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Key Details
Type
GardenMythology
Greek Pantheon
Coordinates
35°N, 5°W
About This Location
Apples at the world's west
Apollodorus 2.5.11: the eleventh labor is the golden apples of the Hesperides, guarded by a dragon (Ladon) in a western garden of Atlas's daughters. Versions split: Heracles holds the sky while Atlas fetches the fruit, or he kills the dragon himself. The garden is not Eden and not a Greek orchard you can visit. It is a sunset horticulture of immortality-adjacent fruit for a goddess (Hera) who did not want it stolen.
Primary Sources
“These apples were not in Libya, as some have said, but on Mount Atlas, among the Hyperboreans. The Hesperides guarded them, and the dragon Ladon.”
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