Caves of Hercules which passes under the Strait of Gibraltar and emerges at St. Michael's Cave in Gibraltar. Legend has it that the Barbary macaques entered the Rock of Gibraltar from Morocco this way. Mythological tradition also holds that the Roman god Hercules stayed and slept in this cave before doing his 11th labour, which was to get golden apples from the Hesperides Garden, which some ancient Greek writers said was located nearby at Lixus. According to some Roman sources, while on his way to the garden of the Hesperides, Hercules had to cross the mountain that was once Atlas. Instead of climbing
Hesperides name of its nymphs: Robert Greene wrote of "The fearful Dragon... that watched the garden called Hesperides". Shakespeare inserted the comically insistent rhyme "is not Love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides" in "Love's Labours Lost" (iv.iii) and John Milton mentioned the "ladies of the Hesperides" in "Paradise Regained" (ii.357). "Hesperides" (published 1647) was the title of a collection of pastoral and religious verse by the Royalist poet Robert Herrick. Hesperides In Greek mythology, the Hesperides (; Ancient Greek: Ἑσπερίδες ) are the nymphs of evening and golden light of sunsets, who were the "Daughters of the Evening"