Hesperides- Greek GroupCollective"Nymphs of the West"

The Garden at the World's Edge

At the far western rim of the earth, beyond the stream of Ocean where Atlas holds the sky, the Hesperides tend a garden. At its center stands a tree bearing golden apples, a gift from Gaia to Hera on the occasion of her marriage to Zeus. Hesiod's Theogony names them daughters of Nyx, among the brood of Night alongside Sleep and Death.

They sang as they circled the tree. Coiled about the trunk, the hundred-headed serpent Ladon kept watch, sleepless, born of Phorkys and Keto according to Hesiod. Between song and serpent, the golden apples hung untouched.

Heracles and the Argonauts

The garden's seclusion ended when Heracles arrived to claim the golden apples as his eleventh labor. Apollodorus records that Heracles, on the advice of Prometheus, sent Atlas to fetch the apples while he held the sky in the titan's place. Apollodorus gives a second version in which Heracles slew Ladon himself. Eratosthenes places the dead serpent among the stars as the constellation Draco.

When the Argonauts passed through the region on their return from Colchis, Apollonius describes them finding the Hesperides in mourning. The nymphs wept for their slain guardian and their plundered tree. When the Argonauts begged for water, the Hesperides transformed before their eyes: one became a poplar, another an elm. From these trees water sprang for the desperate sailors.