HESPERIDES, maidens whose number is variously given as three, four, or seven, who guarded the golden apples which Earth gave Hera at her marriage to Zeus. They live far away in the west at the borders of Ocean, in other words at that point of heaven where the sun sets. Hence the sun (according to Mimnermus) sails in the golden bowl that Hephaestus made from the abode of the Hesperides to the land where he rises again. According to other accounts they dwell among the Hyperboreans, who live in quietness and calm, i.e., they dwell in heaven among the souls of them that have died on earth. The golden apples grow on a tree which is guarded by an ever-watchful dragon. The sun is often in German and Lithuanian legends described as the apple that hangs on the tree of the nightly heaven, like the fleece of the sun-ram that was sacrificed and skinned, and the dragon, the envious power, keeps the light back from men till some beneficent power takes it from him. Heracles is the hero who brings back the golden apples to mankind again. Like Perseus, he first applies to the Nymphs, who help him to learn where the garden is. Arrived there he slays the dragon and carries the apples to Argos; and finally, like Perseus, he gives them to Athene. The Hesperides are, like the Sirens, beautiful singers, λιγvφωvoι. They are said to be the daughters of Atlas; or, according to other accounts, they are the children of Erebus and Night, or Phorcys and Ceto, and are thus sisters of the Graeae, who also receive into their care the setting sun. Hesperides are introduced into the Argonautic legend, but it is doubtful if this is really antique, or only a poetic embellishment of the wanderings of the Argonauts.