In another source, they are named Aegle, Arethusa, and Hesperethusa, the three daughters of Hesperus. Hyginus in his preface to the Fabulae names them as Aegle, Hesperie, and Aerica. Apollonius of Rhodes gives the number of three with their names as Aigle, Erytheis, and Hespere (or Hespera). Nevertheless, among the names given to them, though never all at once, there were either three, four, or seven Hesperides. The Garden of the Hesperides by Frederick, Lord Leighton, 1892. In a Roman literary source, the nymphs are simply said to be the daughters of Hesperus, embodiment of the 'west'. The Hesperides are also listed as the daughters of Atlas and Hesperis, or of Phorcys and Ceto, or of Zeus and Themis. They are sometimes portrayed as the evening daughters of Night ( Nyx), either alone, or with Darkness ( Erebus), in accord with the way Eos in the farthermost east, in Colchis, is the daughter of the titan Hyperion. Their abstract, interchangeable names are a symptom of their impersonality', classicist Evelyn Byrd Harrison has observed.
'Since the Hesperides themselves are mere symbols of the gifts the apples embody, they cannot be actors in a human drama. Ordinarily, the Hesperides number three, like the other Greek triads (the Three Graces and the Three Fates).
