If Adam and Eve, in the Greek religious system, have become Zeus and Hera, there should be literary evidence for their presence in this garden, and there is. Their body language, their easy actions and their very names serve the purpose of establishing what kind of a garden this is: a wonderful, carefree place.

Some mythologists have mistaken the Hesperides for guardians of the tree, but they certainly are not. The Hesperides, the spirit-beings associated with this tree, its apples, and its serpent, get their name from Hespere in Greek which means evening, signifying the west where the sun sets.

Called the Garden of the Hesperides, it was associated with Zeus and Hera and with a serpent-entwined apple tree. The Garden of the Hesperides is the Garden of Eden’s Ancient Greek counterpart and is known as the ‘original Greek paradise’. As a part of his Twelve Labours, Heracles was required to travel to the Garden of the Hesperides and pick the golden apples off the Tree of Life growing at its centre. The story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit of the garden of Eden is similar to the take of Greek hero Heracles, in Greek mythology. It was said the apple became lodged in the throat of Adam. This is why we call the larynx in the human throat the Adam’s apple. The fruit from the garden of Eden – the apple – became a symbol for knowledge, immortality, temptation, the fall of man into sin, and sin itself. In the Book of Genesis in the Bible, popular Christian tradition has held that it was an apple that Eve coaxed Adam to share with her. For a fruit that is dubbed to ‘keep the doctor away’, apples in religious folklore are seen as the forbidden fruit. Apples have been a symbol of good and evil, of magic and of love, but most importantly, apples are the cornerstone to religion, superstition, folklore, history and medicine more than any other fruit.Īpples appear in many religious traditions, often as a mystical or forbidden fruit. But no orchard fruit is as significant in Ancient Greek mythology as the humble apple. Greece is fortunate in having many orchard fruits pears, plums, apricots and cherries.

Hesperides names