
was so dense that he could not cut his way through to where the
man-eating birds were; they sat upon low bushes within the
jungle, gorging themselves upon the flesh they had carried there.
For days Heracles tried to hack his way through. He could not get
to where the birds were. Then, thinking he might not be able to
accomplish this labor, he sat upon the ground in despair.
It was then that one of the immortals appeared to him; for the
first and only time he was given help from the gods.
It was Athena who came to him. She stood apart from Heracles,
holding in her hands brazen cymbals. These she clashed together.
At the sound of this clashing the Stymphalean birds rose up from
the low bushes behind the jungle. Heracles shot at them with
those unerring arrows of his. The maneating birds fell, one after
the other, into the marsh.
Then Heracles went north to where the Coryneian deer took her
pasture. So swift of foot was she that no hound nor hunter had
ever been able to overtake her. For the whole of a year Heracles
kept Golden Horns in chase, and at last, on the side of the
Mountain Artemision, he caught her. Artemis, the goddess of the
wild things, would have punished Heracles for capturing the deer,
but the hero pleaded with her, and she relented and agreed to let
him bring the deer to Mycenm and show her to King Eurystheus. And
Artemis took charge of Golden Horns while Heracles went off to
capture the Erymanthean boar.
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