#GARDEN OF HESPERIDES SERIES#

Antaeus was killed by placing him above the earth, suspended in a tree. In some variations, Herakles, either at the start or at the end of his task, meets Antaeus, who was invincible as long as he touched his mother, Gaia, the earth. This tale is more usually found in the position of the Erymanthian Boar, since it is associated with Chiron choosing to forgo immortality and taking Prometheus' place. In some versions of the tale, Herakles did not know where to travel, and so sought help, being directed to Prometheus to ask, and when reaching Prometheus freed him from his torture as payment. Herakles first caught Nereus, the shape-shifting sea god, to learn where the Garden of the Hesperides was located. The first of these (the eleventh overall) was to steal the apples from the garden.

Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden a never-sleeping, hundred-headed, dragon, named Ladon, as an additional safeguard.Īlthough Herakles was supposed to perform only ten labours, Eurystheus discounted those where he was aided or paid, and so two additional labours were given. The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally plucked from it themselves. The apples were planted from the fruited branches that Gaia gave to her as a wedding gift when Hera accepted Zeus. The Garden of the Hesperides is Hera's orchard in the west, where either a single tree or a grove of immortality-giving golden apples grew. Or they are listed as the daughters of Atlas, or of Zeus and either Hesperius or Themis, or Phorcys and Ceto. They are sometimes portrayed as the evening daughters of Night ( Nyx) and Darkness ( Erebus), in accord with the way Eos in the farthermost east, in Colchis, is the daughter of the titan Hyperion.

In addition to their tending of the garden, they were said to have taken great pleasure in singing. They are also called the African Sisters, perhaps when thought to be in Libya. They are sometimes called the Western Maidens, the Daughters of Evening, or the Sunset Goddesses, all apparently tied to their imagined location in the distant west, and Hesperis is appropriately the personification of the evening (as Eos is of the dawn) and the Evening Star is Hesperus. Among the names given to them are Aegle ('dazzling light'), Arethusa, Erytheia (or Erytheis), Hesperia (or Hespereia), Hespere (or Hespera), Hestia, and Hesperusa. These may have included the Canary Islands, the Madeira Islands and Cape Verde.Īccording to different accounts, there were either three, four, or seven Hesperides, but they are usually numbered three, like the other Greek triads (the Three Graces and the Moirae).

#GARDEN OF HESPERIDES SERIES#

The Greek poet Hesiod said that the ancient name of Cádiz was Erytheia, another name for the Hesperides.Īdditionally, Hesperides (also called Fortunate Isles) is a name given by the ancients to a series of islands located to the extreme west of the then known world. According to the Greek poet Stesichorus, in his poem the 'song of Geryon', and the Greek geographer Strabo, in his book Geographika (volume III), the Hesperides are in Tartessos, a location placed to the south of Iberia (Spain). In Greek mythology, the Hesperides are nymphs who tend a blissful garden in a far west corner of the world, located, according to various sources, in the Arcadian Mountains in Greece, near the Atlas mountains in Libya, or on a distant island at the edge of the ocean.

Garden of hesperides