Hesperides the Isle of Juno."" The island was the seat of Geryon, who was overcome by Heracles. The Hesperides tend a blissful garden in a far western corner of the world, located near the Atlas mountains in North Africa at the edge of the encircling Oceanus, the world-ocean. According to the Sicilian Greek poet Stesichorus, in his poem the "Song of Geryon", and the Greek geographer Strabo, in his book "Geographika" (volume III), the garden of the Hesperides is located in Tartessos, a location placed in the south of the Iberian peninsula. Euesperides (in modern-day Benghazi) which was probably founded by
Greek gardens and apples glowing red,<br> succulent figs and olives swelling sleek and dark.<br> And the yield of all these trees will never flag or die,<br> neither in winter nor in summer, a harvest all year round." The description is beloved of writers on gardens, nevertheless. No such gardens were known to Homer's contemporaries, as far as archaeologists can discern, any more than palaces like Alcinous', whose very doors were of bronze. The gardens of Greek myth were "untended" gardens, maintained in orderly fashion simply because order, "themis", was in the nature of things, as in the garden of the Hesperides, which