Ladon
The Sleepless Dragon Who Guarded Immortality
⚡ Quick Facts
Guardian of the Golden Apples
At the western edge of the world grew a garden tended by the Hesperides, nymphs of the evening. In this garden stood a tree that bore golden apples — a wedding gift from Gaia to Hera when she married Zeus. These were no ordinary fruit; they granted immortality to whoever ate them.
Coiled around the tree was Ladon, a dragon with a hundred heads, each speaking in a different voice. He never slept, his countless eyes always watching, his many mouths always hissing warnings. Even the gods rarely dared approach.
The Eleventh Labour
For his eleventh labour, Heracles was tasked with retrieving three golden apples. In one version, he killed Ladon with arrows tipped in the poison of the Hydra. In another, he convinced Atlas to retrieve the apples while Heracles held the sky in Atlas' place.
After Ladon's death, Hera placed his image in the stars as the constellation Draco, which wraps around the northern celestial pole — forever coiling through the night sky as he once coiled around the tree of golden fruit.