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AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY
ARTEMIDORUS AT THE DREAM GATES:

MYTH, THEORY, AND
THE RESTORATION OF LIMINALITY
Vered Lev Kenaan

Abstract. Ancient conceptualization of dreams is based on a duality that splits the
oneiric field into two hierarchically ordered modalities. The opposition between
these dream categories finds its clearest expression in Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica,
in the distinction between oneiros and enhypnion. This article critically examines
Artemidorus’ dualistic terminology. Uncovering the Oneirocritica’s internal incon-
sistencies, the article aims to show how Artemidorus’ systematization of dreams
attempts to resolve an ambiguity that was essential to the Greek experience. As
a case study, I examine three Homeric dreams in such a way as to restore the
ambiguity suppressed by Artemidorus’ logic.
For the Greeks, as for other ancient peoples, the fundamental distinction
was that between significant and nonsignificant dreams; this appears
in Homer, in the passage about the gates of ivory and horn, and is
maintained throughout antiquity.
—Dodds 1951, 106–7
1. INTRODUCTION
A starting point for the study of how the ancients thought about
dreams is to employ a duality that in ancient times governed the theo-
retical, practical, and poetic mechanisms by which the field of dream
experience was rendered meaningful. This duality is typically understood
as a fundamental distinction splitting the oneiric field, creating two
American Journal of Philology 137 (2016) 189–218 © 2016 by Johns Hopkins University Press
190 VERED LEV KENAAN
ierarchically ordered modalities: significant and nonsignificant dreams.

h
The duality also, however, takes the analogous form of distinctions
between true and false, and visionary and somatic dreams.1 Indeed, for
the ancients the classification of dreams into two main modalities was
intrinsic to their articulation of oneiric experience. Dreams are at times
heavenly phenomena, illuminating and heralding truth, but at other times
they are manifestations of something bodily, opaque, and deceptive.
The dream is at times presented as an event having objective reality, an
external message sent by the gods, but at other times it takes the form
of a merely subjective and psychological experience. The terminology
for these distinctions establishes an opposition between oneiros and
enhypnion, indicating the higher and lower forms of dreams. The binary
opposition between oneiros and enhypnion is clearest in the systematiza-
tion of dreams attempted by Artemidorus in his hermeneutic project of
the second century c.e.2
This article examines how Artemidorus establishes the distinction
between oneiros and enhypnion and explains why it is central for his
approach to dreams. At the same time, I shall also attempt to show that
Artemidorus has difficulties in upholding this distinction and that his
failure to do so is an implicit recognition on his part that despite the
need for classification, the experience of dreams involves an ambiguity
that cannot ultimately be explained away.
In order to couch Artemidorus’ latent understanding in the wider
context of the Greek experience of dreams, I examine the nocturnal family
in Hesiod’s Theogony and Homer’s mythopoetic notion of dreaming. In
analysing three Homeric dreams, I show that ancient dreams create a space
of liminality, from which stems a hermeneutic ambiguity that is intrinsic
to the ancient experience of dreams. For ancient dreamers, the dream
and its meanings cannot be understood independently from the dream’s
temporal and hermeneutic horizons. Ancient understanding of dreams
relies on the dream’s temporal deferral, which means that until its real-
ization or non-realization in the future, a dream is essentially ambiguous
and therefore resists classification. The article will conclude with a return
1
This duality was given centrality in Dodds’ seminal The Greeks and the Irrational
(1951), whose inauguration of a new methodological paradigm for investigating Greek experi-
ence opened the way to the philological study of dreams in antiquity in the last generation.
2
See the comment by Harris-McCoy 2012, 415, on Artemidorus’ terminological inven-
tion: “The application of the terms oneiros and enhypnion in early literature is indiscrimi-
nate and should not be seen as having a definite technical meaning.” All quotations from
the Oneirocritica are taken from the translation and commentary by Harris-McCoy 2012.
ARTEMIDORUS AT THE DREAM GATES 191
to Artemidorus with the intention of exploring how he comes to grips

with dreams in light of this understanding.
My comparative methodology involves examining the reciprocal
relationship between two discourses, temporally and conceptually set
apart, one mythopoetic and the other theoretical and prescientific. The
comparison will demonstrate the differences and similarities between
Artemidorus and his predecessors primarily by showing that the Homeric
dream preserves a dimension of ambiguity that Artemidorus’ guide seeks
to undermine. Whereas for the poetic tradition duality is inherent to
the dream experience, for the theoretical tradition it offers the means
to rationalize the dream experience. Whereas the duality signifies for
ancient dreamers the dream’s indispensable ambiguity, for Artemidorus,
it provides a technical tool to dispel ambiguities. Whereas the dream’s
horizon of interpretation gives rise to contradictions and dualities, for the
Oneirocritica, the polar classification into meaningful and meaningless
dreams makes for an objective, clear-cut terminology marking a set of
further hierarchical oppositions that dispels any such vagueness.
And yet the differences between the theoretical and mythopoetic
discourses of dreams are difficult to pinpoint, precisely because the
fundamental distinction between significant and nonsignificant dreams
was, as Dodds puts it, “maintained throughout antiquity.” Dodds’ view
remains influential for the way contemporary scholarship thematizes the
general experience of dreams in antiquity. In this sense, for Dodds, there
are no “early” and “late” ancient attitudes to dream-experience (1951,
106). For Dodds, making “a distinction between different types of dream-
experience” is in line with the intentions of Homer, Artemidorus, and
Macrobius3 alike (1951, 106–7). Dodds, therefore, criticizes the modern
scholarly attempt to force a narrative of progress onto the various ancient
attitudes to dreams.4 I agree with Dodds that Artemidorus’ oneiros and
enhypnion can be traced back to the Homeric understanding of dreams.
3
Macrobius wrote the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio at the beginning of the
fifth century c.e.: it is an important source for ancient dream classification.
4
The representative of this view is Rose 1925, 151, who distinguishes three successive
stages in the ancient conception of dreams. Dodds 1951, 104, remarks that in spite of Rose’s
logical structure of progress, “in such matters the actual development of our notions seldom
follows the logical course.” In contrast to Rose, Dodds states that in respect to dreams,
Homer and Artemidorus have the same idea, which “is maintained throughout antiquity.”
Moreover, Dodds believes that the “fundamental distinction . . . between significant and
nonsignificant dreams” is important for ancient people in general. Supporting his view he
quotes Lévy-Bruhl 1923, 101: “Primitives do not accord belief to all dreams indiscriminately.
Certain dreams are worthy of credence, others not.”
Yet in contradistinction to Artemidorus’ logic of clear-cut classification,

the mythopoetic discourse involves a completely different attitude to
ambiguity.
I suggest that “the fundamental distinction” is not a given, but a
conceptual construct that was developed in antiquity over and against a
core experience that finds its best expression in myth and poetry. Further,
the influential ontology of dreams based on classification is an implicit
response to the mythopoetic notion of dreams: a notion encompassing all
oneiric productions.5 I argue that the ancient mythology of dreams helps
us understand the logic underlying their later systematic interpretation,
uncovering a mythic dimension of meaning that the logic of dream clas-
sification attempts to suppress.
2. ARTEMIDORUS ON ONEIROS AND ENHYPNION
The distinction between oneiros and enhypnion not only functions as the
backdrop of Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica 6 but also helps him structure his
field of investigation. Pointing to the necessity of grounding the study of
dreams in basic elements, stoicheia, Artemidorus begins as follows (1.1.3):
On the difference between enhypnion and oneiros, the distinction between

the two is in no way trifling . . . For the oneiros differs from the enhypnion
5
The reciprocity between dream theory and literary representations of dreams has
not been fully addressed, especially in modern studies of dreams in antiquity for which only
a historical framework is understood to be essential. A history of oneiric culture centers
on the distinction between myth and theoretical investigation. Two important studies on
ancient dreams that take the inquiry in different directions; Cox-Miller 1994 and Harris
2009 are open to a multifaceted notion of the ancient dream in antiquity, but still do not
provide a critical overview of the subtle interrelationship between ancient mythological and
methodological oneiric discourses. The dream’s textuality, and its relatedness to the ancient
field of imagination, is central for Cox-Miller’s study. She postulates an originary mythic
foundation for ancient theories and classifications of dreams. Accordingly, her first chapter,
“Figurations of Dreams,” is dedicated to the ancient literary fascination with the power of
dreams, thus setting the stage for the following chapter dealing with “Theories of Dreams.”
More recently, Harris 2009 has presented the wide range of ancient prescientific notions of
the dream. Although Harris, concerned with the history of a culture of dreaming, examines
mythopoetic language in shaping ideas and conventions of dream-description, he does not
inquire into the relationship of the mythopoetic to ancient hermeneutic systematization
of dreams.
6
The work is generally translated as “interpretation of dreams” but in fact a more lit-
eral and exact translation would have to be “classification of dreams.” The word oneirocritica
is composed of two elements: dream, oneiros, and the verb “to separate,” “to distinguish”
different things or “to evaluate,” krino. On this, see Martin 1991.
in so far as it is characteristic of the former to be significant of things in the

