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In Greek mythology, the Hesperides (; , ) are the of evening and golden light of , who were the "Daughters of the Evening" or "Nymphs of the West". They were also called the Atlantides () from their reputed father, Atlas.Diodorus Siculus. Library, 4.27.2
They are sometimes portrayed as the evening daughters of Night (Nyx), either alone,Hesiod, Theogony 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 AtlasHyginus, De Astronomica 2.3.1 citing Pherecydes as the authority 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 In a Roman literary source, the nymphs are simply said to be the daughters of Hesperus, embodiment of the "west".Servius, ad Aeneid, iv.484.
Nevertheless, among the names given to them, though never all at once, there were either three, four, or seven Hesperus. Apollonius of Rhodes gives the number of three with their names as Aigle, Erytheis, and Hespere (or Hespera).Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4.1396–1449 Hyginus in his preface to the Fabulae names them as Aegle, Hesperie, and Aerica.Wilhelm Friedrich Rinck (1853). Die Religion der Hellenen: aus den Mythen, den Lehren der Philosophen und dem Kultus. p. 352 Hyginus. Fabulae, Preface. In another source, they are named Aegle, Arethusa, and Hesperethusa, the three daughters of Hesperus.Peter Parley (1839). Tales about the mythology of Greece and Rome, p. 356Charles N. Baldwin, Henry Howland Crapo (1825). A Universal Biographical Dictionary, p. 414
Hesiod says that these "clear-voiced Hesperides",Hesiod, Theogony 275 daughters of Ceto and Phorcys, guarded the beyond Ocean in the far west of the world, gives the number of the Hesperides as four, and their names as: Aigle (or Aegle, "dazzling light"), Erytheia (or Erytheis), Hesperia ("sunset glow") whose name refers to the colour of the setting sun, red, yellow, or gold; and lastly Arethusa.Servius, Commentary on Virgil Aeneid 4.484 quoting Hesiod In addition, Hesperia, and Arethusa, the so-called "ox-eyed Hesperethusa".Hesiod, Homeric Hymns and Homerica, edited and translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. [12] Apollodorus gives the number of the Hesperides also as four, namely: Aigle, Erytheia, Hesperia (or Hesperie), and ArethusaApollodorus, 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 [14] However, the historiographer Diodorus Siculus in his account stated that they are seven in number with no information of their names. An ancient vase painting attests the following names as four: Asterope, Chrysothemis, Hygieia, and Lipara; on another seven names as Aiopis, Antheia, Donakis, Calypso, Mermesa, Nelisa, and Tara. A pyxis has Hippolyte, Mapsaura, and Thetis.Attic pyxis (red-figure) by Douris, circa 470. London, British Museum: E. 772. Petrus Apianus attributed to these stars a mythical connection of their own. He believed that they were the seven Hesperides, nymph daughters of Atlas and Hesperis. Their names were: Aegle, Erythea, Arethusa, Hestia, Hespera, Hesperusa, and Hespereia.Michael Grant, John Hazel (2002). Who's who in Classical Mythology, p. 268 [15] A certain Crete, possible eponym of the 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. 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.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 The Hesperides could be hamadryad nymphs or 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 or literally to have white arms and golden heads.Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, 4.1422ff
Erytheia ("the red one") is one of the Hesperides. The name was applied to an island close to the coast of southern Hispania, which was the site of the original Punic colony of Gades (modern Cadiz). Pliny's Natural History (VI.36) records of the island of Gades:
The island was the home of Geryon, who was overcome by Heracles.
| +Comparative table of Hesperides' parentage, number and names ! rowspan="3" | Variables ! rowspan="3" | Item ! colspan="13" | Sources | |||||||||||
| Theo. | Sch. Hipp. | Argo | Sch. | Fab. | Aen. | |||||||||
| Parents | Nyx | |||||||||||||
| Nyx and Erebus | ||||||||||||||
| Zeus and Themis | ||||||||||||||
| Phorcys and Ceto | ||||||||||||||
| Atlas and Hesperis | ||||||||||||||
| Hesperus | ||||||||||||||
| Number !3 | ||||||||||||||
| Names | Aegle | |||||||||||||
| Erythea or | ||||||||||||||
| Erytheis / Eretheis or | ||||||||||||||
| Erythia | ||||||||||||||
| Hesperia or | ||||||||||||||
| Hespere / Hespera or | ||||||||||||||
| Hesperusa | ||||||||||||||
| Arethusa | ||||||||||||||
| Hestia | ||||||||||||||
| Medusa | ||||||||||||||
| Aerica | ||||||||||||||
| Hippolyte | ||||||||||||||
| Mapsaura | ||||||||||||||
| Thetis | ||||||||||||||
| Asterope | ||||||||||||||
| Chrysothemis | ||||||||||||||
| Hygieia | ||||||||||||||
| Lipara | ||||||||||||||
| Aiopis | ||||||||||||||
| Antheia | ||||||||||||||
| Donakis | ||||||||||||||
| Calypso | ||||||||||||||
| Mermesa | ||||||||||||||
| Nelisa | ||||||||||||||
| Tara |
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
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 Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally picked apples from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden an immortal, never-sleeping, hundred-headed European dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard.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.Coluthus. 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 language 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.
