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The Hesperides were the nymphs of the evening who guarded the golden apples in a garden at the western edge of the world. Because that garden lay in the far west, in the Atlantic, it keeps coming back in my research as one of the names under which Atlantis may have been remembered. These are the pages where I wrote about it.
The garden and the golden apples
On The forbidden fruit I describe the Hesperides as the “Daughters of the Evening” or nymphs of the west, to whom Hera entrusted the golden apples, together with the hundred-headed dragon Ladon. Nymphs lists them among the other Greek nymphs. On Herculus I retell the labour in which Hercules had to fetch the apples: he either killed the dragon or tricked Atlas into getting them for him.
A garden in the far west
The ancient writers placed the garden beyond the known world. The island of Erytheia was guarded by Orthrus, a two-headed dog, and the cattle were herded by the giant Eurytion describes Erytheia as one of the Hesperides, the islands at the westernmost edge of the known world. Canary Islands: The Gaunches had light skin, fair hair, and blue eyes notes that ancient writers sometimes put the garden in or near the Canary Islands. On Ancient sources on Atlantis I list the geographer Statius Sebosus, who placed Atlantis forty days’ sail from the Gorgades islands to the Hesperides, in the middle of the Atlantic.
On War Against the Atlantioi: Led by Queen Myrina, the Amazones invaded the Atlantioi I show how Diodorus Siculus combined the tales of the Hesperides, the Libyan Amazones of Lake Tritonis and the Atlantioi into one history.
The Hesperides as Atlantis
Ignatius Donnelly saw the garden as one more memory of Atlantis. On The Irish Colonies from Atlantis, after quoting an Irish poem about Tir-na-n’oge, the land of eternal youth that rises out of the western sea, he concludes:
This is the Greek story of Elysion; these are the Elysian Fields of the Egyptians; these are the Gardens of the Hesperides; this is the region in the West to which the peasant of Brittany looks from the shores of Cape Raz; this is Atlantis.
Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
On The antiquity of some of our great inventions he adds that the Greek traditions of the golden apples of the Hesperides and the golden fleece point to Atlantis. On The Pyramid, the cross and the Garden of Eden he quotes an older writer who placed the gardens on an island of the ocean, or on the islands off the north or west coast of Africa. And Atlantis: a name recorded by hundreds of cultures includes the Hesperides in its list of names for Atlantis.
Related pages
- The forbidden fruit
- Herculus
- Nymphs
- The island of Erytheia was guarded by Orthrus, a two-headed dog, and the cattle were herded by the giant Eurytion
- Ancient sources on Atlantis
- The Irish Colonies from Atlantis
- The Pyramid, the cross and the Garden of Eden
- Atlantis: a name recorded by hundreds of cultures
For every page I tagged with Hesperides, see the Hesperides tag archive.
