Golden apple

Though abandoned by her father as an infant, Atalanta became a skilled hunter and received acclaim for her role in the hunt for the Calydonian boar.

Their marriage ended in misfortune when they were transformed into lions (which the Greeks believed were unable to mate with their own species, only with leopards) for offending Zeus by having an affair in one of his shrines.

Eris, the goddess of discord, was not invited due to her troublesome nature, and upon turning up uninvited, she threw a golden apple into the ceremony, with an inscription that read: "ΤΗΙ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗΙ" (Ancient Greek: τῇ καλλίστῃ, romanized: tē(i) kallistē(i), Modern Greek: τη καλλίστη ti kallisti; "for/to the most beautiful" – cf.

Zeus gave the apple to Hermes and told him to deliver it to Paris and tell him that the goddesses would accept his decision without argument.

The silver branch with golden apples is owned by the Irish sea deity and Otherworld guardian Manannán mac Lir in the tale Echtra Cormaic.

[9] In the Oidheadh Chloinne Tuireann version of the quest of Tuirenn's sons (Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba), the éric items demanded by Lugh Lamhfada included the Golden Apples of Hesperides.

In Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird (1910) which is based upon an amalgam of Russian folk-legends, the hero Prince Ivan enters a garden where he witnesses 13 young Princesses' playing with Golden Apples which grow there.

The Golden Apples is the name of Southern writer, Eudora Welty's, fourth short story collection, published in 1949.

A golden apple plays a crucial role in the climax of David Mitchell's sixth novel The Bone Clocks, published by Random House in 2014.

Michael Hübner has suggested that the fruit of the Argan tree, endemic to the Sous Valley in present-day Morocco, may be the golden apples of the Hesperides.

Other languages, like German, Finnish, Hebrew, and Russian, have more complex etymologies for the word "orange" that can be traced back to the same idea.

[14] In later years it was thought that the "golden apples" of myth might have actually been oranges, a fruit unknown to Europe and the Mediterranean before the Middle Ages.

[citation needed] Frequently [dubious – discuss], the term "golden apple" is used to refer to the quince, a fruit originating in the Middle East.