HESPERIDES, in the ancient mythology, were the daughters of Hesper, or Hesperus, brother of Atlas. The Hesperides were three in number, Ægle, Arethusa, and Hesperthusa.—Hesiod, in his Theogony, makes them the daughters of Nox, night; and seats them in the same place with the Gorgons, viz. at the extremities of the west, near mount Atlas: it is on that account he makes them the daughters of Night, by reason the sun sets there.
The Hesperides are represented by the ancients, as having the keeping of certain golden apples, on t'other side the ocean. The poets give them a dragon to watch the garden where the fruit grows: this dragon Hercules slew, and carried off the apples.
Pliny and Solinus will have the dragon to be no other than an arm of the sea, wherewith the garden was inclosed, and which defended the entrance thereof. And Varro supposes that the golden apples were nothing but sheep. Others, with more probability, say they were oranges.