Stymfalia

Stymphalia (Greek: Στυμφαλία; Ancient Greek: Στύμφαλος Stymphalos) is a village and a former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Sikyona, of which it is a municipal unit. Population 2,852 (2001). The seat of the municipality was in Kalianoi, 41 km southwest of the town of Kiato. The municipality occupies a mountain valley with an average altitude of 600 metres. Mount Kyllene dominates it to the north east, rising to c. 2400 metres. The largest village is Lafka, but the principal antiquities are just south of the modern village of Stymphalia, a hamlet of c. 100 inhabitants.

History

In ancient Greece, Stymphalos, lying in this valley of northwestern Arcadia, was renowned as the site of one of the Labors of Hercules, the slaying of the Stymphalian birds. Hera, whose presence is never far from Heracles was venerated at the site in an archaic form in which she took three phases, as maiden, matron and even widow.Pindar mentions an Olympic victor in the mule cart race] (a man called Hagesias) in his sixth Olympian Ode, and urges the members of the choir to venerate their virginal Hera, who was apparently a survival of pre-Olympian religion. Pausanias mentions a statue of Dromeus, a long distance runner from Stymphalos who won at all the panhellenic games in the mid-5th century BC. Little else is known from literature of Stymphalos in antiquity. Artemis was the principal divinity of the town and her temple seems still to have been in use in Roman times. One unusual aspect of the goddess is that her sanctuary is referred to in an inscription of the early 2nd century BC as that of Brauronian Artemis, an Athenian cult. An inscription commemorating Stymphalian hospitality to the people of Elateia was to be set up in the agora of Elateia and the sanctuary of Brauronian Artemis at Stymphalos. Demeter and Hermes are also epigraphically attested.