future, and of the latter to be significant of things in the present.
Artemidorus develops a multilayered picture of the dream phenomenon

focussing exclusively on the oneiros (its different aspects and subcatego-
ries). He begins by distinguishing the significant dream that concerns
him from a spectrum of dream phenomena that he ultimately relegates
to the periphery of the interpretative enterprise. Unlike the oneiros, the
enhypnion is presented as a dream whose significance completely belongs
to immediate experience. The enhypnion is insignificant in that it carries
no weight—refers to nothing—beyond the present in which it appears.
And this is because such a dream is a mere apparition generated by the
kind of (1.1.3):
affections [that] are inclined to rush up and marshal themselves in the mind
and to bring about nocturnal emissions. For example, it is inevitable that
in a dream, a lover imagines that he is with his boyfriend, and a frightened
man observes the things he fears and, again, that a hungry man eats and
a thirsty man drinks, and moreover, one who is stuffed with food either
vomits or chokes . . . It is therefore necessary to regard these dreams . . . as
containing not a warning (prorresis) of things to come but a recollection
(hypomnesis) of things that are.
For Artemidorus, the term enhypnion should be read literally. As sug-

gested by its prefix “en,” enhypnion implies an experience of absorption,
of being-in, and it is this structure of immersion that captures the essence
of the phenomenon:7 enhypnion is that which occurs in or during (and
only during) sleep (1.3):8
And its name is, in fact, appropriate, not because all who observe it are
asleep, since the oneiros is <also> a production of the sleeper, but because
it is active as long as sleep lasts but, when sleep stops, it disappears. But
the oneiros . . . makes us observe a prophecy of future events and, after
sleep, it is by nature inclined to rouse and stir the soul by inciting active
investigations. And its name was originally given to it for these reasons or
else because it “tells” <“the truth”>.
7
The absorbing dimension of the enhypnion is also marked by the prefix “in” of
the equivalent Latin term, insomnium, assigned by Macrobius in Stahl 1990, 1.3.5, to the
meaningless dream: “Thus the name insomnium was given, not because such dreams occur
“in sleep” . . . but because they are noteworthy only during their course and afterward have
no importance or meaning.”
8
Harris-McCoy 2012, 417, follows the conjecture of Pack 1963 <to on> and translates
it as “the truth” or “extant reality.”
The intensity of the enhypnion imprisons its dreamer in the confines

of a narrow present. Charged and excited by bodily instincts and pas-
sions, dreamers have no critical distance from the immediacy of these
affections and, as such, cannot translate their experience into any form
of knowledge, especially not foreknowledge which is precisely the pos-
sibility presented by the oneiros. Unlike the enhypnion that is riveted to
a present based completely on the facts (facts which in being complete
belong to the past), the oneiros proposes itself as a window onto the
future. To put this in terms of the difference between the operational
modalities of these two types of dreams, we may say that, whereas the
enhypnion is a passive experience that takes the form of a copy or reen-
actment, the oneiros is an active experience having creative force. For
Artemidorus, the oneiros is a movement (kinesis) or invention of the soul
(plasis psyches) that continues to be operative after dreamers awake and
that drives them to “active investigations” (energeis encheireseis, 1.2.4).9
Indeed, an understanding of an oneiros ultimately requires a grasp of
the dream’s fulfilment in a future event, but the process of identifying
that event is itself important as it engages the dreamer in hermeneutic
activity. Moreover, according to Artemidorus, the oneiros appears with
an inbuilt demand for interpretation, an internal voice that requires the
dreamer to “Observe this and pay it heed, learning from me as best as you
can!” (1.2.5).10 In other words, the temporal structure of the oneiros—the
projection of its meaning onto the future—is intimately tied to its nature
as a hermeneutic object, one that is constituted through interpretation,
and is, as such, a textual entity.
For Artemidorus, and later for his Latin heir Macrobius, dreams
unfold like texts. Their textuality may vary in form and level of com-
plexity and, in a corollary manner, require different levels of proficiency
reading, different kinds of readers, and a more general ethics of
in
interpretation.11 In this context, the oneiros is a dream that consists of a
complex polysemic textuality (poluschemon semantike ton esomenon)12
whose full meaning never gives itself directly, but requires deciphering,
a process that takes time. The textual horizons of the oneiros are thus
9
“But the oneiros . . . after sleep, is by nature inclined to rouse and stir the soul by
inciting active investigations.”
10
θέασαι τοῦτο καὶ πρόσεχε δι᾽ ἐμοῦ μαθὼν ᾗ σοι μάλιστα δυνατόν.
11
On the relation between classifications of dreams and texts in Artemidorus and
Macrobius, see Kenaan 2004.
12
The whole sentence is: “The oneiros is a movement or composition of the soul,
consisting of many forms, that is significant of future events, both good and bad” (On. 1.2.4).
dynamic and their fluctuation is determined by the dream interpreter’s

way of responding to the oneiros’ enigmatic structure. In contradistinction,
the enhypnion’s textuality places no intellectual demand on the dreamer.
The enhypnion is a literal dream which, as such, is of little or no value.
Thus, “to those who ask about the difference between an oneiros and
an enhypnion,” Artemidorus finds it important to reiterate (in Book 4,
praef.) that an enhypnion is “that which has no significance (asemanton)
and foretells nothing and only operates during sleep and arises from
irrational desire or excessive fear or a surfeit or deficiency [of food].”
The enhypnion is asemanton in the sense that it is strictly literal and
requires no interpretation, since it explicitly presents the actual—bodily
or affective—condition of dreamers (1.1.3).
3. TWO SOURCES OF ARTEMIDORUS’

ONTOLOGY OF DREAMS
It may be argued that Artemidorus developed the notion of the enhypnion

to accommodate a long tradition of naturalistic investigation of the origins
of dreams. Beginning with Hippocrates’ On Regimen, various authors,
from Aristotle to the Epicureans, did not accept the prevailing view that
dreams are messages sent by the gods.13 These different approaches share
a common interest in the dream as a somatic product, or as a nocturnal
reverberation of happenings occurring during the previous day. Dreams,
as Cicero explains, are the day’s residues, reliquiae rerum earum (Div.
2.140). The absence of the exclusive term oneiros or its Latin equivalent
from such naturalistic treatises on dreams is telling. If Artemidorus’
enhypnion is indeed a way of addressing the naturalist’s concerns, he
does so by designating it as the insignificant counterpart of the symbolic
dream. In this sense, Artemidorus’ hermeneutic approach can be seen
as an important ancient source for the modern field of psychoanalysis.
In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud exhibited a similar con
descending attitude towards dreams that “bear their meaning upon their
faces.” Freud identified these literal “simple dreams” as typical of young
children whose “psychical productions are less complicated than those
of adults” (2001, 127–28).14 While Artemidorus foreshadows Freud’s
13
On the ancient naturalistic tradition concerning dreams, see Harris 2009, 229–78.
14
Artemidorus’ insignificant enhypnia should, however, interest a Freudian reader
since they specify a group of dreams that deal with the dreamer’s present and past
wishes. Freud relied on the Oneirocritica and related to Artemidorus of Daldis as an early
progenitor. Freud 2001, 98–99, reinforced Artemidorus’ view that both the dream and the
isinterest in literal-somatic “simple dreams,” rendering them insignificant

d
for interpretation, his hermeneutics is ultimately non-Freudian since it is
based on the identification of the somatic with the psychological.15 That is,
for Artemidorus, the somatic and psychological origins of dreams both find
their expression in literal projections of the dreamer’s present condition.
According to Artemidorus, the dreamer’s soul remains incarcerated
within the bodily circumstances of the sleeper. In this respect, Artemidorus’
notion of the enhypnia corresponds to Lucretius’ general understanding
of dream life. The various dreams that Lucretius mentions in Book 4 of
De Rerum Natura have common features. Lucretius refers to dreams as
perceptual events that occur in somnis or per somnum, and hence avoids
using different terms for different kinds of dreams.16 These perceptual
events are recreations of the dreamer’s daily life and they exhibit the
dreamer’s objects of desire and concern.17 Artemidorus relies on, and
even absorbs, this naturalistic tradition and yet, his incorporation of that
tradition is done only negatively. Artemidorus relegates its wide scope of
inquiry to the domain of insignificance. Classifying Lucretius’ collection
of wish-fulfilment dreams, anxiety dreams, and somatic dreams under the
category of the enhypnion, Artemidorus denies them serious scrutiny.18
circumstances of the dreamer’s life must be considered in interpreting the dream text,
and at 328, Freud echoed Artemidorus’ practice of reading the dream text forwards and
backwards. Freud 99n refers to Artemidorus in the context of discussing word play; Freud
606n refers to specific symbols and sexual dreams. See Armstrong 2005, 86–92, on Freud’s
reading of Artemidorus’ On.
15
The identification of the somatic with the psychological is also typical of Lucretius
who, according to Nussbaum 1994a, 166, views “the psychological mechanism as natural.”
16
For Lucretius’ references to nighttime phenomena as perceptual events that occur
in somnis, see DRN 4.965, 972, 988, 1006, 1012, or per somnum 4.1018.
17
Lucretius, DRN 4.984–86 speaks about the studium and voluntas, passionate ardor
and will, that dominate the nightly field of vision of humans and animals. He concentrates
on the connection between the somatic and the psychical through the physical effects
of dreams: discharge of fluids and bodily gestures, or the mental effects of dreams: i.e.,
representations of fears and desires. For dream recreations of everyday occupations that
express the dreamer’s wishes and concerns, see DRN 4.962–72. For dreams causing extreme
fears that reflect the dreamer’s mental condition in waking life, see DRN 4.1011–23. For
animals’ dreams that reproduce nervous experiences of racing and hunting impulses as well
as moments of fright, see DRN 4.987–1010. For night sweats and wet dreams, see DRN,
4.1024–1036. See also Kragelund 1989.
18
Referring to Lucretius’ dreams as “signs of a bodily condition,” Nussbaum 1994b,
58, ties his notion of dreams specifically to Artemidorus’ enhypnia: “he might seem to be
denying the existence of what Artemidorus calls oneiroi, and giving us an account merely
of enhypnia.” Nussbaum argues, however, that Epicurean dream theory concerns itself
with depth interpretation.
Besides its implied indebtedness to Lucretius’ poem, Artemidorus’ view

