Hesperia

See Spain. Hesperian (Hesperides). Eleg. 3. 46; 5. 82; Comus 4-5 (fifteen canceled lines appear at this point in the Cambridge MS.), 393, 981; P. L. 3. 568; 4. 250; 8. 632; P. R. 2. 357. (See also Spain.) The mythical garden of the Hesperides was the cause of much speculation among the ancients. Pliny puts it in Mauretania, where a grove of wild olives was said to be a remnant of it. (5. 1.) See also Virgil, ^neid 4. 486. According to another view the Islands of the Hesperides lay off the desert shore of Africa. In his description of Cyrenaica, (Pliny 6. 31; Mela 3. 10.) Scylax writes as follows: “There, in an elevated place, is the garden of the Hesperides. The place is sixteen fathoms high, circular, and with precipitous sides, nowhere having a way down. In breadth and length it extends two stades, not le , in every direction. It is thickly shaded with trees crowded in among each other in the densest fashion. The trees there are the pomegranates, pears, arbutuses, mulberries, vines, myrtles, laurels, ivy, olives, wild olives, almonds, lotus, apples of all kinds, and walnut-trees.” (Periplus, Sect. 108.) In the elevation of the garden, and other points, this description is of the same type as Milton’s description of the Garden of Eden, and shows why Milton could think of his garden as Hesperian. In P. L. 8. 632, and Eleg. 5. 82, Milton uses the word “Hesperian” after the Latin fashion to mean western, and po ibly also in P. L. 3. 568. There he perhaps refers to the mythical Islands of the Blest, or Fortunate Islands, which might easily be a ociated with the Islands of the Hesperides, for they lay far to the west, beyond the bounds of human habitation. “There round the islands of the blest the Ocean-breezes blow, and golden flowers are glowing, some from the land on trees of splendor, and some the water feedeth, with wreaths whereof they entwine their Milton’s other references are (Pindar, Olymp. 2. 70-4.) unambiguous, for they mention the tree bearing golden apples which was the centre of the garden of the Hesperides. (Ovid, In P. R. Met. 4. 621 ff.; Euripi des, Hercules Furens 394 IT.) 2. 357 the word Hesperides perhaps means the garden itself hands.” rather than the women who po e ed it. ch141.xhtml w 158