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| Diversity of Dreams and Visions. Epicurus Thought Lightly of Them, Though Generally Most Highly Valued. Instances of Dreams.
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Chapter XLVI.—Diversity
of Dreams and Visions. Epicurus Thought Lightly of Them, Though
Generally Most Highly Valued. Instances of Dreams.
We now find ourselves constrained to express an
opinion about the character of the dreams by which the soul is excited.
And when shall we arrive at the subject of death? And on such a
question I would say, When God shall permit: that admits of no long
delay which must needs happen at all events. Epicurus has given it as
his opinion that dreams are altogether vain things; (but he says this)
when liberating the Deity from all sort of care, and dissolving the
entire order of the world, and giving to all things the aspect of
merest chance, casual in their issues, fortuitous in their nature.
Well, now, if such be the nature of things, there must be some chance
even for truth, because it is impossible for it to be the only thing to
be exempted from the fortune which is due to all things. Homer has
assigned two gates to dreams,1770
| 1770 See the
Odyssey, xix. 562, etc. [Also, Æneid, vi.
894.] | —the
horny one of truth, the ivory one of error and delusion.
For, they say, it is possible to see through horn, whereas ivory is
untransparent. Aristotle, while expressing his opinion that
dreams are in most cases untrue, yet acknowledges that there is some
truth in them. The people of Telmessus will not admit that dreams are
in any case unmeaning, but they blame their own weakness when unable to
conjecture their signification. Now, who is such a stranger to human
experience as not sometimes to have perceived some truth in dreams? I
shall force a blush from Epicurus, if I only glance at some few of the
more remarkable instances. Herodotus1771
relates how
that Astyages, king of the Medes, saw in a dream issuing from the womb
of his virgin daughter a flood which inundated Asia; and again, in the
year which followed her marriage, he saw a vine growing out from the
same part of her person, which overspread the whole of Asia. The same
story is told prior to Herodotus by Charon of Lampsacus. Now they who
interpreted these visions did not deceive the mother when they destined
her son for so great an enterprise, for Cyrus both inundated and
overspread Asia. Philip of Macedon, before he became a father, had seen
imprinted on the pudenda of his consort Olympias the form of a small
ring, with a lion as a seal. He had concluded that an offspring from
her was out of the question (I suppose because the lion only becomes
once a father), when Aristodemus or Aristophon happened to conjecture
that nothing of an unmeaning or empty import lay under that seal, but
that a son of very illustrious character was portended. They who know
anything of Alexander recognise in him the lion of that small
ring. Ephorus writes to this effect. Again, Heraclides has
told us, that a certain woman of Himera beheld in a dream
Dionysius’ tyranny over Sicily. Euphorion has publicly
recorded as a fact, that, previous to giving birth to Seleucus, his
mother Laodice foresaw that he was destined for the empire of Asia. I
find again from Strabo, that it was owing to a dream that even
Mithridates took possession of Pontus; and I further learn from
Callisthenes that it was from the indication of a dream that Baraliris
the Illyrian stretched his dominion from the Molossi to the frontiers
of Macedon. The Romans, too, were acquainted with dreams of this
kind. From a dream Marcus Tullius (Cicero) had learnt how that
one, who was yet only a little boy, and in a private station, who was
also plain Julius Octavius, and personally unknown to (Cicero) himself,
was the destined Augustus, and the suppressor and destroyer of
(Rome’s) civil discords. This is recorded in the Commentaries of
Vitellius. But visions of this prophetic kind were not confined to
predictions of supreme power; for they indicated perils also, and
catastrophes: as, for instance, when Cæsar was absent from the
battle of Philippi through illness, and thereby escaped the sword of
Brutus and Cassius, and then although he expected to encounter greater
danger still from the enemy in the field, he quitted his tent for it,
in obedience to a vision of Artorius, and so escaped (the capture by
the enemy, who shortly after took possession of the tent); as, again,
when the daughter of Polycrates of Samos foresaw the crucifixion which
awaited him from the anointing of the sun and the bath of
Jupiter.1772
| 1772 See an account of her
vision and its interpretation in Herodot. iv. 124. | So likewise in
sleep revelations are made of high honours and eminent talents;
remedies are also discovered, thefts brought to light, and treasures
indicated. Thus Cicero’s eminence, whilst he was still a little
boy, was foreseen by his nurse. The swan from the breast of Socrates
soothing men, is his disciple Plato. The boxer Leonymus is cured
by Achilles in his dreams. Sophocles the tragic poet discovers, as he
was dreaming, the golden crown, which had been lost from the citadel of
Athens. Neoptolemus the tragic actor, through intimations in his sleep
from Ajax himself, saves from destruction the hero’s tomb on the
Rhoetean shore before Troy; and as he removes the decayed stones, he
returns enriched with gold. How many commentators and chroniclers
vouch for this phenomenon? There are Artemon, Antiphon, Strato,
Philochorus, Epicharmus, Serapion, Cratippus, and Dionysius of Rhodes,
and Hermippus—the entire literature of the age. I shall
only laugh at all, if indeed I ought to laugh at the man who fancied
that he was going to persuade us that Saturn dreamt before anybody
else; which we can only believe if Aristotle, (who would fain help us
to such an opinion,) lived prior to any other person. Pray
forgive me for laughing. Epicharmus, indeed, as well as
Philochorus the Athenian, assigned the very highest place among
divinations to dreams. The whole world is full of oracles of this
description: there are the oracles of Amphiaraus at Oropus, of
Amphilochus at Mallus, of Sarpedon in the Troad, of Trophonius in
Bœotia, of Mopsus in Cilicia, of Hermione in Macedon, of
Pasiphäe in Laconia. Then, again, there are others, which with
their original foundations, rites, and historians, together with the
entire literature of dreams, Hermippus of Berytus in five portly
volumes will give you all the account of, even to satiety. But
the Stoics are very fond of saying that God, in His most watchful
providence over every institution, gave us dreams amongst other
preservatives of the arts and sciences of divination, as the especial
support of the natural oracle. So much for the dreams to which credit
has to be ascribed even by ourselves, although we must interpret them
in another sense. As for all other oracles, at which no one ever
dreams, what else must we declare concerning them, than that they are
the diabolical contrivance of those spirits who even at that time dwelt
in the eminent persons themselves, or aimed at reviving the memory of
them as the mere stage of their evil purposes, going so far as to
counterfeit a divine power under their shape and form, and, with equal
persistence in evil, deceiving men by their very boons of remedies,
warnings, and forecasts,—the only effect of which was to injure
their victims the more they helped them; while the means whereby they
rendered the help withdrew them from all search after the true God, by
insinuating into their minds ideas of the false one? And of course so
pernicious an influence as this is not shut up nor limited within the
boundaries of shrines and temples: it roams abroad, it flies through
the air, and all the while is free and unchecked. So that nobody can
doubt that our very homes lie open to these diabolical spirits, who
beset their human prey with their fantasies not only in their chapels
but also in their chambers.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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