of wishful and anxiety dreams as insignificant is undoubtedly tied to the
Platonic tradition. Unlike the naturalistic tradition, Plato’s interest in the
dream’s ability to reflect the soul’s condition is essentially ethical. Yet,
like the naturalistic tradition, Plato’s discussion of those “desires that are
awakened in sleep” (Rep. 571c) plays an important role in grounding the
psychological in the somatic.19
The somatic aspect of the wishful and anxious enhypnia is discussed
in Plato’s Republic.20 Following Plato, Artemidorus is concerned with the
dreamer’s mental condition and, moreover, assigns ethical responsibility
to dreamers by ascribing them authority as dream creators. The Platonic
elaboration of the dreaming subject identifies uninhibited dreams with
an imbalanced self. Immoral dreams thus reflect the neglected (or mis-
treated) condition of the soul’s epithymetic part.21 Artemidorus’s oneiros
and enhypnion correspond to the dreams that Plato relates respectively
to the philosopher and the morally debased.
Plato’s interest in dreams in the Republic relates to their usefulness
for analyzing different states of the soul. Dreams are means to test his
theory of the soul through its image-making faculty. The visual night-
phenomena indicate an essential difference in the psychic balance of two
paradigmatic dreamers categorically set apart. Hence, for Plato, there is no
real need for dream classification, but rather, a distinction between types
of souls. The philosopher knows how to conduct himself in a healthy and
settled way and is therefore represented by Plato as an ideal dreamer.
Before the philosopher goes to sleep, he wakens the power of logic, takes
care to calm his emotions, and attends to his desires and thus will be
neither satiated nor hunger overmuch, so that “the visions that appear
in his dreams are least lawless” (Rep. 572a–b). It is this specification of
ethical conduct that matters for Plato who is otherwise less concerned
with formalization of dream categories. Plato accordingly uses a unified
terminology for the dreams that characterize the two forms of being.
Hence, although Plato’s ethical approach to dreams inevitably renders the
somatic group of dreams categorically inferior to those of the philosopher,
19
In this sense, the Platonic notion of dreams is fundamental for the naturalistic
tradition.
20
“Artemidorus’ enhypnia,” writes Harris-McCoy 2012, 13, “resemble the theory of
false dreams found in Plato’s Republic. There, Socrates describes false dreams as the prod-
ucts of bodily appetites and, in particular, lust, hunger, and violence (Plato, Rep. 9.571c–d).”
21
This appetitive, lower part of the soul is essentially corporeal, being in charge of
the body’s needs and desires.
he nevertheless refers in the Republic (572a–b) to all n ighttime phe-

nomena in the same manner. Thus, for Plato, enhypnion refers both to
the dream that distracts from, and the one that leads to, knowledge of
the truth.22 In Crito, for example, the double sense of the enhypnion is
made explicit as Plato presents the divide between Socrates’ and Crito’s
responses to Socrates’ enhypnion. While Crito decisively judges Socrates’
enhypnion as having no sense, atopon enhypnion, Socrates perceives it
as a clear dream, a prophetic vision (44a–b).23 In Plato, enhypnia occur
both to those who take care of their soul and to those who neglect it.
The enhypnion is, for Plato, a general term whose specific manifestations
mirror the dreamer’s ethos. In the Republic, the enhypnion is not a value-
laden concept; it is neither positive nor negative. The enhypnion does
not in advance connote a sense of immorality. It functions like a screen
on which the dreamer’s somatic and psychological issues are projected,
a screen which in the philosopher’s case is transparent, and in the case
of the average dreamer is opaque. The opaque enhypnion presents the
eye with lawless visions. These visions correspond to dreamers’ aggres-
sive instincts, and their vividness bars any contact with the truth. To the
wise, the enhypnion has a transparent quality elevating the dreamer to
a standpoint where truth can be perceived.24 Without entering into the
whole complex picture of Plato’s notion of dreams,25 one can say that
Plato, unlike Artemidorus, does not wish to use classification to overcome
the dream’s ambiguity. Plato saves the tactics of differentiation for his
22
Plato’s somatic and ethical discussion of dreams in Book 9 should be distinguished,
however, from his metaphoric use of dreams. In Book 5 of the Republic, the famous Platonic
contrast between hupar e onar, e.g., Rep. 476c and d, metaphorically conveys two forms of
life: living in the darkness as opposed to leading a life dedicated to true knowledge. Plato
makes adverbial use of hupar and onar. In other words, they do not stand respectively
for waking visions and dreams. For Plato being awake or in a dream are two conflicting
modes of being. By associating, on the one hand, the subjective, incoherent and ephemeral
domain of dreaming (onar) with doxa and by associating, on the other hand, the clarity of
gnome with waking consciousness (hupar), Plato distinguishes, in the Republic, between
different levels of cognition.
23
For Plato’s complex notion of dreams and the dream metaphor, see Tigner 1970,
206–12; Gallop 1971, 187–201.
24
One who goes to sleep after taking care of the three parts of the soul “is most
likely to apprehend the truth, and the vision of his dreams (enhypnion) are least likely to
be lawless” (ὅτι τῆς τ᾽ ἀληθείας ἐν τῷ τοιούτῳ μάλιστα ἅπτεται καὶ ἥκιστα παράνομοι τότε αἱ
ὄψεις φαντάζονται τῶν ἐνυπνίων, Rep. 572a–b).
25
At times Plato describes truthful and prophetic dreams as enigmatic (i.e., referring
to his own wisdom as onar in the Symposium 175e) while at other times he calls them clear
and transparent (i.e., Crito 44b).
theory of the soul, and refrains from applying it to dreams in order to

preserve a unified general theory of the image.26
4. THE BLIND SPOT IN THE ONEIROCRITICA
In contrast to Plato’s interest in the relation of dreams to the metaphysi-

cal notion of truth, Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica focuses its investigation
only on those dreams that come true. Oneiroi compose the principle
part of Artemidorus’ essentialist theory of dreams. Within the wide and
transient experience of dreams, oneiroi specify a hierarchically distinct
group of dreams. Their relation to the future makes them superior to
the more average short-lived, present-centered dreams. Artemidorus’
insistence on different types of dreams forges a dream ontology. And
yet, his essentialist mapping discloses subtle discrepancies. At the begin-
ning of Book 1, immediately after he establishes the difference between
enhypnion and oneiros, and just before he establishes—by the force of
etymology—an inner connection between oneiros and telling the truth,
Artemidorus awkwardly retreats to the following inconsistent assertion:
“But the oneiros, which is also an enhypnion, makes us observe a prophecy
of future events” (1.1.3). In the context of his discussion, Artemidorus’
statement produces an apparent contradiction. How can his strict sys-
tematization of dreams contain an identification between the significant
and the nonsignificant dream, while its proclaimed teleology rules out
identification of this sort as erroneous? The inconsistency has not drawn
special attention from ancient or modern readers,27 perhaps because it can
be explained away on a terminological level, by presenting the oneiros
as a subcategory of the enhypnion.28 But such an implication would go
against the guide’s explicit intention. Consequently, this unexpected cae-
sura in Artemidorus’ rhetoric of dichotomies must be recognized. Does
this momentary appearance of a contradiction point to a blind spot in the
Oneirocritica? Is such a discrepancy only a failure of systematization or
is it also indicative of the guide’s implicit, latent concerns regarding an
26
Vernant 1991, 164, refers to Plato’s unifying terminology as follows: “Had not a
philosopher like Plato already collected the most diverse types of imagery into one and
the same group so as to present a unified general theory?”
27
Two of Artemidorus’ prominent readers, Foucault 1986, 10–11, and Winkler 1990,
32, observe this contradictory statement without thoroughly accounting for it. See the
discussion in section 8 above.
28
Harris-McCoy, 2012, 417, writes, e.g., of this identification that “the oneiros is,
technically speaking, an enhypnion because it occurs, at least in part, during sleep.”
ambiguity that, in principle, cannot be eradicated from the interpretation

of dreams? This is how I suggest we read Artemidorus whose insistence
on a binary methodology cannot, as he himself knows, clear away the
dream’s inherent equivocation. Artemidorus’ conflation of the oneiros
and the enhypnion thus invites us to re-examine the presence of these
apparent oppositions in the ancient experience of dreaming. We are led
to rethink the tensions between the rich and multifarious forms of the
unfolding of a dream and the logical constraints imposed on that experi-
ence by the ancient project of systematic classification.
In order to get a glimpse of the domain of ambiguity that was
part and parcel of the Greek experience of dreams, an ambiguity that
Artemidorus works hard to dispel, I turn now to sketch a mythologi-
cal picture of dreams. In the following sections (5–7), I consider two
important mythological sources, two mythopoetical texts, that explore
the dream’s twofold nature. By reading three Homeric dreams, I will
trace the dreamer’s experience of an inherently unresolved ambiguity.
Homeric representations of dreams entangle present with future; they
allow a collaboration between the psychological and the prophetic, and
produce an experience of liminality that Artemidorus’ binary methodol-
ogy aspires to disrupt.
5. THE CHTHONIC-OLYMPIAN ORIGINS

