Ladon was the serpent-like dragon that twined and twisted around the tree in the Garden of the Hesperides and guarded the golden apples. In pursuance of his eleventh labour, Heracles killed Ladon with a bow and arrow and carried the apples away. The following day, Jason and the Argonauts passed by on their chthonic return journey from Colchis, hearing the lament of "shining" Aegle, one of the four Hesperides, and viewing the still-twitching Ladon.[9] In an alternate version of the myth, Ladon is never slain, and Heracles instead gets the Titan god Atlas to retrieve the apples. At the same time, Heracles takes Atlas’ place, holding up the sky.
The dragon (Ladon) image coiled around the tree, originally adopted by the Hellenes from Near Eastern and Minoan sources[citation needed], is familiar from surviving Greek vase-painting. In the 2nd century CE, Pausanias saw among the treasuries at Olympia an archaic cult image in cedar-wood of Heracles and the apple-tree of the Hesperides with the snake coiled around it.[10]
Diodorus Siculus gives an euhemerist interpretation of Ladon, as a human shepherd guarding a flock of golden-fleeced sheep, adding, "But with regards to such matters it will be every man's privilege to form such opinions as accord with his own belief."[11]
According to the Astronomy attributed to Hyginus, Ladon is the constellation Draco which was placed among the stars by Zeus.[12] Ladon is the Greek version of the West Semitic serpent Lotan, or the Hurrian serpent Illuyanka.[citation needed] He might be given multiple heads, a hundred in Aristophanes' The Frogs (a passing remark in line 475), which might speak with different voices.
See also
Lernaean Hydra, a similar monster who was also slain by Heracles.
Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004. ISBN978-0-415-18636-0. Google Books.
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, Fabulae, in Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, translated, with Introductions by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Hackett Publishing, 2007. ISBN978-0-87220-821-6. Google Books.
Ogden, Daniel, Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN978-0-19-955732-5. Google Books.
Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Tzetzes, John, Chiliades, edited by Gottlieb Kiessling, Leipzig, F. C. G. Vogel, 1826. Google Books.