Coverpage....Introduction....Hera's Interview....Eurystheus's Interview....Zeus's Interview....Atlas's Interview

Atlas Talks About the Eleventh Labor

A Golden Apple


Hello, hello, readers!  It's finally that time- the time, that is, for our last installment in the series about Heracles.  Over the past three months, we've learned all about Heracles's history with Hera and two of the labors he completed for Eurystheus.  This month, we'll be hearing about the eleventh labor of Heracles- a labor that involves a dragon, three garden nymphs, and some golden apples.  Like all the other stories, I wanted to learn about the eleventh labor from someone who has actual firsthand knowledge of it.  And that is why I went in search of Atlas.  You might be familiar with him- he's the Titan who literally holds the world on his shoulders.  So, as you can imagine, it can be difficult to pin him down for an interview.  He takes his work very seriously, and the physical strain isn't always conducive to conversation.  But, knowing Zeus paid off, and he helped me convince Atlas to speak with me.  So, I hope you all enjoy the story of the eleventh labor as told by Atlas!

MOT: Good morning, Atlas.  Thank you for doing this interview.
Atlas: Yeah, yeah.  Let's cut back on the pleasantries.  This world is heavy, and I'd rather hold it up in peace.  Let's get this interview over with.
MOT: Alright then.  Can you tell me what Eurystheus required of Heracles for the eleventh labor?
Atlas: Yes.  He wanted Heracles to bring him back the golden apples.
MOT: The golden apples?
Atlas: Right.  The apples belong to Zeus.  They were gifts to him from Hera, which meant they were prized possessions.  Those apples were carefully guarded in the Garden of the Hesperides.
MOT: So carefully guarded that Eurystheus and Hera probably thought this was the perfect labor to stump Heracles, right?
Atlas: Exactly. 
MOT: OK, Eurystheus sends Heracles out to find these apples.  How did Heracles go about this task?
Atlas: Well, not many people know where the Garden of the Hesperides is, so he had to travel around for a while to find it.  He met many people along the way that helped to point him in the right direction.
MOT: And after all this traveling, Heracles eventually came upon the Garden of the Hesperides.  How was the garden protected?
Atlas: There were two major layers of protection in the garden.  The first one was a monstrous dragon who was called Ladon.  You can always know a creature is going to be terrible if it's an offspring of Typhon and Echidna, and Ladon was one of theirs.
MOT: And how did Heracles manage to get past Ladon?
Atlas: Well, it wasn't an easy.  They battled for a while.  Ladon was a very protective creature.  He actually almost ended up killing Heracles.  But just when things were starting to look really bad for Heracles, he pulled out the one weapon that was able to defeat Ladon.  He shot him with an arrow, but it wasn't just any arrow.  It was one of the few arrows Heracles had left from when he'd dipped some into the highly poisonous blood of the Lernean Hydra. 
MOT: Oh, the ironic twist of that!  So, in a sense, the blood of Ladon's own brother is what killed him?
Atlas: Precisely.
MOT: Alright.  So Heracles made it through the first layer of protection in the garden.  What was the second layer?
Atlas: The Hesperides themselves.  They were three sisters- nymphs, actually.  And also, they're my daughters.
MOT: Your daughters, really?  And what did Heracles do to distract their attention so that he could take the golden apples?
Atlas: That's actually when I come into the story.  Heracles couldn't have done anything to distract my daughters from their job of protecting the apples.  He knew, however, that I would be able to walk right in and grab the apples without question.
MOT: And how did he convince you to do this for him?
Atlas: He found me exactly where we are now.  I was holding up the world those days, too, and he offered to hold it for me if I would get the apples for him. 
MOT: And you willingly did so?
Atlas: Listen, lady, the world isn't exactly a light load, OK?  I was happy for the break.
MOT: That's understandable.  So you brought Heracles the apples, and then what happened?
Atlas: I didn't want to give them to him.  I told him I would take them to Eurystheus myself, and that he could just keep holding up the world for me.  Of course, it didn't totally work out for me that way.  Heracles tricked me.  He told me that would be fine, but that he wanted to arrange his cloak differently on his shoulders to help cushion the load, and that I just needed to hold the world for a few more seconds while he did that.  In retrospect, it was so obvious that I shouldn't have taken it back from him.  Because once the world was back on my shoulders again, he picked the golden apples up off the ground and went straight back to Eurystheus. 
MOT: One more labor successfully completed for Heracles.  How did Hera respond after she found out her defenses of Ladon and the Hesperides weren't successful?
Atlas: Oh, she was not happy at all.  To say she was extremely displeased with me is a major understatement.  Because it wasn't really the Hesperides that failed her, but me.  And as for Ladon... she was very upset about that.  As with all the other beastly creatures Heracles killed during his labors, Hera mourned his death and gave him a final resting place in the sky.  He's generally referred to as Draco these days.  He's up there somewhere close to Leo, the Hydra, and Cancer.
MOT: This has been an absolutely fascinating story, Atlas.  Thanks for taking the time to tell me all the details.
Atlas: Yeah, sure.  Can you leave me in peace now?  Spinning the world on its axis isn't easy work, even for a Titan.

And that was the end of my interview with Atlas, and thus also the conclusion of our series on Heracles.  I hope you all feel the same way I do- that we all know Heracles a little bit better.  We understand his childhood, his rivalry with Hera, his experiences with a few of the labors, and we've seen that Heracles is not only a great physical legend, but is also very intelligent and quick-thinking.  Thank you for keeping up with the series, readers, and don't stop picking up the monthly Mount Olympus Times.  This particular series is over, but I have an inkling another exciting one will be beginning soon!
Draco the Dragon
Author's Note: Out of all my other stories, this is the one that is much more of a compilation.  There are so many different versions of the eleventh labor out there, and they're all so great, so I just decided to take the bits and pieces of all the stories I liked and put them into my version!  As far as Heracles finding the Garden of the Hesperides, like I said in my story, he met many people along the way that pointed him in the right direction.  It happens to be that many of those people were mythological characters we're all familiar with, but I wasn't able to add all of that into this story.  In one version, Prometheus plays quite a big role in the story.  Prometheus is the mythological character who stole fire from the gods, and as punishment, Zeus had him bound to a mountain where a giant eagle pecked at his liver everyday.  The story says that Heracles killed the eagle, and as a sign of gratitude, Prometheus told Heracles how to get the apples.  It was Prometheus who suggested that Atlas would have no trouble getting the apples.  Also, some versions of the story tell only of the Hesperides protecting the garden, and others tell only of Ladon protecting the garden.  In the Ladon versions, it reads like he was actually wrapped around the tree that held the golden apples, but I changed that because I wanted to be able to include the Hesperides and Ladon in my story.

Sources:
"Atlas." Wikipedia 2008. 14 Nov 2008.  Web Source: Wikipedia- Atlas.
"Hesperides." Wikipedia 2008. 14 Nov 2008.  Web Source: Wikipedia- Hesperides.
"Ladon (mythology)." Wikipedia 2008. 14 Nov 2008.  Web Source: Wikipedia- Ladon.
"The Apples of the Hesperides." The Perseus Project. 2008.  14 Nov 2008.  Web Source: Perseus Project- Apples.

Image Information:
"The Golden Apple."  Weblink: Casselman's Word of the Day.
"The Draco Constellation."  Weblink: redOrbit.


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