What Did the Ancient Greeks Think About Dreams?

What theories did the past Greeks person astir dreams? Credit: ShanMcG213. CC BY-2.0/flickr

From prophecy and divine connection to aesculapian diagnosis and knowing the quality psyche, the past Greeks had galore theories astir wherefore we dream.

The improvement of the mentation of dreams successful the ancient Greek satellite took galore turns, with earlier Greeks believing each dreams were divinely inspired and that lone the astir important of radical experienced them.

In his Iliad, wide acknowledged to person been written successful the aboriginal seventh period BC, Homer describes a imagination that Greek King Agamemnon has regarding the warfare with the defending powerfulness of Troy. It was a mendacious imagination sent to the ruler by Zeus.

The large writer wrote, “Go, deadly dream, on the Greek ships,” with Zeus commanding the imagination truthful that “the imagination listened and went” to Agamemnon. It is worthy noting that the Greek soldiers did not uncertainty the dream, arsenic it was talented to a king. “If immoderate different antheral told america this imagination we would telephone it a prevarication and crook our backs connected him,” Homer wrote.

Here, the past writer of the Iliad and the Odyssey embodies the non-scientific Greek mentation of dreams successful which helium believed strongly.

Theories surrounding dreams successful past Greece tended to signifier astir polarities, specified arsenic whether a imagination was existent oregon mendacious and perchance divine oregon natural.

For astir past Greeks, the astir important relation of dreams was to foretell the future, and the archetypal steps taken to construe a imagination and render it “authentic” was to analyse whether it was some sent by a deity and true.

Ancient Greek Philosophers connected the Nature of Dreams

Aristotle and a fewer others, however, took a much agnostic presumption of dreams. In his enactment On Dreams, written astir the mediate of the 4th period BC, Aristotle explained that, during slumber erstwhile the eyes are closed and incapable to see, determination is an lack of outer sensory stimulation, and thing is perceived by the sleeper.

He goes connected to comparison dreams to waking hallucinations, writing, “The module by which, successful waking hours, we are taxable to illusion erstwhile affected by disease, is identical with that which produces illusory effects successful sleep.”

Aristotle yet came to the decision that dreams are owed to residual movements of the sensory organs, and immoderate dreams, the philosopher wrote, whitethorn adjacent beryllium caused by indigestion.

Like Aristotle, the past Greek philosopher Epicurus attributed dreams to a earthy alternatively than divine origin. As written successful the “Vatican Sayings,” a postulation of quotes of Epicurus and different Epicureans preserved successful a fourteenth period manuscript from the Vatican Library, the philosopher said “dreams person nary divine quality nor immoderate prophetic unit but originate from the interaction of images connected the senses.”

There was a duality to the mode Greek philosopher Plato understood dreams. He claimed dreams were 1 of the ways by which the gods shared their plans and intentions with humankind, arsenic helium wrote successful Apology.

However, astatine the aforesaid time, Plato believed earthy causes, including disturbances successful the body’s interior motions, could springiness emergence to dreams.

Dreams and Their Medical Implications

Hippocrates, a Greek doc from the classical period, besides posited theories connected the quality of dreaming. He placed accent connected the relation of dreams arsenic a important indicator of the dreamer’s carnal information and provided a theoretical ground for the usage of dreams arsenic penetration into the information of the body.

Moreover, helium assigned dreams a precise precocious presumption successful his prodiagnostic theory. Hippocrates believed determination were 2 types of dreams, namely those sent by the gods and those sent by the soul. Dream interpretation for the past Greeks was typically a mode to find the people of aesculapian treatment.

Another peculiarity of past Greek civilization was that galore radical believed the psyche, oregon soul, was revealed successful slumber done the relaxed authorities of being radical presume portion dormant alternatively than the realms of dreams themselves. This is simply a authorities Aristotle referred to arsenic the “borderland betwixt surviving and not living.”