Abstract

Significant dreams, like omens and oracles, play a conspicuous part in Herodotus′ narrative; the prominence which he affords to them well illustrates the difference between his approach to historiography and that of Thucydides, in whose work we shall look in vain for nocturnal visions. From the point of view of the scientific historian reports of dreams are inadmissible evidence, resting as they must on the unverifiable testimony of a single witness whose recollection is very likely to have been influenced by subsequent events. Herodotus′ more hospitable attitude in part reflects his incalculable debt to the traditions of Levantine storytelling; but it is also connected with the central position occupied by kings and other powerful individuals in his narrative. Homer bears witness to the belief that the dreams of kings are more likely to be divinely inspired than those of others , and throughout the Near East rulers recorded the achievements which resulted from monitions received in sleep; if royal dreams assumed a more lucid and orderly form than most people could well parallel from their own experience, this might be regarded as a natural corollary of the peculiar link between king and gods