In Greek mythology, the Hesperides (; , ) are the nymphs who tend the garden in which grow the trees of Hera which bear golden apples. They were also called the Atlantides () from their reputed father, Atlas.Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 4.27.2
Etymology The name means originating from Hesperos (evening). Hesperos, or Vesper in Latin, is the origin of the name Hesperus, the evening star (i.e. the planet Venus) as well as having a shared root with the English word "west".
Parentage and names Both the parents, number, and names of the Hesperides vary between sources. They are sometimes portrayed as the evening daughters of Night (Nyx), either alone,Hesiod, Theogony 214–215 or with Darkness (Erebus),Hyginus. Fabulae, Preface; Cicero. De Natura Deorum, iii.44 in accord with the way Eos in the farthermost east, in Colchis, is the daughter of the titan Hyperion. The Hesperides are also listed as the daughters of Atlas and Hesperis,Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 4.27.2 or of Phorcys and Ceto,scholia in Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, 4.1399 or of Zeus and Themis.scholia in Euripides, Hippolytus, 742, citing Pherecydes as the authority In his commentary on the Aeneid, Servius records a tradition in which the nymphs are said to be the daughters of Hesperus.Servius, ad Aeneid, iv.484.
Apollonius of Rhodes gives the number as three with their names as Aigle, Erytheis, and Hespere (or Hespera).Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4.1427–8. Hyginus in the Fabulae names two as Aegle and Hesperie. A third name, 'Aerica' is accepted by some, though Thomas Muncker views it as a certain corruption and suggests it be restored as 'Erythia'. Muncker (1681) Mythographi Latini, Jul. Hyginus Fab. Planciades Fulgentius Lactantius Placidus Albricus Philosophus. p.2 note g. The amendment is followed by Smith and Trzaskoma.Smith and Trzaskoma (2007) p.118 (Th. 1. Erythea)Hyginus. Fabulae, Preface.
According to Servius, Hesiod named the Hesperides as Aigle, Erytheia, Hesperia, and Arethusa, though in some manuscripts it is instead recorded as 'Aegle and Erythea and ox-eyed Hesperethusa'. The attribution is considered doubtful.Servius, Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid 4.484 quoting HesiodHesiod, doubtful fragments 5. (=Servius on Vergil's Aeneid 4.484), Homeric Hymns and Homerica, edited and translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Apollodorus gives the number of the Hesperides also as four, namely: Aigle, Erytheia, Hesperia, and Arethusa,Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.5.11 while Fulgentius named them as Aegle, Hesperie, Medusa, and Arethusa.Fulgentius, Expositio Virgilianae continentiae secundum philosophos moralisErsch, Johann Samuel (1830). Allgemeine encyclopädie der wissenschaften und künste in alphabetischer folge von genannten schrifts bearbeitet und herausgegeben von J. S. Ersch und J. G. Gruber. p. 148 The historiographer Diodorus in his account stated that they are seven in number with no information of their names.
The Meidias Hydria shows depicts Heracles in the garden of the Hesperides in one of the lower friezes. The names given above the figures of the Hesperides are: Asterope, Chrysothemis, Hygieia, and Lipara.British Museum: Museum No. 1772,0320.30.+ = BM Vases F284. On a lekythos by Asteas seven names are given: Aiopis, Antheia, Donakis, Calypso, Mermesa, Nelisa, and Tara.. Vase = Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli (MANN) 81847. Ian McPhee argues that Donakis is probably a personification rather than one of the Hesperides.McPhee, Ian (1990) Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae V.1 Pp.399–400. A red-figure pyxis 500–470 BCE attributed to a follower of Douris shows four figures in a garden presumed to be that of the Hesperides. Three names are provided above their heads: Hippolyte, Mapsaura, and Thetis.British Museum: Museum No. 1873,0111.6 = BM Vases E772. H. Heydemann describes these names as being picked out of a list of general mythic names according to the taste and inclination of the vase painter.Rheinisches Museum für Philologie (1881) p. 470. A certain Crete, possible eponym of the island of Crete, was also called one of the Hesperides.Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. Krētē; Solinus, Polyhistor, 11.5. Translated by Arwen Apps
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.
In addition to their tending of the garden, they have taken great pleasure in singing.Hesiod, Theogony, 518; Orphic Fragments, 17; Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, 4.1399. Euripides calls them "minstrel maids" as they possess the power of sweet song.Euripides, Heracles, 394
+Comparative table of Hesperides' parentage, number and namesVariablesItemSourcesHesiodPherecydesApolloniusCic.Apollod.Hyg.Serv.Fulg.ApianusVase PaintingsTheo.Sch. Hipp.ArgoSch.N.D.Fab.Aen.Virg. cont.BM E772BM F284MANN 81847ParentsNyxNyx and ErebusZeus and ThemisPhorcys and CetoAtlas and HesperisHesperusNumber347NamesAegleErytheis / ErytheiaHesperiaHespere / Hespera Hesperusa ArethusaHestiaMedusa Aerica / Erythia HippolyteMapsaura ThetisAsteropeChrysothemisHygieiaLiparaAiopisAntheiaDonakisCalypsoMermesaNelisaTara
Land of Hesperides
The Hesperides tend a garden in a far western corner of the world, located near the Atlas Mountains in North Africa, at the edge of the world-encircling ocean of Oceanus.A confusion of the Garden of the Hesperides with an equally idyllic Arcadia is a modern one, conflating Sir Philip Sidney's Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia and Robert Herrick's Hesperides: both are viewed by Renaissance poets as oases of bliss, but they were not connected by the Greeks. The development of Arcadia as an imagined setting for pastoral is the contribution of Theocritus to Hellenistic culture: see Arcadia (utopia).
