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excellent when fresh, keeps well, and may be cooked in a variety of ways. The Apple and the 
Pear are the most wholesome and the most generally useful of all fruits. 
From the earliest records the Apple has ever been held in the highest esteem, and its merits 
are so great, that we cannot w r onder that it should be surrounded with many poetical and super¬ 
stitious fancies. Imagination has indeed been busy with it. In every age and in almost every 
country some poetical legend or some mystical allusion concerning the apple is to be found. It was 
an apple that Paris awarded to Aphrodite as the prize of beauty. It was the golden fruit of apples 
that the dragon watched in the garden of the Hesperides. This is the healing fruit of the Arabian 
tales. In Greece its name, strangely enough was the same as that of sheep, and it thus became 
the symbol of all manner of wealth. Ulysses enjoys it in the garden of Alcinous. Tantalus gasps 
for it vainly in Hades. The golden apple is the golden ball which the Frog-prince brings up from 
the water: the golden egg which the red hen lays in Teutonic story : the gleaming sun which is 
born of the morning. Golden apples are frequently used in Grecian mythology. They do not 
always mean golden fruit of any kind, but sometimes denote the golden tinted cloud-flocks, or herds 
of Helios. The fact that the same word “ v-yjXct” means apples, as well as sheep, accounts for the 
transformation of numerous myths of cloud-flocks, into stories of boughs of golden apples—notably 
in the case of the golden apples which Gaia gave to Here when she became the bride of Zeus, 
these apples being the golden herds of Helios, the apples of the Hesperides guarded by the fierce 
dragon Ladon, which never slept. Cox. “Aryan Mythology ”. 
It was one of the labours of Hercules to procure this golden fruit, or these fine herds; but 
at the Heracleia, or festival held in honor of Hercules, by the Thisbians and Thebans in Boeotia, by 
another play upon the word, the sheep again became apples, which were offered at his altars. The 
custom arose in this way. It was always usual to offer sheep to Hercules, but the overflowing of 
the river Asopus, on one occasion, having rendered it impassable, the sheep could not be con¬ 
veyed across the stream, and some youths remembering the ambiguity of the Greek word, offered 
apples instead, with much sport and festivity. To represent the sheep they raised an apple upon 
four sticks as the legs, and two more were placed on the top to represent the horns of the victim. 
Hercules was delighted at the ingenuity of the youths, and the festivals were ever after continued 
with the offering of apples. 
The Scholiast on Hesiod (Theog. 215,) says “ The golden apples are the stars. The even¬ 
ing hours are said to tend them, because it is at that time that we see the stars. But Flercules is 
the sun; and when the sun rises the stars disappear.” 
The golden apple itself is also used for the new born sun, as in the story of the marriage of 
Peleus with the sea-sprung Thetis, when Eris the goddess of discord, the only one of the gods not 
invited to the wedding feast, cast the golden apple on the banquet table, insqribed “ a gift for the 
fairest.” It was forthwith claimed of right by the three queens of heaven, as goddesses of the 
dawn, Here, Athene, and Aphrodite—Here as queen of the blue sky, Athene as cold queen of the 
morning light, and Aphrodite as queen of the warm young rays. Paris bestowed the apple on 
Aphrodite, and henceforth the wrath of Here and Athene dwelt always on the city of I lion. 
It was by the aid of the three golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides, or as some 
versions of the story run, from an orchard in Cyprus, that Hippomenes won the race with the fleet 
Atalanta. He artfully threw them down separately at some distance from each other, and the fair 
