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 people from Cyrene or Barca might have mythological associations with the garden of Hesperides. By Ancient Roman times, the garden of the Hesperides had lost its archaic place in religion and had dwindled to a poetic convention, in which form it was revived in Renaissance poetry, to refer both to the garden and to the nymphs that dwelt there. 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. According to the legend, when the marriage of Zeus and Hera took place, the different deities came