Ladon (Ancient Greek: Λάδων) was a dragon in Greek mythology who guarded the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides. He is most often depicted as a serpent coiled around the apple-tree, and the ancient sources disagree sharply about his parentage. He was slain by Heracles during the hero's eleventh labour, the retrieval of the golden apples, and was afterward placed among the stars as the constellation Draco.
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I.Family
According to Hesiod's Theogony, Ladon was the last offspring of Phorcys and Ceto. The sources, however, conflict on his parentage.
A scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes cites Hesiod as calling him a son of Typhon, while another scholion, attributed to Peisandros, claims he was born of the earth. Apollodorus identifies him as the offspring of Typhon and Echidna, a parentage repeated by Hyginus and Pherecydes, and Tzetzes' Chiliades likewise names Typhon as his father. According to Ptolemy Hephaestion, Ladon was a brother of the Nemean lion.
II.Mythology
Ladon was the serpent-like dragon that coiled around the tree in the Garden of the Hesperides, guarding the golden apples. Pseudo-Apollodorus wrote that he had a hundred heads and spoke with many diverse voices.
During his eleventh labour, Heracles killed Ladon with a bow and arrow and retrieved the apples. 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. In an alternate version Ladon was never slain; instead, Heracles enlisted Atlas to fetch the apples while he himself took up Atlas' burden of holding up the sky.
III.In art and cult
The image of a dragon coiled around a tree derived from Near Eastern and Minoan sources and appears in surviving Greek vase-paintings.
In the 2nd century CE, Pausanias saw among the treasuries at Olympia an archaic cult image in cedar-wood depicting Heracles, the apple-tree of the Hesperides, and the snake coiled around it. Diodorus Siculus gave an euhemerist interpretation of Ladon, presenting him as a human shepherd guarding a flock of golden-fleeced sheep, adding that 'with regards to such matters it will be every man's privilege to form such opinions as accord with his own belief.'
IV.Catasterism
According to the Astronomy attributed to Hyginus, Ladon became the constellation Draco, which was placed among the stars by Zeus after the dragon's death.