Whose Dream Is It Anyway?

Abstract

Dreams were a deeply paradoxical method of divination in the ancient world; sometimes dismissed or treated with the greatest of suspicion, they might also be treated as a routine and reliable way of obtaining insight into divine will—occasionally by the very same person. This chapter argues that dreams had a distinctive role within the many options of ancient divination, and that they were compelling in specific sets of circumstances. The more divination was routinized, the more likely there was to be an occasion when a dream was the best way of legitimately circumventing divinatory habits. Equally critical are those factors affecting the reception of a dreamer’s claims; social standing, political circumstances, and personal idiosyncrasies all played a part in ‘managing the significance of signs’. Accounting for dreams was a critical test of any system of thought (including medicine). Despite the contradictory variety of general statements about the reliability of dreams, there is an underlying but accessible logic to whether it was right to take them as divine instructions, or a meaningless act of the imagination.