OF THE HOMERIC DREAM
a. Mythological Conceptualization
The mythic provenance of dreams offers a horizon of interpretation

common to Artemidorus’ oneiros and enhypnion. In the epic tradition
from Homer to Vergil,29 dreams typically raise an expectation of the
unfolding of a future event. Yet, as we can see, literary dreams usually
involve the dreamer’s current emotional state. The dream’s future and
present aspects are understood by the mythological imagination as emerg-
ing from the dream’s dual chthonic and Olympian origins. One cannot
understand the dual nature of the ancient dream without acknowledging
its chthonic genealogy, and in particular, the family group it belongs to
and within which it was shaped: the two brothers of Dream (Oneiros)30
are Sleep (Hypnos) and Death (Thanatos), all being the sons of Night
29
See, e.g., Vergil, Aen. 6.893–96 and its Homeric source, Od. 19.562–67.
30
Hesiod’s exact expression in Th. 212 is “the tribe of dreams.”
(Nyx) (Hesiod, Th. 211–12).31 Other siblings represent various forces that
leave their painful imprint on human lives.32
The Hesiodic mythology responds to the visual and psychological
effects that are typical of the nocturnal experience. At night we see in
visions, give in to desires and dark fears, and converse with the dead.
The relation between Oneiros and Thanatos is revealed through the
Homeric senses of eidolon.33 What the brothers share is their capacity
to form images—empty and shallow eidola, meager resemblances or
remembrances of a living body. Being a chthonic creature, the Hesiodic
and Homeric dream is shaped according to the dreamer’s needs, desires,
and anxieties, all of which are nourished by the night. The dream is closely
related to death. The convention of closing the eyes of the dead conveys
the idea that death is a longer variation of sleep. Hypnos and Thanatos
pertain to darkness and stimulate longing through empty images of absent
others. These chthonic features of the dream would become essential
characteristics of Artemidorus’ enhypnion, conceived by the tradition of
dream interpretation as products of the psychological apparatus.
In this mythological conception of dream making, however, along-
side chthonic/psychological forces, Olympian gods are also involved.
Under Olympian command, the dream’s latent (and true) significance is
dictated. Thus in the epic tradition, Olympian involvement is responsible
for the dream’s qualities, which Artemidorus associates with the oneiros.34
The mythological origins of Artemidorus’ identification of oneiros and
enhypnion are therefore found in the Homeric association of the chthonic
and the Olympian. A close reading of three Homeric dreams shows what
Artemidorus’ guide is reluctant to explore, namely, that the ancient dream,
whether true or false, symbolic or literal, is always tied to the current
psychological experience of the dreamer. Moreover, as we shall see, the
chthonic and the Olympian are responsible for shaping the dream’s
different temporal dimensions: the chthonic is in charge of representing
31
In Hesiod’s Th. 116–22, the dream is born at the earliest stage of the world’s
development, long before the creation of the human being. Dreams were created close
on the heels of the appearance of the four primary elements that were the beginning of
the world. These four primordial elements, Chaos, Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros, belong to a
primary dimension of being associated with the cosmological beginning, as well as reflecting
a specific kind of human experience antithetical to rationality, i.e., the unconscious. For the
role of dreams in ancient cosmogonies, see Brelich 1996, 293–301.
32
These forces include loathsome Doom, black Fate, Blame, painful Distress, Nemesis,
Deceit, and sexual craving: see Hes. Th. 213–25.
33
See, e.g., Od. 11.218–23.
34
Zeus and Athena are responsible for the messages of several Homeric dreams.
the dreamer’s present psychological condition, while its Olympian origins

reflect the dream’s connection to the future.
b. The Dream’s Dual Agency
The ancient dream, as the epic tradition constructs it, presents a complex
structure of temporality that involves the dreamer’s present and past
with a twist towards the unknown future. The first dream in Book 2 of
the Iliad (1–47) manifests this form of complexity. Agamemnon’s dream
is presented as a destructive dream (oulos oneiros, Il. 2.6), sent by Zeus
as part of his plot to help Achilles defeat the Greek army. The dream
figure appearing to Agamemnon is Nestor, one of the oldest and most
respected among Greek warriors, who in waking life accompanies and
helps him. In the dream, Nestor promises Agamemnon that the gods are
univocally in favour of the Greek army and that victory on the battlefield
is guaranteed.
The mythic description gives a good picture of the dual components
of the dream in Homeric thought. First of all, the dream that appears to
Agamemnon is a product of Zeus’ plan, an Olympian strategy of decep-
tion. Zeus is the dream architect, but he leaves the specific contrivance
of the divine dream (theios Oneiros) completely in the hands of an
independent agent. Thus, to accomplish the general purpose of his plan,
Zeus invites an artistic divinity, Dream (Oneiros), to shape the false
message (Il. 2.6–10):35
πέμψαι ἐπ᾽ Ἀτρεΐδῃ Ἀγαμέμνονι οὖλον ὄνειρον·

καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·
‘βάσκ᾽ ἴθι οὖλε ὄνειρε θοὰς ἐπὶ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν·
ἐλθὼν ἐς κλισίην Ἀγαμέμνονος Ἀτρεΐδαο
πάντα μάλ᾽ ἀτρεκέως ἀγορευέμεν ὡς ἐπιτέλλω.’
He thought it best to send to Agamemnon that same night a fatal dream.
Calling the dream he said: “go down amid the fast ships of Akhaia, enter
Lord Agamemnon’s quarters, tell him everything, point by point, as I
command you.”
35
In Il. 2.11–15, Zeus gives the dream a general instruction (“tell him everything, point
by point”) and dictates the contents of the false message: the dream must tell Agamemnon
that Hera has succeeded in turning the whole congregation of gods against the Trojans.
The dream must use rhetorical persuasion appropriate to his choice of the dream image.
Although Zeus takes the role of producer-in-chief, script writing and

lead part is given to the chthonian Oneiros. He has artistic freedom and
the ability to manoeuvre within the bounds of Zeus’ Olympian author-
ity. Thus, under Zeus’ guidance, Oneiros is aware of the need to choose
a reliable dream figure who will convince Agamemnon to trust Zeus’
false message. Nestor suits the divine dream’s purpose, for Agamemnon
is known to respect him above “all the elders” (2.21). Oneiros’ choice
proves effective: Agamemnon fails to classify the dream experience as an
oulos oneiros. When Agamemnon wakes up he gathers the Greek warriors
and informs them of his divine dream (theios oneiros). In presenting the
nighttime vision as a divine dream (theios oneiros), Agamemnon suspends
the question of the dream’s truthfulness (2.56–59):
‘κλῦτε φίλοι: θεῖός μοι ἐνύπνιον ἦλθεν ὄνειρος