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 ii. 5; 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.
There is another variation to the story where Heracles was the only person to steal the apples, other than Perseus, although Athena later returned the apples to their rightful place in the garden. They are considered by some to be the same "apples of joy" that tempted Atalanta, as opposed to the "apple of discord" used by Eris to start a beauty contest on Olympus (which caused "Trojan War").
On Attica pottery, especially from the late fifth century, Heracles is depicted sitting in bliss in the Gardens of the Hesperides, attended by the maidens.
Then, like raging hounds, they i.e. rushed to search for a spring; for besides their suffering and anguish, a parching thirst lay upon them, and not in vain did they wander; but they came to the sacred plain where Ladon, the serpent of the land, till yesterday kept watch over the golden apples in the garden of Atlas; and all around the nymphs, the Hesperides, were busied, chanting their lovely song. But at that time, stricken by Heracles, he lay fallen by the trunk of the apple-tree; only the tip of his tail was still writhing; but from his head down his dark spine he lay lifeless; and where the arrows had left in his blood the bitter gall of the Lernaean hydra, flies withered and died over the festering wounds. And close at hand the Hesperides, their white arms flung over their golden heads, lamented shrilly; and the heroes drew near suddenly; but the maidens, at their quick approach, at once became dust and earth where they stood. Orpheus marked the divine portent, and for his comrades addressed them in prayer: "O divine ones, fair and kind, be gracious, O queens, whether ye be numbered among the heavenly goddesses, or those beneath the earth, or be called the Solitary nymphs; come, O nymphs, sacred race of Oceanus, appear manifest to our longing eyes and show us some spring of water from the rock or some sacred flow gushing from the earth, goddesses, wherewith we may quench the thirst that burns us unceasingly. And if ever again we return in our voyaging to the Achaean land, then to you among the first of goddesses with willing hearts will we bring countless gifts, libations and banquets.
So he spake, beseeching them with plaintive voice; and they from their station near pitied their pain; and lo! First of all they caused grass to spring from the earth; and above the grass rose up tall shoots, and then flourishing saplings grew standing upright far above the earth. Hespere became a poplar and Eretheis an elm, and Aegle a willow's sacred trunk. And forth from these trees their forms looked out, as clear as they were before, a marvel exceeding great, and Aegle spake with gentle words answering their longing looks: "Surely there has come hither a mighty succour to your toils, that most accursed man, who robbed our guardian serpent of life and plucked the golden apples of the goddesses and is gone; and has left bitter grief for us. For yesterday came a man most fell in wanton violence, most grim in form; and his eyes flashed beneath his scowling brow; a ruthless wretch; and he was clad in the skin of a monstrous lion of raw hide, untanned; and he bare a sturdy bow of olive, and a bow, wherewith he shot and killed this monster here. So he too came, as one traversing the land on foot, parched with thirst; and he rushed wildly through this spot, searching for water, but nowhere was he like to see it. Now here stood a rock near the Tritonian lake; and of his own device, or by the prompting of some god, he smote it below with his foot; and the water gushed out in full flow. And he, leaning both his hands and chest upon the ground, drank a huge draught from the rifted rock, until, stooping like a beast of the field, he had satisfied his mighty maw.
Thus she spake; and they gladly with joyful steps ran to the spot where Aegle had pointed out to them the spring, until they reached it. And as when earth-burrowing ants gather in swarms round a narrow cleft, or when flies lighting upon a tiny drop of sweet honey cluster round with insatiate eagerness; so at that time, huddled together, the Minyae thronged about the spring from the rock. And thus with wet lips one cried to another in his delight: "Strange! In very truth Heracles, though far away, has saved his comrades, fordone with thirst. Would that we might find him on his way as we pass through the mainland!
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