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Herodotus claims that Heracles stopped in Egypt, where King Busiris decided to make him the yearly sacrifice, but Heracles burst out of his chains. Heracles killed Antaeus by holding him aloft and crushing him in a bearhug. In some variations, Heracles, either at the start or at the end of his task, meets Antaeus, who was immortal as long as he touched his mother, Gaia, the earth. Heracles first caught the Old Man of the Sea, the shape-shifting sea god, to learn where the Garden of the Hesperides was located. The first of these two additional Labours was to steal the apples from the garden of the Hesperides. Under this assumption, the Greek botanical name chosen for all citrus species was Hesperides and even today the Greek word for the orange fruit is πορτοκαλί (Portokali)-after the country of Portugal in Iberia near where the Garden of the Hesperides grew.Īfter Heracles completed his first ten Labors, Eurystheus gave him two more claiming that neither the Hydra counted (because Iolaus helped Heracles) nor the Augean stables (either because he received payment for the job or because the rivers did the work). In later years it was thought that the "golden apples" might have actually been oranges, a fruit unknown to Europe and the Mediterranean before the Middle Ages. In the myth of the Judgement of Paris, it was from the Garden that Eris, Goddess of Discord, obtained the Apple of Discord, which led to the Trojan War. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden a never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard. The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally picked apples from it themselves. The trees were planted from the fruited branches that Gaia gave to Hera as a wedding gift when Hera accepted Zeus. Hera's Orchad (:"also" known as the "Garden of the Hesperides":) is Hera's orchard in the west, where either a single apple tree or a grove grows, producing golden apples that grant immortality when eaten.