ἀμβροσίην διὰ νύκτα: μάλιστα δὲ Νέστορι δίῳ
εἶδός τε μέγεθός τε φυήν τ᾽ ἄγχιστα ἐῴκει·
στῆ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς καί με πρὸς μῦθον ἔειπεν.
Hear me, friends. A divine dream has come to me in sleep—a figure in height
and bearing very close to Nestor, standing above my pillow, speaking to me.
Agamemnon is attentive only to the chthonic elements of the dream. It

is they that stimulate the dreamer’s hermeneutic instincts. Oneiros’ sly
tactics lead the dreamer to reflect on the significance of the encounter
with the dream figure. The satisfaction involved in deciphering the dream’s
Olympian meaning must be postponed, however. It is simply beyond the
dreamer’s hermeneutic capacity to guess whether his dream is true or
false in relation to a future event.
Modern commentators usually call Agamemnon’s dream “decep
tive,” relating to the fact that the dream remains unrealized.36 That
Agamemnon’s dream does not correspond to any future event indicates
its Olympian provenance. Had it been a prophetic dream, Agamem-
non’s dream would have fit Artemidorus’ category of the theorematic
dream, a dream whose outcome is identical to its literal message.37 Zeus
constructs the dream specifically as a direct and literal message, but
lacking any prophetic value. Agamemnon’s dream thus neither belongs
36
See, e.g., Kessels 1978, 37.
37
The theorematikoi and the allegorikoi pertain to the category of the oneiroi. Unlike
the allegorical dream, however, the theorematic dream is a dream that is “directly perceived,”
and whose outcome is “identical to its appearance.” The theorematic dream is literal but
its prophetic message makes it a unique example of the oneiros type. See Artem, On. 1.2.4.
to the theorematic subcategory of prophetic dreams nor to the literal

enhypnion. The dream’s misleading message manifests a complexity that
requires thought.
The separation of powers between Zeus and Oneiros in making the
dream shows that according to the Homeric epic, the chthonic divinity
is responsible for the dream’s psychological dimension. The mimetic art
of creating the dream figure is based on a deep acquaintance with the
sleeping soul. Only detailed familiarity with the sleeper’s biography allows
Oneiros to manipulate the dream figure and operate it according to the
Olympian dream plan. Although dictated by Zeus, the subtle weaving
of Zeus’ scheme is the result of the chthonic dream-work. Oneiros elabo-
rates Zeus’ message through psychological affects, mimetic technique,
and figures of speech.
The Homeric dream is therefore a collaborative work. The dream’s
network of meanings is composed by Olympian and chthonic agencies.
Agamemnon’s dream cannot be reduced to a one-dimensional mean-
ing: its possible meanings cannot be exhausted only through testing its
truth-value. Beyond its relation to future facticity, a dream’s meaning is
tied to different perspectives and temporalities. For the Homeric poet,
it is important therefore that the experience of the dream preserves an
option of openness within the predetermined framework of Zeus’ plan.
This is the reason that the Homeric poet refrains from representing Zeus
as a dream figure. It is not Zeus who directly announces the misleading
message (which he contrived) to the sleeping Agamemnon. Had Zeus
delivered the message himself, the dream would have reduced its herme-
neutic space in the shadow of Zeus’ supreme authority. Conveying the
dream message through the chthonic dream figure, the Homeric Zeus
allows the dream to retain its ambiguity. And thus, more generally, the
greater the autonomy that the dream characters have, in spite of their
role as messengers under orders, the more pronounced is the polyvalent
and multilayered nature of the dream.
Hence, with the Homeric dream grounded in the dream figure of
Nestor, the dreamer is called to the work of interpretation. The involve-
ment of the dream figure in the dreamer’s real life demands that an
interpreter, whether the dreamer or someone else, takes on the dreamer’s
point of view, specifically involving his personal relationship with the rep-
resented figure. Intrigued by the dream, Agamemnon has to ask himself
what the appearance of Nestor in his dream means, what the connection
is between Nestor’s dream appearance and what he says, and what the
connection might be between the real Nestor beyond the dream and his
dream stand-in.
Accordingly, the Homeric text explicitly emphasizes that the dream

is meant to open a horizon of interpretation for the dreamer: “on this the
dream withdrew into the night, and left the man to envision, rapt, all that
was not to be” (Il. 2.35–36). Agamemnon’s dream is not a theorematic
dream, but is disguised as such. Its false theorematic appearance is tied
to its explicit literal message. From an Olympian perspective, however,
the dream is utterly false since its literal message does not correlate with
a future event. Structured as a promise, the dream fails to maintain a
direct correspondence with the future, and consequently shows itself to be
empty. And yet, through its chthonic agent, the dream’s false theorematic
appearance disguises genuine refractions of the dreamer’s unconscious
thoughts. Thus, for example, the dream is a reflection of the dreamer’s
current desires. Agamemnon not only wishes to embark on a battle with
the Trojans, but also craves support, wanting paternal approval. To use
Artemidorus’ terminology, Homer provides an example in Agamemnon’s
dream of the oneiric enhypnion (Harris-McCoy 2012, 417). In contriving
hidden and destructive content for the dream through the figure of Nestor,
the chthonic Oneiros constructs the dream as an enigmatic oneiros whose
core is that of an enhypnion.
6. THE DREAM’S LIMINAL SPACE
Penelope’s dream in Book 4 of the Odyssey (787–841) is a creation of

Athena, assisted by a dream figure. The dream depends on an image
(eidolon), a dream figure or automaton performing a divine mission.
The vibrant figure who appears to Penelope is completely controlled
by the goddess Athena who manoeuvres her at will. And yet, even in
being activated by the goddess, the image has an impact and is respon-
sible for emotionally rousing the sleeping Penelope. It is certainly due
to the image’s specific qualities qua image that it brings the introverted
and melancholic Penelope to speech.38 The image’s interaction with the
dreamer testifies therefore to a certain affective power unique to it.39
As Odysseus’ divine patron, Athena is interested in raising Penel-
ope’s dejected spirits. Penelope falls asleep on her bed without having
eaten or drunk. She is tormented by grievous worry. Her suitors are
On Penelope’s melancholy, see Weiss 2014.

38
It would be interesting to think of the partnership between the creator of the dream
39
and the dream figure, such as Zeus and Nestor in Agamemnon’s dream, and Athena and
Iptheme in Penelope’s dream, in terms of Freud’s notion of condensation.
ressuring her to marry while secretly plotting to murder Telemachus,

p
who has gone on a journey in pursuit of his father. The dream that Athena
sends is meant to reassure Penelope by promising the safe return home
of her son. To create a trustworthy message, Athena devises a dream
figure assuming the physical appearance of Penelope’s sister, Iptheme,
who lives far from Attica.40 The image enters the bedchamber, stands by
Penelope’s head, and recites the text dictated beforehand by the goddess.
The sleeping Penelope responds. The dialogue that develops between
the two gains autonomy, going beyond Athena’s original intention. In
spite of its directness and literalness, the epiphany-dream cannot dispel
the dreamer’s immediate doubt as to the dream’s truth-value. Unlike
Agamemnon, who remains contemplative in his dream while asleep and
chooses upon waking to believe it, Penelope examines her doubt in her
sleep as she strives to prolong the encounter with the image for as long
as possible, to this end engaging it in conversation. The Homeric narrative
shows an interest in the affective aspects of the dream image. This means
that the Homeric notion of the dream goes beyond its indicative message,
and that there is an awareness of the dream’s psychological significance.
Hence, whereas Penelope is said to be amazed by the unexpected visit of
her distant sister, her subtle emotional response demonstrates a strong
ambivalence towards Iptheme. Penelope is resentful since not only does
her sister show no familiarity with the details of her complex situation,
but dares to advise her as well (Od. 4.808–13):41
τὴν δ᾽ ἠμείβετ᾽ ἔπειτα περίφρων Πηνελόπεια,

ἡδὺ μάλα κνώσσουσ᾽ ἐν ὀνειρείῃσι πύλῃσιν·
‘τίπτε, κασιγνήτη, δεῦρ᾽ ἤλυθες; οὔ τι πάρος γε
πωλέ᾽, ἐπεὶ μάλα πολλὸν ἀπόπροθι δώματα ναίεις·
καί με κέλεαι παύσασθαι ὀιζύος ἠδ᾽ ὀδυνάων
πολλέων, αἵ μ᾽ ἐρέθουσι κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν’
And Penelope murmured back, still cautious,
Drifting softly now at the gate of dreams,
“why have you come, my sister?
40
Notwithstanding the physical appearance Athena gives the image, it remains
scanty and airy: it infiltrates Penelope’s bedchamber through the keyhole, and on its way
out, evaporates. Images of women appear to female dreamers in the Odyssey, while in the
“masculine” Iliad, both dreamers and dream images are typically male. See Messer’s study
(1918, 27–28) on Homeric dreams that considers their gender aspect and argues that by
allowing his female protagonist to be a dreamer, the narrator of the Odyssey is specifically
invested in bringing Penelope and her perspectives to light.
41
Trans. Fagles 1996.
Your visits all too rare in the past,

For you make your home so very far away.
You tell me to lay to rest the grief and tears
that overwhelm me now, torment me, heart and soul?”
Despite this dissonance in the unexpected appearance, her sister’s physical

likeness lends it credibility, and enables Penelope to broach her concerns
(814–23). At this stage, the dream asserts its therapeutic role. Although
typically classified as an epiphany dream, its complex textuality corre-
sponds to the psychological dream.
When Penelope tries to glean news of her husband’s fate, the eidolon
reveals its illusionary essence. The dream mechanism is thus exposed
and its backstage revealed. Penelope is disillusioned. She realizes that
the dream image contains no true knowledge, being a mere carrier of
information. Penelope cannot expect the dream image, an empty shadow
of her sister, to go beyond the role of messenger (835–37). Although
this disillusion causes the sisters’ reunion to abruptly end, it also brings
Penelope to believe in the dream’s veracity. As the eidolon’s divine
operator is brought to light, and Pallas Athena is identified as its Olym-
pian maker, Penelope becomes convinced that her dream is prophetic.
Penelope’s dream shows that although the dream is an image, a vague
and evasive phenomenon, a persuasive simulacrum, it cannot be taken as
indicative of a false essence. Homeric iconography does not share Platonic
hostility towards the image’s illusionary force (830–41):
τὴν δ᾽ αὖτε προσέειπε περίφρων Πηνελόπεια:

‘εἰ μὲν δὴ θεός ἐσσι θεοῖό τε ἔκλυες αὐήν,
εἰ δ᾽ ἄγε μοι καὶ κεῖνον ὀιζυρὸν κατάλεξον . . .
. . . ἡ δ᾽ ἐξ ὕπνου ἀνόρουσε
κούρη Ἰκαρίοιο· φίλον δέ οἱ ἦτορ ἰάνθη,
ὥς οἱ ἐναργὲς ὄνειρον ἐπέσσυτο νυκτὸς ἀμολγῷ.’
But the circumspect Penelope replied,
“if you are a god and have heard a god’s own voice,
come, tell me about that luckless man as well . . .
. . . Icarius’ daughter
started up from sleep, her spirit warmed now
that a dream so clear had come to her in darkest night.
The Homeric dream is thought of as false only if it leads the dreamer

astray in the future. This means that every dream, even one that is explicitly
transmitted as a divine promise (thus guaranteeing its fulfilment in the
future) leaves the dreamer in a state of uncertainty. The divine promise
guarantees something whose realization in the field of practical ethics

is still unknown.
Eventually, Penelope’s dream proves itself to be a theorematic dream
predicting Telemachus’ return. The message of the dream is identical to
the future outcome.42 And yet, Homeric poetry shows sensitivity to the
dream’s twilight zone; it is concerned with exploring the dream’s space of
meaning in its ambiguous stage, before the future becomes the measure
of the dream’s adequacy. Set between the present and the future, dreams
allow the sleeper to contemplate and be open to future transformations.
Up to the moment of their verification or refutation in future reality,
dreams retain their inherent ambiguity. This temporal deferral opens a
reflective space for the dreamer struggling with worries and fears that he
or she has not dared to voice in waking life. In this sense, the Homeric
dream, whether predictive or not, is at heart a psychological phenomenon.
Penelope’s dream is an event that in limine can be either true or
false. The Homeric dream is a sounding board for an ambiguity, which
is also at the core of Hesiod’s notion of poetry, that originates with the
Olympian Muses and is delivered by a human mouth: despite its divine
sources, Hesiodic poetry’s relation to truth remains unclear—for the
human ear, it remains like and unlike divine truth (Th. 27–28). Yet the
Odyssey does more than point to the opaqueness of the dream. It also
formulates conditions, albeit in mythical language, for distinguishing
between a true and a false dream. Every dream has to pass through one
of two dream gates, as readers of the Odyssey find out in Book 19. It is
these gates that Penelope’s sleeping awareness approaches, a moment
before separation from the dream image: “Then wise Penelope answered
her, as she slumbered very sweetly at the gates of dreams” (Od. 4.808–9).43
7. THE GATES OF DREAMS
The Odyssey discloses a further feature of dreams that can expand our
reading of Artemidorus’ oneiros-enhypnion. This feature is specifically
elaborated in Penelope’s second dream in Book 19.536–51, a dream
that has received much attention from dream interpreters throughout
the history of the reception of the Homeric text.44 From Penelope’s
42
See above n. 37.
43
τὴν δ’ ἠμείβετ’ ἔπειτα περίφρων Πηνελόπεια / ἡδὺ μάλα κνώσσουσ’ ἐν ὀνειρείῃσι πύλῃσιν·
Trans. Murray 1925.
44
Although Freud does not mention Homer’s two gates, his reference (2001, 102–3)
to the “two gates of reason” in Schiller’s allegory of creative writing is clear evidence for
dream in Book 19, we learn that in the liminal moment before waking,
a dream has still not taken on meaning for the future. Will it turn out
to be a true or a false dream? This question, central for the Homeric
dreamers, is articulated through the image of dreaming as a voyage to
the land of dreams culminating in a pause in front of two gates. The two
gates of dreams offer two openings, two opposed directions of meaning.
The stage when the dream departs from the sleeper’s field of experience
on her return to the waking world is described in Penelope’s dream as
employing all the features typical of the ambiguous oneiros-enhypnion.
Its somatic-psychological aspects reverberate in the dream’s complex rela-
tion to Penelope’s current state. She is torn between remaining loyal to
her husband and guarding her son’s interests, between keeping or losing
faith in Odysseus’ return. Her dream is distinctively different from other
Homeric dreams. First, it is a dream of events outside the palace, outside
Penelope’s bedroom. Second, the dream presents puzzling events which
are symbolically resolved by the dream figure of an eagle which in the
first part of the dream kills Penelope’s twenty beloved geese and in the
second part appears as the interpreter of the enigmatic vision. This dream
is testimony to the ancient psychological awareness of the dream-work.45
Penelope’s dream can easily be understood as an ancient example of wish-
fulfilment found in the slaying of the geese.46 When Penelope wakes up
and goes looking for her geese, she finds them “feeding on wheat beside
the trough, where they had before been wont to feed” (19.553). Her
response to the dream might seem at first glance an expression of literal-
mindedness. She seems to ignore the eagle’s symbolic interpretation.47
Yet, by attempting to check the dream’s theorematic possibility, she can
be seen as a skilful interpreter who advances the hermeneutic inquiry by
a process of elimination. She first makes sure that the dream vision has
the German transformations of the image of the Homeric dream gates (including Kafka’s
gate in “Before the Law”).
45
Dodds 1951, 106, makes the connection to displacement and condensation in Freud.
46
Nevertheless, inasmuch as Penelope sorrows over the geese, and mourns for them,
we cannot interpret the dream as a direct expression of wish-fulfilment. Her dream needs
an interpretation that uses the working principles of the unconscious, as several interpret-
ers have shown. See, e.g., Dodds 1951, 123, n. 21, who connects the Freudian operations of
displacement and inversion to the dream of the geese, or Felson-Rubin 1996, 176, for whom
Penelope’s dream is an unconscious expression of her ambivalent emotions. Contrastingly,
for a critical review of the Freudian view of the Homeric dream, see Pratt 1994.
47
In the dream, the eagle speaking in human language, Odysseus in disguise, announces
that “this is not a dream (onar)” calling it, instead, a true vision (hupar). For the Platonic
elaboration of the dream/true vision polarity, see n. 22 above.
not come to be. Only when she finds out, to her great joy, that the dream
fails to be theorematic, does she examine its symbolic structure for clues
to its being an oneiros or enhypnion, acknowledging her inability to know
which of the two gates the dream came through (560–67):
ξεῖν᾽, ἦ τοι μὲν ὄνειροι ἀμήχανοι ἀκριτόμυθοι

γίνοντ᾽, οὐδέ τι πάντα τελείεται ἀνθρώποισι.
δοιαὶ γάρ τε πύλαι ἀμενηνῶν εἰσὶν ὀνείρων·
αἱ μὲν γὰρ κεράεσσι τετεύχαται, αἱ δ᾽ ἐλέφαντι·
τῶν οἳ μέν κ᾽ ἔλθωσι διὰ πριστοῦ ἐλέφαντος,
οἵ ῥ᾽ ἐλεφαίρονται, ἔπε᾽ ἀκράαντα φέροντες·
οἱ δὲ διὰ ξεστῶν κεράων ἔλθωσι θύραζε,
οἵ ῥ᾽ ἔτυμα κραίνουσι, βροτῶν ὅτε κέν τις ἴδηται.
Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, and in no
wise do they find fulfilment in all things for men. For two are the gates
of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those
dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing
words that find no fulfilment. But those that come forth through the gate
of polished horn bring true issues to pass.
Many readers have attempted to explain Homer’s choice of ivory and

