Ladon was the immortal hundred-headed dragon that coiled around the tree of golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides, the never-sleeping guardian of one of the most precious treasures in the cosmos. To win the apples, even the mightiest hero had to get past a serpent whose hundred mouths never all closed at once.
The Serpent of the Golden Apples
At the western edge of the world lay the garden of the Hesperides, where a tree bearing golden apples — a wedding gift to Hera from Gaia — grew under the care of the nymphs called the Hesperides. To guard this priceless treasure, the dragon Ladon was set coiling around the trunk. A child of the monstrous brood (offspring of Typhon and Echidna, or of the sea-deities Phorcys and Ceto), Ladon had as many as a hundred heads, and it never slept — for with a hundred heads, there was always a watchful eye and a ready mouth, and the tree was guarded without pause, day and night.
The Eleventh Labour
The fetching of the golden apples was the eleventh of the Twelve Labours of Heracles. Accounts differ on how Ladon met his end: in one, Heracles himself slew the dragon with his arrows to reach the apples; in another, the cleverer hero persuaded the Titan Atlas (father of the Hesperides) to fetch the apples for him while Heracles temporarily held up the sky. Either way, Ladon's long vigil ended with the hero's success.
The Dragon Among the Stars
Because Ladon had served Hera faithfully, the goddess honoured the slain dragon by placing it among the stars as the constellation Draco, the great serpent that coils around the celestial pole — still guarding, in a sense, the highest point of the heavens. Ladon endures as the archetypal treasure-guarding dragon, the never-sleeping serpent coiled around what is most precious, an image that flows directly into the dragon-and-hoard motif of countless later myths and tales.
A hundred heads, and never all asleep at once — the perfect guardian for the most precious tree in the world.