one of the Hesperides, Greek nymphs of Hera's garden
Lipara
Lipara is one of the Hesperides, Greek nymphs who tended Hera's garden of golden apples. Her name survives only on a painted vase, the Meidias Hydria, beside the figures of that garden.
The myth
According to Greek tradition, the Hesperides lived in a garden in the far west, near Mount Atlas, where they guarded the golden apples that Gaia had given Hera at her wedding to Zeus. A hundred-headed dragon, Ladon, watched over the tree.
The sources say little about Lipara in particular. The lists of names differ from author to author, and on the Meidias Hydria she appears alongside Asterope, Chrysothemis and Hygieia. She belongs to the group of nymphs linked to the episode in which Heracles stole the apples as his eleventh labour.
Legacy
Her name has not passed into later culture, but the garden has. Renaissance poets revived the Hesperides as a literary motif, and the Greeks named citrus fruits hesperidoeidē, 'hesperidoids', after the golden apples.
Ancient sources: Her name appears in the decoration of the Meidias Hydria, an Attic red-figure vase; ancient texts describing the Hesperides, such as those of Apollonius of Rhodes or Apollodorus, do not mention her with certainty.