by Mary Beougher

Created on: August 26, 2010

In Greek mythology, Hesperides was originally a beautiful garden in a far western corner of the world. It is written as being located in a couple of different places. The first is near the Atlas Mountains in Tanger, Morocco on the edge of Oceanus, the world ocean. The second is stated in the poem “Song of Geryon” by Stesichorus and also mentioned by a Greek geographer as being in Tartessos, which is somewhere south of the Iberian peninsula. By the Renaissance, what initially was a part of an archaic religion became an allusionary reference to both the gardens and the nymphs that inhabited it.

Several origins of the Hesperides as nymphs are mentioned throughout Greek myths. One is that they are the daughters of Atlas, one of the Titans, and Hesperis, who is the personification of the evening. Sometimes they are also referred to as the Western Maidens, the Daughters of the Evening, or the Sunset Goddesses. Sometimes their parentage is linked to Nyx (Night), either alone or with Erebus (Darkness) or Zeus and Themis or Phorcys and Ceto.

In the garden of Hesperides, there is a tree with golden apples that was a gift from Gaea to Hera, and then from Hera to Zeus on the day of their wedding. The three nymphs were set to guard the golden apples, which give immortality. Hera didn’t fully trust the nymphs, so she also set her hundred-headed dragon, Ladon to guard the tree as well. Probably the most famous myth involving the golden apples and the garden of Hesperides is the eleventh labor of Hercules. In one version he succeeds by tricking Atlas and slaying Ladon, although they were later returned by Athena. These “apples of joy” are also believed to be the same ones that Hippomenes used to defeat and thus marry Atalanta, with the help of Aphrodite. Many also believe that it was one of these golden apples that Paris handed as a prize to the contest between Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena deciding which one was the most beautiful. The Judgment of Paris eventually led to the Trojan War.

As a garden, Hesperides is an older incarnation of the Garden of Eden or Avalon. It symbolizes bliss and peace, with every mythology in the world having some place within it. These gardens or paradises symbolize a “heaven on earth”, a piece of the divine here, where we mere mortals can strive to touch it. The Hesperides nymphs echo the recurring mythology of the virginal guardians of treasure. We have Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Maiden of the Chalice Well in the Avalon mythology. They all represent a purity that must be present to interact with holy things without consequence.

References:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesperides

Dictionary of Classical Mythology, J.E. Zimmerman, Bantam Books

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