Stymphalos

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Stymphalos ( Greek  Στύμφαλος , Latin Stymphalus), also Stymphelos or Stymfalos, is the ancient name of a plateau, the Stymphalian Lake and a place in the northeast of the Peloponnese , which are now called Stymfalia .

Mythological and late antique historiography

Abundant spring water and the lake Stymphalos favored the settlement. Agriculture in the fertile Karst plain ( Polje ), however, remained fateful, as the extent of the lake in the plain fluctuated greatly from season to year due to the lack of surface runoff - from dried out to completely flooded (see Stymfalia (ecosystem) ). Without the legend about Heracles and the Stymphalids, Stymphalos would have remained an insignificant, little-known spot at all times.

According to the legend, Stymphalos could only be settled after Heracles had killed the crane-sized Stymphalian birds with a bow and arrow because they chopped people to death with their hard beaks. The legend obviously has a relation to the local reality then and now in Stymfalia: The unpredictable lake makes it difficult to secure a livelihood through farming. To this day, the plain and lake have provided a secure livelihood for rare fish and bird species and a resting place for many migratory birds. Today in Stymfalia the danger no longer comes from nature, but from human interference.

The preserved writings of Pausanias are an important source for this legend, for the plain and lake Stymphalos, as well as for the archeology and historiography of all of Greece . He described facts and myths about Stymphalos in his approximately 171–181 written work Description of Greece, Book VIII, Arcadia (8.22).

After-effects in culture and art to this day

In Roman times, in the Renaissance, in classicism, but also today, Greek mythology - including Stymphalos - was and is very much alive and still lives on today in mosaics, sculptures, engravings, oil paintings, lexical works and in literature. A 1750-year-old document from Spain (!) Is part of a Roman mosaic "Heracles kills the Stymphalic birds" (from Llíria near Valencia). Old maps of the Peloponnese, including the Moreae map by Frederick de Witt from 1680, recorded a "Stymphalus lacus".

Archeology: Hellenistic settlement, Frankish episode

Since the Bronze Age, a settlement developed on the north side of Lake Stymfalia, which became a small Greek city with a city wall and temple from the 4th century BC. When Pausanias visited Stymphalos (around 150), the city was largely abandoned, especially after a devastating earthquake.

Since 1980 the lake has been geologically explored and its north side has been archaeologically explored.

Canadian archaeologists (see the links) were able to uncover the remains of city walls and gates, streets, a temple of Athena (on the Acropolis hill) and, repeatedly flooded by the fluctuating extent of the lake, a number of building foundations using finds and comparisons date the settlement period.

About 2 km to the north-west of this are well-preserved ruins, which can be assigned to a Frankish Cistercian monastery, Zaraka Monastery , from the time of the Crusades. The monastery was built with stones from the Hellenistic ruins, used as a monastery from around 1225 and abandoned around 1280.

Field cultivation, irrigation, cultural monument in a difficult ecosystem

In contrast to the series of similar karst basins in the Peloponnese, Lake Stymfal has two special features:

1. The lake almost never disappears during the hot, dry season; The amount of water, which often rises sharply from winter rainfall, is reduced by evaporation and two, sometimes clogged, swallowing holes (Greek: katavothres, pl.) And an artificial exit only to the extent that the lake i. d. Usually keeps a minimum size of 3 to 1 km.

2. The philhellenic Roman emperor Hadrian built an artificial exit, the Hadrian aqueduct of Corinth from the Stymphalian Sea to Corinth . For this purpose, a 1070 m long tunnel was driven through the adjacent mountain from the south-eastern edge of the lake and another 780 m long tunnel after the next valley. From here the water was directed in a wide arc to the south with an average gradient of only 5 m per km to Corinth. The 84 km long structure was a masterpiece, but a routine task for the experienced Roman engineers.

Pausanias also mentioned these two peculiarities in his book Arcadia .

The aqueduct was in operation for a long time. It fell into disrepair, however, until the solidly built tunnels and the subsequent further kilometers up to the Nemea plain from 1881 to 1885 were repaired so that lake water could reach the summer-hot field irrigation of the plain near Kiáto on the Gulf of Corinth (Morfis, p. 130) . From 2002 the prefecture administration of Korinthia started the construction of a modern water pipeline system, the first 10 km on the basically same route. The alignment and the construction work behind the first tunnel there grossly endangered the functionality of the historical cultural monument of late antiquity. The dispute over the redistribution of water rights since the 1990s (Stymfalier versus coastal cities) and environmental concerns about whether the high transport capacities of the pipeline endanger the ecological balance of Stymfalia have also led to legal interventions. Construction sites and steel pipes were left lying around for years. The lake and the surrounding area had meanwhile been legally protected. After the ratification of EU water directives and the EU protection provision Natura 2000 by Greece, the state put the lake and the surrounding area of ​​Stymfalia under protection provisions. See Stymfalia (ecosystem) .

literature

  • A. Morfis (Edb), Karst Hydrogeology of the Central and Eastern Peloponnesus (Greece); Styrian contributions to hydrogeology, 1986.
  • Description of Greece; Pausanias (Periegeta), translated into German by Ernst Meyer , Zurich, 1954.
  • Pausanias. Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by WHS Jones, HA Ormerod, Cambridge, USA, 1918. (See link Pausanias ...)
  • Yannis A. Lolos, The Hadrianic Aqueduct of Corinth, in: Hesperia, 66.2, 1997, Princeton, NJ.

Web links