Hesperides Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
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.Additionally, 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. These may have included the Canary Islands, the Madeira Islands, and Cape Verde.
The Garden of the Hesperides is Hera's orchard in the west, where either a single tree or a grove of immortality-giving golden appless grew. The apples were planted from the fruited branches that Gaia gave to her as a wedding gift when Hera accepted Zeus. The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally plucked from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden an unsleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard.
According 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). Among the names given to them are Aegle ("dazzling light"), Arethusa, Erytheia (or Erytheis), Hesperia (or Hespereia), Hespere (or Hespera), Hestia, and Hesperusa. 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. They are also called the African Sisters, perhaps when thought to be in Libya. In addition to their tending of the garden, they were said to have taken great pleasure in singing.
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 sun titan Hyperion. Or they are listed as the daughters of Atlas, or of Zeus and either Hesperius or Themis, or Phorcys and Ceto.
Heracles was the only one who ever managed to steal any of the golden apples from the Hesperides. As part of one of his Twelve Labors, Heracles tricked Atlas into finding and retrieving the golden apples for him, shouldering Atlas's burden of carrying the Earth in the meantime. Alternatively, Heracles was said to have slain Ladon. Athena later returned the apples to their rightful place in the garden.
Hesperides was the original name of a Greek city in Cyrenaica, North Africa, that was traditionally founded in 446 BC, by a brother of the king of Cyrene. The city was refounded during the Ptolemaic Dynasty as Berenice, the name by which it is generally remembered. (It is the site of the modern seaport of Benghazi, Libya.)