Hesperides

In Greek mythology, the Hesperides (/hɛˈspɛrɪdiːz/; Ancient Greek: Ἑσπερίδες ) are the nymphs of evening and golden light of sunsets, who were the 'Daughters of the Evening' or 'Nymphs of the West'. They were also called the Atlantides (Ἀτλαντίδων) from their reputed father, the Titan Atlas.Hespera or‘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.’'Then, like raging hounds, they 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!'Garden of Hesperides by Albert HerterHercules steals the Apples of the Hesperides by Lucas Cranach the ElderHercules and the Hesperides by Giovanni Antonio PellegriniHesperides, Dance around the Golden Tree by Edward CalvertHuerto de las Hespérides, 1909The Garden of Hesperides by Ricciardo MeacciHesperus by William EttyLandschaft mit dem Garten des Hesperides by J. M. W. TurnerAtlas and the Hesperides by John Singer SargentHesperides and HeraclesHercule et les Hesperides by Rudolf Jettmar In Greek mythology, the Hesperides (/hɛˈspɛrɪdiːz/; Ancient Greek: Ἑσπερίδες ) are the nymphs of evening and golden light of sunsets, who were the 'Daughters of the Evening' or 'Nymphs of the West'. They were also called the Atlantides (Ἀτλαντίδων) from their reputed father, the Titan Atlas. 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'. Ordinarily the Hesperides number three, like the other Greek triads (the Three Graces and the Moirai). 'Since the Hesperides themselves are mere symbols of the gifts the apples embody, they cannot be actors in a human drama. Their abstract, interchangeable names are a symptom of their impersonality,' Evelyn Harrison has observed. They are sometimes portrayed as the evening daughters of Night (Nyx) either alone, or with Darkness (Erebus), 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, or of Phorcys and Ceto or of Zeus and Themis. In another source, the nymphs are said to be the daughters of Hesperus. Nevertheless, among the names given to them, though never all at once, there were either three, four, or seven Hesperides. Apollonius of Rhodes gives the number of three with their names as Aigle, Erytheis and Hespere (or Hespera). Hyginus in his preface to the Fabulae names them as Aegle, Hesperie and *aerica. In another source, they are named Ægle, Arethusa and Hesperethusa, the three daughters of Hesperus. Hesiod says that these 'clear-voiced Hesperides', daughters of Night, guarded the golden apples 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. In addition, Hesperia and Arethusa, the so-called 'ox-eyed Hesperethusa.' Pseudo-Apollodorus gives the number of the Hesperides also as four, namely: Aigle, Erytheia, Hesperia (or Hesperie) and Arethusa while Fulgentius named them as Aegle, Hesperie, Medusa and Arethusa. However, the historiographer Diodorus 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, Kalypso, Mermesa, Nelisa and Tara. A Pyxis has Hippolyte, Mapsaura, and Thetis. 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. A certain Crete, possible eponym of the island of Crete, was also called one of the Hesperides. 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. Euripides calls them 'minstrel maids' as they possess the power of sweet song. The Hesperides could be hamadryad nymphs or epimeliads 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. 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: 'On the side which looks towards Spain, at about 100 paces distance, is another long island, three miles wide, on which the original city of Gades stood. By Ephorus and Philistides it is called Erythia, by Timæus and Silenus Aphrodisias, and by the natives the Isle of Juno.' The island was the seat of Geryon, who was overcome by Heracles. The Hesperides tend a blissful garden in a far western corner of the world, located near the Atlas mountains in North Africa at the edge of the encircling Oceanus, the world-ocean.