horn as material representations of the two types of dream.48 Penelope,
however, is certain that no matter how distinctly the division between the
two dream gates is drawn, there is no way for the truth-value of her dream
to be disclosed to her. Time will eventually resolve the undetermined
relation between the symbolic dream and future reality: “But in my case
it was not from thence [the horn gate], methinks, that my strange dream
(ainon oneiron) came. Ah, truly it would then have been welcome to me
48
The explanations rely on an ancient etymology collated by Eustathius in his twelfth-
century commentaries on the Iliad and the Odyssey. So, e.g., it turns out that the word “horn”
(keras) was thought of as close to the verb kraino, which means to actualize. Whereas the
word “ivory” (elephas) was seen as close to the verb elephairomai, which means to deceive.
Another reading has the horn gate related to the covering of the eyeball, so giving dreams
with visual status more validity than dreams exiting by the ivory gate, symbolizing the
mouth because of the ivory-like enamel of the teeth. Ivory dreams are understood in this
interpretation as dreams based on verbal rather than pictorial messages. And finally, the
division between the horn gate and the ivory gate is based on the difference between the
transparency of horn as against the opacity of ivory, impeding vision. So dreams issuing
from the horn gate are clear and meaningful, while dreams from the ivory gate remain
obscure. For a detailed engagement with the whole interpretive tradition of the gates of
horn and ivory, see Amory 1966, 3–57. A synopsis of Amory’s study is found in Cox-Miller
1994, 15–17. See Haller 2009, 397–417, who considers the topic.
and to my son” (568–69).49 The dream’s true identity, even if it bears the
mark of one of the gates, remains for the time being a puzzling sign. The
riddle that the dream poses for Penelope forces her on the one hand to
carefully weigh her steps as they bear on the future and, on the other, to
decide on a line of action.50 Penelope decides to follow her pessimistic
intuition telling her that the dream came via the ivory gate. She does not
believe that the dream is true or that Odysseus will come back, so she
decides to subject the suitors to a test—an axe contest that will determine
which of them she will marry. But as we know, this competition ends with
Odysseus’ appearance and the killing of the suitors in fulfilment of the
dream. Thus we conclude that the significance of Penelope’s dream is its
psychological effect on her, with its concomitant power to influence how
she faces external reality. Dreams are then events impelling dreamers
to move from ignorance of a predetermined future to challenging the
unknown through action. Dreams point to the future as an object of the
human desire for knowledge, motivating the efforts of interpreters in
the liminal space between the two contradictory poles signified by the
dream gates. Penelope believes that her dream is untrue, but is uncertain
whether it came through the gate of illusory dreams. For the dreamer,
the vision remains a hermetic experience until it is deciphered through a
reflective engagement with reality. The Homeric vision then emphasizes
the dream’s structure of ambiguity, more than its definition as true or false.
Dreams in Homeric poetry are ambiguous events. Their ambiguity
surfaces in their very formation. Both Olympian and chthonic divinities
are involved in their making. These divinities compose messages based on
the messengers’ complex relation to the dreamer’s waking life. Homeric
dreams can be somatic, psychological, and prophetic at the same time.
Their unsettled relation to the future makes Homeric dreams triggers
for hermeneutic activity. The dream’s future is hence a site of meaning
which develops apace with continuing inquiry.
8. ARTEMIDORUS AT THE GATES OF DREAMS
Attending to ambiguity as a fundamental principle of the Homeric

experience of dreams, I now return to Artemidorus’ treatment of dreams
that seem to resist ambiguity. Yet the guide’s classificatory strategies
49
ἀλλ᾽ ἐμοὶ οὐκ ἐντεῦθεν ὀΐομαι αἰνὸν ὄνειρον / ἐλθέμεν· ἦ κ᾽ ἀσπαστὸν ἐμοὶ καὶ παιδὶ
γένοιτο.
50
See in this connection Amory 1966, 30, who reads the Homeric dream as a sign
needing to be interpreted.
cannot hide an awareness in the text that the dream remains in some
respect unresolved. In two places the author of the guide admits that the
fundamental distinction between oneiros and enhypnion is not as clear
cut as it promises to be. We have already observed the equation between
the oneiros and the enhypnion in Book 1 of the Oneirocritica,51 and its
reiteration in Book 4 will concern us now. The equation is made imme-
diately after Artemidorus emphasizes the clear-cut distinction between
these opposite dream categories (praef. 199):
And to those who ask about the difference between an oneiros and an
enhypnion, I have stated before that an enhypnion is different from an
oneiros and that they are not the same. But one might also rightly say that
an oneiros is an enhypnion.
The tension entailed by the identification of oneiros and enhypnion

endangers Artemidorus’ hermetic construction. How can Artemidorus see
the truthful, future-predictive oneiros as similar to the present absorbed
enhypnion? Why does he allow cracks to appear in his own program-
matic division?
In The Care of the Self, Foucault accepts that for Artemidorus the
distinction between oneiros and enhypnion is fundamental. Beyond speci-
fying a future event in the world and the current state of affairs, Foucault
reads the opposition between oneiros and enhypnion as constituting two
widely opposed domains of meanings (1986, 10–11).52 In this context,
Foucault attempts to explain Artemidorus’ apparent inconsistency. Thus
he explains away the contradiction by endowing the enhypnion with the
capacity to misleadingly adopt the symbolic form of an oneiros (12):
For Artemidorus, in any case, when state dreams occur they can take two
forms. In most people, desire and aversion are manifested directly and
without concealment; but in a man who knows how to interpret his own
dreams, they are manifested only through signs. This is because his mind
51
The two dream categories are first identified in Artem. On. 1.1.3. See the discus-
sion in section 4 above.
52
“Term by term, then, enhypnion and oneiros are opposed to each other: the first
speaks of the individual, the second of events in the world; one originates in the states of
the body and the mind, the other anticipates the unwinding of the temporal chain; one
manifests the action of the too-little and the too-much in the domain of the appetites and
aversions, the other alerts the soul and at the same time shapes it. On the one hand, the
dreams of desire tell the soul’s reality in its present state. On the other hand, the dreams
of being tell the future of the event in the order of the world.”
“plays tricks on him in a rather ingenious way”53 . . . The mistrustful or

clever mind of the expert will, so to say, refuse to make manifest the state
of desire in which he finds himself: it will resort to trickery, so that instead
of simply seeing the woman he desires, the dreamer will see the image of
something that signifies her.
Quoting from Artemidorus, Foucault explains the dream’s ambiguous

duality as a direct consequence of the dreamer’s expertise in dream inter-
pretation. Unlike the common literal form of the enhypnion, the oneiros-
enhypnion misleads its dreamer by clothing itself in symbols; thus instead
of noticing the way in which the dream reflects his or her present state,
the dreamer is deluded into searching for the dream’s enigmatic message
as a code for a future event. According to Artemidorus, a clever dreamer
can unwittingly fashion a symbolic dream that hides its true content from
herself. The dreamer is thus unaware of the dream’s enhypnion quality,
which despite its symbolic form, concerns the dreamer’s present emotional
situation. Winkler realizes that Artemidorus ascribes to certain dreamers
knowledge of dream analysis and, accordingly, awareness of the use of
allegorical associations in their enhypnia (1990, 32). Yet the understanding
that these special enhypnia are signifiers of hidden mental contents does
not, for Artemidorus, turn them into hermeneutically interesting dreams.
Thus according to Winkler, “For Artemidorus the discovery that the real
content of a particular dream is the client’s desires or fears serves to
disqualify it as a signifier of a hidden signified.”54
Interestingly, Foucault who is otherwise known for his resistance to
psychoanalysis and for dissociating the ancient dreamer from the Freudian
conception of the inhibited self (Sissa 2002, 150), ascribes unconscious
apparatus to the skilled dreamer: “The mistrustful or clever mind of
the expert will, so to say, refuse to make manifest the state of desire.”
Artemidorus’ example of the dream of the Corinthian painter is for
Foucault an ancient manifestation of a defense mechanism that avoids
direct representations of dream thoughts (On. 4, praef. 201):55
53
This is Foucault’s translation of Artemidorus’ τεχνικώτερον αὐτῷ προσέπαιζεν ἡ ψυχή
in Book 4, praef. 201. Cf. Harris-McCoy’s: “his soul was playing a rather artful game with him.”
54
Winkler 1990, 26, agrees with Price in seeing Artemidorus and Freud as opposites:
“The significant messages from the Artemidoran soul concern external matters of fact, not
internal feelings, whereas the Freudian soul is trying to talk about suppressed wishes.” On
the importance of knowledge of the future for Artemidorus in contrast to the centrality
of the unconscious knowledge in Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, see Price 1989.
55
For the root of this way of thinking in the work of Freud, see, e.g., his explanation
of the centrality of the censorship in guiding dream interpretation (2001, 321).
For example, there was a painter in Corinth <who> often imagined that he
buried his master <and> that the room of the dwelling in which he lived was
destroyed and that his head was cut off. Nevertheless, his master outlived
him and even now is still alive. But since he was able to interpret these
things, his soul was playing a rather artful game with him. For these same
things, to another observer, would have prophesized the death of the master.
The Corinthian painter is for Artemidorus an example of an unusual

