W. V. Harris, Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity - History, Politics and Society

French Literature Reviews - 2026

W. V. Harris, Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity
History, Politics and Society

W. V. Harris, Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. 2009. 352 pages.

  • ISBN: 978-0-674-03297-2
  • Price: $49.95

Excerpts online at www.hup.harvard.edu.

Publisher's Description:

From the Iliad to Aristophanes, from the Gospel of Matthew to Augustine, Greek and Latin texts are constellated with descriptive images of dreams. Some are formulaic, others intensely vivid. The best ancient minds—Plato, Aristotle, the physician Galen, and others—struggled to understand the meaning of dreams.

With Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity, the renowned ancient historian William Harris turns his attention to oneiric matters. This cultural history of dreams in antiquity draws on both contemporary post-Freudian science and careful critiques of the ancient texts. Harris traces the history of characteristic forms of dream description and relates them both to the ancient experience of dreaming and to literary and religious imperatives. He analyzes the nuances of Greek and Roman belief in the truth-telling potential of dreams, and in a final chapter offers an assessment of ancient attempts to understand dreams naturalistically.

How did dreaming culture evolve from Homer's time to late antiquity? What did these dreams signify? And how do we read and understand ancient dreams through modern eyes? Harris takes an elusive subject and writes about it with rigor and precision, reminding us of specificities, contexts, and changing attitudes through history.

Table of Contents:

  • Preface
  • Abbreviations
  • Introduction: Then and Now

From Epiphany to Episode: A Revolution in the Description of Dreams

  • Epiphany or Messenger Dreams
  • Definition and Origin of the Epiphany Dream
  • Varieties of the Epiphany Dream
  • Distinguishing the Epiphany Dream from the Modern Dream
  • Other Kinds of Greek and Roman Dream Reports
  • The Force of Convention
  • Actual Epiphany Dreams?
  • The Epiphany Dream in Danger: Galen and Aelius Aristides
  • Late-antique Stimuli
  • Epiphany Dreams in the Middle Ages
  • The Early-Modern Demise
  • Explaining the Change

Greek and Roman Dreams That Were Really Dreamt

  • Is this Tale Tall?
  • An Essential Question
  • The Matter of Authenticity
  • The Problem of Memory
  • Dream-like Dreams
  • Mendacious Historians and Biographers
  • Some Strong Candidates
  • Perpetua
  • Artemidorus
  • Constantine
  • Augustine
  • Aelius Aristides
  • Writing Good Stories

Greek and Roman Opinions about the Truthfulness of Dreams

  • What They Believed and What We Believe
  • Truth
  • Belief
  • The Interpreters
  • Metaphors
  • The Greeks before the Sophists
  • Fifth-century Athens
  • Ordinary and Extraordinary Athenians in the Fourth Century
  • Plato and Aristotle
  • Hellenistic Impressions
  • Predictive Dreams in the Context of Greek Divination
  • The Roman Republic down to Sulla
  • Lucretius, Cicero and the Late Republic
  • Incubation and the Doctors
  • Augustus to the Flavians
  • A Victory for Religion? 100–250 AD
  • What Dreams Were Good for under the Roman Empire
  • Late Antiquity
  • A Conclusion

Naturalistic Explanations

  • Introduction
  • The Origins of Naturalistic Thinking about Dreams
  • The Preplatonic Philosophers
  • 'Hippocratic' Doctors
  • Back to Plato
  • Aristotle Uncertain
  • The Epicureans
  • Other Hellenistic Voices
  • The Reasons for a Failure
  • A Note on Galen
  • What Does a Swallow Mean?
  • A Complete Halt
  • Conclusions
  • Bibliography
  • Index
  • Illustrations

The study of oneiric phenomena has long occupied scholars of classical antiquity, bridging the gap between literary analysis, religious history, and the history of science. Across the Greco-Roman world, dream reports functioned as narrative devices, religious epiphany accounts, and objects of philosophical inquiry. Writers and thinkers from the archaic period through late antiquity sought to classify these nocturnal experiences, distinguishing divine portents from psychological events.

William V. Harris draws on both contemporary post-Freudian science and critiques of ancient texts to trace the evolution of dream descriptions from the Iliad to Augustine. The book addresses characteristic forms of dream reporting, the nuances of Greek and Roman beliefs in truth-telling dreams, and ancient naturalistic explanations. Readers interested in the cultural history of the ancient Mediterranean and the history of psychology may find it relevant.