Hesperides

> *"Hesperides are the daughters of Atlas and guardians of Iduna's private orchard where a tree which bear immortality-inducing golden apples is kept. They are the only people other than Iduna, Echidna, or Typhon to be able to tame the Evil Dragon Ladon."*
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The **Hesperides** are the nymphs of evening and golden light of sunsets, who are the "Daughters of the Evening" or "Nymphs of the West". They are also called the **Atlantides** from their reputed father, the Titan Atlas.

## Description

### The Nymphs of the Evening

Since the Hesperides themselves are mere symbols of the gifts the apples embody, they cannot be actors in a human drama. Their abstract, interchangeable names are a symptom of their impersonality. They guard the golden apples beyond Ocean in the far west of the world. The Hesperides are four nymphs, and their names are: Aigle (or Aegle, "dazzling light"), Erytheia (or Erytheis), Hesperia ("sunset glow") whose name refers to the color of the setting sun, red, yellow, or gold; and lastly Arethusa.

They are sometimes called the "Western Maidens", the "Daughters of Evening", or *Erythrai*, and the "Sunset Goddesses", designations all apparently tied to their imagined location in the distant west. Hesperis is appropriately the personification of the evening (as Eos is of the dawn) and the Evening Star is Hesperus.

In addition to their tending of the garden, they have taken great pleasure in singing. Iduna calls them "minstrel maids" as they possess the power of sweet song. The Hesperides could be hamadryad nymphs or epimeliads as suggested by a passage in which they change into trees: *"... Hespere became a poplar and Eretheis an elm, and Aegle a willow's sacred trunk ..."* and in the same account, they are described figuratively to have white arms and golden heads.

### The Garden of the Hesperides

The Garden of the Hesperides is Iduna's orchard in the west, where a grove grows, producing golden apples.

The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally picked apples from it themselves. Iduna also placed in the garden an immortal, never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard. In the Judgement of Paris, it was from the Garden that Eris, Goddess of Discord, obtained the Apple of Discord, which led to the Trojan War.

### The Eleventh Labor of Hercules

After Hercules completed his first ten Labors, Eurystheus gave him two more claiming that neither the Hydra counted (because Iolaus helped Hercules) nor the Augean stables (either because he received payment for the job or because the rivers did the work). The first of these two additional Labors was to steal the apples from the garden of the Hesperides. Hercules first caught the Old Man of the Sea, the shape-shifting sea god, to learn where the Garden of the Hesperides was located. In some versions of the tale, Heracles went to the Caucasus, where Prometheus was confined. The Titan directed him concerning his course through the land of the peoples in the farthest north and the perils to be encountered on his homeward march after slaying Geryon in the farthest west.

Finally making his way to the Garden of the Hesperides, Hercules tricked Atlas into retrieving some of the golden apples for him, by offering to hold up the heavens for a little while (Atlas was able to take them as he was the father to the Hesperides). This would have made this task – like the Hydra and Augean stables – void because he had received help. Upon his return, Atlas decided that he did not want to take the heavens back, and instead offered to deliver the apples himself, but Hercules tricked him again by agreeing to take his place on condition that Atlas relieve him temporarily so that Hercules could make his cloak more comfortable. Atlas agreed, but Hercules reneged and walked away, carrying the apples.