The serpent in the Garden was a Pink Headed Reed Snake.
and those weren't apples in the tree.
And it wasn't a tree.
The Garden of the Hesperides is Hera's orchard in the west, where either a single tree or a grove of immortality-giving golden (glittering/glowing) apples grew. The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally plucked from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden a never-sleeping,
hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard.
After Heracles completed his first ten Labours, Eurystheus gave him two more claiming that neither the Lernaean
Hydra counted (because Iolaus helped Heracles) nor the Augean stables (either because he received payment for the job or because the rivers did the work).
The first of these two additional Labours was to steal the apples from the garden of the Hesperides
Fulgentius gives four Hesperides, named: Aegle, Hesperie,
Medusa and Arethusa
Medusa ("guardian, protectress") was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as having the face of a hideous human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair.
Most sources describe her as the daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, though the author Hyginus (Fabulae, 151) interposes a generation and gives Medusa another chthonic pair as parents. (Typhon and Echidna).
Medusa was
beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as a weapon. The severed head or heads becoming Pegasus and Chrysaor.
Typhon was known as the Father of all monsters; his wife Echidna was likewise the Mother of all monsters.
The inveterate enemy of the Olympian gods is described in detail by Hesiod as a vast grisly monster with a
hundred serpent headsTyphon fathered several children by his niece, Echidna, daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, including the
multiheaded hounds Cerberus and Orthrus.
Ladon was the serpent-like dragon that twined and twisted around the tree in the Garden of the Hesperides and guarded the golden apples. He was overcome by Heracles. The following day, Jason and the Argonauts passed by on their chthonic return journey from Colchis and heard the lament of "shining" Aegle, one of the four Hesperides, and viewed the still-twitching Ladon
Ladon might be given
multiple heads,
a hundred in Aristophanes' The Frogs (a passing remark in line 475), which might speak with different voices.
ir-os = eros = eyes many
ir-on = orion = eyes great
ir-on-os = ouranos = eyes great many
cheir-on = chiron = hands great
cheir-on-os = chronos = hands great many
di-os = zeus =
many heads (many enlighteners)
di-on = dione = great heads
di-on-os = dionysus = many great heads
Dios/Zeus - from root *dyeu- "to gleam, to shine; to enlighten; to project light;" also the root of words for "sky" and "day" (cf. diurnal).
The
Hekatonkheires, or Hecatoncheires or Hundred-Handers (singular: Hekatonkheir; "Hundred-Handed Ones"; LatinisedCentimani), were figures in an archaic stage of Greek mythology, three giants of incredible strength and ferocity that surpassed that of all the Titans, whom they helped overthrow. Their name derives from the Greekἑκaτόν (hekaton; "hundred") and χείρ (kheir; "hand"), "each of them having a
hundred hands and fifty heads"
Argus Panoptes or
Argos, guardian of the heifer-nymph Io and son of Arestor, was a primordial giant whose epithet "Panoptes", "all-seeing", led to his being described with multiple, often
one hundred, eyes.
God saith, `Let the earth yield tender grass, herb sowing seed, fruit-tree making
fruit after its kind, on the earth:' and it is so.
And the earth bringeth forth tender grass, herb sowing seed after its kind, and tree making fruit after its kind; and God seeth that [it is] good;
and there is an evening, and there is a morning -- day third.
And saith God, `Let be
light sources in expanse (shield) the heavens, to the separation between the day and between the night and be to signs and to beacons and to days and years,
and they have been for light sources in the expanse of the heavens to enlighten the earth.
(In Norse mythology the expanse of heaven was made from the skull of the giant Ymir)
And the woman saith unto the serpent, `Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we do eat, But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said,
"Ye shall eat of it not; ye shall die"
And the serpent saith unto the woman,
"Ye shall eat of it; not ye shall die"
And Jehovah God saith to the woman, `What [is] this thou hast done?'
and the woman saith, `The (sneaky) snake snaked me -- and I did eat