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
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