The 1st-century AD Roman author Pliny the Elder, in the fifth book of his Natural History, places the garden in Lixus (in modern-day Morocco), which he describes as the location of the combat between Antaeus and Hercules; later, in the sixth book of the work, he states that the Hesperides live on two islands in the Atlantic.Ambühl, para. 1; Pliny the Elder, Natural History 6.36.
Euesperides (in modern-day Benghazi) which was probably founded by people from Cyrene or Barca, from both of which it lies to the west, might have mythological associations with the garden of Hesperides.Ham, Anthony, Libya, 2002, p.156
In his epic poem, the Punica, Roman poet Silius Italicus describes the Massylii as coming from the "Woods of the Hesperides" located at the edge of the inhabited world. However, modern historians note that this account reflects a geographical and ethnographical confusion by the poet. Silius Italicus conflated the Massylii with the neighboring Masaesyli, placed them under the rule of the moorish king Bocchus, and shifted their origin further west to northern Tingitana (in modern-day Morocco), where the Hesperides were traditionally localized in Roman poetic convention.Silius Italicus, Punica III.282–283. By Ancient Roman times, the garden of the Hesperides had lost its archaic place in religion and had dwindled to a poetic convention, in which form it was revived in Renaissance poetry, to refer both to the garden and to the nymphs that dwelt there.
The Garden of the Hesperides
The Garden of the Hesperides is Hera's orchard in the west, where either a single apple tree or a grove grows, producing golden apples. According to the legend, when the marriage of Zeus and Hera took place, the different deities came with nuptial presents for the latter, and among them the goddess Gaia, with branches having golden apples growing on them as a wedding gift.Poet. Astron. ii. 3 Hera, greatly admiring these, begged of Gaia to plant them in her gardens, which extended as far as Mount Atlas.
The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, and Hera set an immortal, never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon to guard the apples.quoting Pherecydes, Hyginus. Astronomica ii.3 In the myth of 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.Colluthus. Rape of Helen, 59ff. Translated by Mair, A. W. Loeb Classical Library Volume 219. London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1928
In later years it was thought that the "golden apples" might have actually been oranges, a fruit unknown to Europe and the Mediterranean before the Middle Ages.Athenaeus. Deipnosophistae, 3.83c Under this assumption, the Greek botanical name chosen for all citrus species was Hesperidoeidē (Ἑσπεριδοειδῆ, "hesperidoids") and even today the Greek word for the orange fruit is πορτοκάλι (Portokáli)--after the country of Portugal in Iberia near where the Garden of the Hesperides grew.
The Eleventh Labour of Heracles
After Heracles completed his first ten Labours, Eurystheus gave him two more claiming that neither the Hydra counted (because Iolaus helped Heracles) 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 Labours was to steal the apples from the garden of the Hesperides. Heracles first caught the Old Man of the Sea,Karl Kerenyi, The Heroes of the Greeks, 1959, p.172, identifies him in this context as Nereus; as a shape-shifter he is often identified as Proteus. 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.
Follow this straight road; and, first of all, thou shalt come to the Boreades, where do thou beware the roaring hurricane, lest unawares it twist thee up and snatch thee away in wintry whirlwind.
As payment, Heracles freed Prometheus from his daily torture.Aeschylus. Prometheus Unbound, Fragment 109 (from Galen, Commentary on Hippocrates' Epidemics, 6.17.1). Translated by Weir Smyth. 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.
Another story recounts how Heracles, either at the start or at the end of his task, meets Antaeus, who was immortal as long as he touched his mother, Gaia, the earth. Heracles killed Antaeus by holding him aloft and crushing him in a bearhug.Apollodorus 2.5.11; Hyginus, Fab. 31 Herodotus claims that Heracles stopped in Egypt, where King Busiris decided to make him the yearly sacrifice, but Heracles burst out of his chains.
Finally making his way to the Garden of the Hesperides, Heracles 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, in this version, he was the father or otherwise related 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 Heracles tricked him again by agreeing to take his place on condition that Atlas relieve him temporarily so that Heracles could make his cloak more comfortable. Atlas agreed, but Heracles reneged and walked away, carrying the apples. According to an alternative version, Heracles slew Ladon instead and stole the apples. Apollodorus states that, having been presented with the apples by Heracles, Eurytheus bestowed them upon Heracles, and that Athena then returned the apples to the garden.Apollodorus 2.5.11.