client who frequently had disguised enhypnia, which conceal wishful
thoughts, or in this case specifically reveal the dreamer’s latent aggres-
sion. Artemidorus’ description of this case study is interesting, since on
a descriptive level the anecdote invites psychological interpretation. We
may notice that Artemidorus presents the painter’s dream as a repetitive
experience. This repeating thematic dream sheds light on the relationship
of painter to master. In the artistic circle of the Romanized Corinth of
the second century, the term “master” (despotes) may signify a patron
with political and artistic authority (Lepinksi 2013). Artemidorus’ short
introduction thus situates the dreamer and the master in an intensely
charged relationship. The artist’s dependence on the master may gen-
erate repressed aspirations for artistic and other kinds of freedom. In
dreams, the painter’s secret wishes are formulated literally and symboli-
cally through imagery of the master’s death. Thus the dream in which
the painter sees himself burying his master or the dreams in which the
roof of the master’s house collapses, decapitating him, are all representa-
tions of the same thing.56 These are subversive dreams, which reflect the
painter’s intense desire to be released from an oppressive master. For the
average man, remarks Artemidorus, these dreams would have been taken
to prophesy an event in the world; the average man would have wrongly
classified them as theorematic57 or enigmatic oneiroi. Yet, a skilled dream
interpreter like Artemidorus cannot be taken in by the clever mind of
the dreamer whose artistic skill allows him to conceal his intense and
unlawful desire in the innocent form of theorematic or symbolic visions
of a future death. Artemidorus interprets the artist’s oppressed condition
as the motivating force in the dream composition, and is therefore able to
classify his dreams as enhypnia, mere representations of an individual’s
56
My reading of Artemidorus relies on Harris-McCoy’s Greek text and is slightly
different from that of Foucault 1986, 12–13: “As an example, Artemidorus cites a painter
from Corinth, an expert interpreter no doubt, who saw the roof of his house collapse in a
dream and saw his own decapitation. One might have imagined that this was the sign of a
future event, but in fact it was a state dream: the man wished for the death of his master
who is still living, Artemidorus notes in passing.”
57
On Artemidorus’ definition of the theorematic dream, see n. 37 above.
state of mind. The fact that the master outlives the painter is compelling
proof, endorsing Artemidorus’ interpretation. Had the master died, the
recurrent dream would have turned out to be oneiros. More precisely, the
dream about the death of the master would thus have been seen to be a
theorematic oneiros, while a symbolic dream would have turned out to
be an enigmatic oneiros. According to Artemidorus, when the dreamer
is able to identify his object of fear or desire with the dream image, the
somatic and psychological content of the enhypnion is exposed, and the
dream can be dismissed out of hand as insignificant (On. 1.6.13):
And it is necessary to keep in mind that the things that appear to those
who are worried about something and who have requested a dream from
the gods will not resemble their worries [and signify something about the
matters at hand] since dreams that are identical to the things one has on
one’s mind are insignificant and have the quality of an enhypnion.
While keeping the two dream categories strictly apart, Artemidorus’

methodological instructions as to how to distinguish between the onei-
ros and the enhypnion cannot in fact be followed. Artemidorus cannot
completely detach a symbolic dream from the dreamer’s individual
concerns. Moreover, he cannot provide absolute criteria for classifying a
literal dream as an enhypnion or as a theorematic dream. For how can
a dreamer possibly be sure that an enhypnion is not actually a literal
oneiros? An answer to this puzzling question ultimately ties the dream
experience to time (4.1.201):
Of all the oneiroi, some we call theorematic and some allegorical. And
theorematic dreams come to pass in the same manner as they are observed,
but allegorical dreams reveal the things signified by them through riddles.
And since, in such cases, a degree of error can arise for those who are
uncertain whether it is necessary to accept as true the things that are seen
themselves or whether something else will result from them in the future,
the opportunity to interpret is not closed off to you. For first off, any dream
that is theorematic comes to pass in a time of need and straightaway. But
any that is allegorical always comes after some time has elapsed, either a
lot or a little [or in an extreme case after a single day].
Time is the only medium through which a correct interpretation can be

achieved. The true value of theorematic dreams is tested right after the
dream’s occurrence (as in Penelope’s immediate response after dream-
ing of her slain beloved geese, when she goes to see if they are alright).
However, the classification of an enigmatic dream as an oneiros, that is,
as a significant dream, requires temporal deferment.
On reading the Oneirocritica, then, we need to recognize that

despite systematic mapping of dreams and a clear hierarchical terminol-
ogy, a synopsis of the dream manual would nevertheless have to include
the place it gives to equivocation and ambiguity. This is largely due to
Artemidorus’ recognition, albeit implicit, that dreams are temporal enti-
ties whose unfolding continues beyond the nocturnal dream event. In this
respect, Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica is responsive, even if against its explicit
program, to the Homeric understanding of dreams discussed above.
Hence, by way of conclusion, we may say that by contrast with
Artemidorus’ dual classification, Homeric dreams are psychological and
somatic products that nevertheless retain their significance as riddles
for the future, which demand deciphering. The Homeric image of the
threshold of the two gates of dreams illustrates Penelope’s general state-
ment that all dreams alike are “difficult to decipher and unclear” (Od.
19.560).58 I have thus shown that Agamemnon and Penelope face different,
sometimes even contradictory meanings within the dream’s horizon of
interpretation and that their hermeneutic engagement, as these dreamers
are well aware, depends on time. Only time can validate the force of a
dream interpretation and eventually demonstrate its truth or falsity. As
the Homeric dreamers know, being at the threshold of the gates of dreams
takes time, a period of uncertainty that brackets the predictability of the
future. Riven by the tension of ambiguity, this period has an important
hermeneutic role. A dreamer such as Penelope who stays with the sus-
pense of not knowing the future is meanwhile engaged in the search for
meaning. Reflecting on their concerns, desires, and relationships in the
past and present, ancient dreamers make use of dreams in order to make
decisions and act. As I have shown, Artemidorus, too, recognizes the test
of time as the ultimate criterion for resolving the dream’s unavoidable
ambiguities. And thus, despite the Oneirocritica’s essentialist distinction,
oneiros and enhypnion ultimately resist the guide’s binary framework: as
long as the significance of these dreams is still in the process of unfolding,
they cannot claim any distinct identity.59
University of Haifa
e-mail: vered.lev.kenaan@gmail.com
58
ὄνειροι ἀμήχανοι ἀκριτόμυθοι.
59
I thank David Konstan, Patricia Rosenmeyer, Hagi Kenaan, Mark Joseph, David
Larmour, and the AJP anonymous readers who read the essay with great care and improved
it with their insightful comments. I also wish to thank Noga Weiss and Maor Liscia for their
wonderful work as research assistants.
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ARTEMIDORUS AT THE DREAM GATES:

Vered Lev Kenaan

­ ierarchically ordered modalities: significant and nonsignificant dreams.

to Artemidorus with the intention of exploring how he comes to grips

Yet in contradistinction to Artemidorus’ logic of clear-cut classification,

2. ARTEMIDORUS ON ONEIROS AND ENHYPNION

On the difference between enhypnion and oneiros, the distinction between

in so far as it is characteristic of the former to be significant of things in the

Artemidorus develops a multilayered picture of the dream phenomenon

For Artemidorus, the term enhypnion should be read literally. As sug-

The intensity of the enhypnion imprisons its dreamer in the confines

dynamic and their fluctuation is determined by the dream interpreter’s

3. TWO SOURCES OF ARTEMIDORUS’

It may be argued that Artemidorus developed the notion of the enhypnion

­ isinterest in literal-somatic “simple dreams,” rendering them insignificant

Besides its implied indebtedness to Lucretius’ poem, Artemidorus’ view

he nevertheless refers in the Republic (572a–b) to all n ­ ighttime phe-

theory of the soul, and refrains from applying it to dreams in order to

4. THE BLIND SPOT IN THE ONEIROCRITICA

In contrast to Plato’s interest in the relation of dreams to the metaphysi-

ambiguity that, in principle, cannot be eradicated from the interpretation

5. THE CHTHONIC-OLYMPIAN ORIGINS

The mythic provenance of dreams offers a horizon of interpretation

the dreamer’s present psychological condition, while its Olympian origins

b. The Dream’s Dual Agency

πέμψαι ἐπ᾽ Ἀτρεΐδῃ Ἀγαμέμνονι οὖλον ὄνειρον·

Although Zeus takes the role of producer-in-chief, script writing and

‘κλῦτε φίλοι: θεῖός μοι ἐνύπνιον ἦλθεν ὄνειρος

Agamemnon is attentive only to the chthonic elements of the dream. It

to the ­theorematic subcategory of prophetic dreams nor to the literal

Accordingly, the Homeric text explicitly emphasizes that the dream

6. THE DREAM’S LIMINAL SPACE

Penelope’s dream in Book 4 of the Odyssey (787–841) is a creation of

On Penelope’s melancholy, see Weiss 2014.

­ ressuring her to marry while secretly plotting to murder Telemachus,

τὴν δ᾽ ἠμείβετ᾽ ἔπειτα περίφρων Πηνελόπεια,

Your visits all too rare in the past,

Despite this dissonance in the unexpected appearance, her sister’s physical

τὴν δ᾽ αὖτε προσέειπε περίφρων Πηνελόπεια:

The Homeric dream is thought of as false only if it leads the dreamer

guarantees something whose realization in the field of practical ethics

7. THE GATES OF DREAMS

ξεῖν᾽, ἦ τοι μὲν ὄνειροι ἀμήχανοι ἀκριτόμυθοι

Many readers have attempted to explain Homer’s choice of ivory and

8. ARTEMIDORUS AT THE GATES OF DREAMS

Attending to ambiguity as a fundamental principle of the Homeric

The tension entailed by the identification of oneiros and enhypnion

“plays tricks on him in a rather ingenious way”53 . . . The mistrustful or

Quoting from Artemidorus, Foucault explains the dream’s ambiguous

The Corinthian painter is for Artemidorus an example of an unusual

While keeping the two dream categories strictly apart, Artemidorus’

Time is the only medium through which a correct interpretation can be

On reading the Oneirocritica, then, we need to recognize that

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ierarchically ordered modalities: significant and nonsignificant dreams.

isinterest in literal-somatic “simple dreams,” rendering them insignificant

he nevertheless refers in the Republic (572a–b) to all n ighttime phe-

to the theorematic subcategory of prophetic dreams nor to the literal

ressuring her to marry while secretly plotting to murder Telemachus,