Dreams in late antiquity : studies in the imagination of a culture

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DREAM S IN LATE A N T IQ U IT Y S T U D I E S IN T H E IM A G IN A T IO N OF A CULTURE

P a tric ia Cox M iller

• K I N »logically suspect, and when the lines o f demarcation that support such structures are probed deeply enough, they tend to wobble, if not to disap­ pear altogether. This is especially the case when one is considering the relationship between dreams and waking life, where, as Socrates says in the I heartetu s, “there is plenty o f room for doubt."4 Indeed, across the centu­ ries there has been so much room lor doubt that, as O’Flaherty shows so well, people have insisted on tantalizing themselves with the thought that dreams are real and the “real" world is a dream: the line not only wobbles, the categories change places. In the company o f such thoughts, we are in a kind o f twilight zone where, to borrow a phrase from Marianne Mre, there are imaginary gardens with real toads in them.5 We cannot escape this twilight zone by dismissing it as the prtxluct o f O'Flaherty s exotic Hindus immersed in ninvd; the Western tradition has its own frogs, and nowhere are they livelier than in late antiquity. Pcrpetua, after all, awoke from her dream o f eating paradisal cheese with the taste o f something sweet in her mouth, and M.u robins thought that a vision o f the entire cosm os lay encoded in a dream monotheist and polytheist, martyr and philosopher alike substribcd to the figurative world o f dreams.6 Socrates can help again in exploring the particular kind o f “ imaginary ‘ Wcmfy Douiger O'Flahertv, Dreams, Illusion, and (filter Realities, pp. 1 9 8 -9 9 . • Plato, Tbeartetus 15 XU, in ( 'aliened Ihaloflues, p. 8 6 3 Sec tin- discussion by Steven S. Tigner, “ Plato's Pliilosoplm.il Uses o f the Dream Metaphor,” pp. 204 12. Tigner argues that Plato “recognized in certain familiar features ol dream consciousness a conceptually potent model Ibr m ans epistemologii.il situation' (2 1 1 1. s Marianne M oore, “Poetry,” m /1 Collefle Hook o f Modem Verse, p. 325. '• h»r IVrpctua, see Vasuo Sanitation !*erpetuac rt Felidtatis I 10 (cd Van Reek. p. 14); Ibr M aoohm s, see < ononeniani in unnnuon Snfnanu

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garden” that was the ancient dream world. As though echoing what he had said in the T heaetetu s about our perceptual uncertainty when pressed to say whether we are awake o r dreaming that we are awake, Socrates remarks in the Sym posium that his “understanding is a shadowy thing at best, as equivocal as a dream.”7 This is a statement o f the kind o f wisdom that belongs to dreams. It involves a m ode o f discourse that is shadowed and equivocal, speaking with more than one voice, as in the following poem: In a dream I meet my dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and tar, and yet he is the same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: “How you been?” He grins and looks at me. “I been eating peaches o ff some mighty fine trees .” 8

In this poem, the “I” in the dream meets a dream figure, a friend, who is dead, “gone long and far.” The friend in the dream is dead (even though he grins, looks, and speaks), while the dream “I” is convinced o f his own status as not-dcad because he is conscious (although he is dreaming) that he has changed. Yet it is the dreamer w ho feels that he has “grown strange” to himself, while the dead man is the one w ho calls up the sensuous imagery o f a world that is alive, “eating peaches o ff some mighty fine trees.” W ho is “really” alive, and who is dead? I think that ancient readers would have liked this poem, because it gives expression to a dimension o f dream-reality that runs fairly consistently through the classical and late-antique traditions: that is, that the dream is the site where apparently unquestioned, and unquestionable, realities like life and death meet, qualify each other, even change places. A particularly striking representation o f the equivocal qualities o f the dreamworld forms part o f Ovid’s M etam orphoses. It will take us more squarely into the imagistic world o f the late-antique oneiric imagination.

Plato, Symposia»/ 175c, in ( 'aliened Dialoflucs, p. 5 3 0 . f o r a discussion o f the equivocal status o f dreams in Plato’s thinking, sec Tigner, “Plato’s Philosophical Uses o f the Dream Metaphor,” pp. 2 0 0 II, and David Ciallop, “ Dreaming and Waking in Plato," pp. 187 94. * Wendell B ern, “The M eenng," in /1 r a n , p. 18.

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PART I: IMAGES OF DREAMING

Part o f Book 11 o f the M etam orphoses tells the story o f King Ccyx, who dies in a torrential storm at sea.9 Meanwhile, his wife Alcyone, knowing nothing o f her husband’s death, continues to burn incense at the altar o f Juno as petition for his safe return. Juno, irked by the touch o f Alcyone's unconsciously mourning hands, summons Iris to g o to “the drowsy house o f Sleep,” “to tell that god to send Alcyone a dream o f C cyx, to tell the truth about him.” So Iris goes to the kingdom o f Sleep, a place o f “dusky twilight shadows” where she delivers her plea to Sleep: “O mildest o f the g< k I s , most gentle Sleep, Rest o f all things, the spirit's comforter. Router o f care, ( ) soother and restorer, Juno sends orders: counterfeit a dream to go in the image o f King Ceyx to Trachis, to make Alcyone see her ship­ wrecked husband.” Sleep wakes up Morpheus, who is the best o f all his sous at imitating humans, “their garb, their gait, their speech, rhythm, and gesture.” Morpheus flies to Alcyone’s bedside and stands there with the face, lorin, pallor, and nakedness o f the dead C cyx: “His beard was wet, and water streamed from his sodden hair, and tears ran down as he bent over her: 4 ) wretched wife, do you recognize your husband? Have I changed too much in death? Lk at me! You will know me, your husbands ghost, no more your living husband. I am dead, Alcyone.'” Still asleep, Alcyone knows that “the voice o f Morpheus was that o f Ceyx; how could she help but know it? The tears were real, and even the hands went moving the way his used to .” She weeps and tries to touch this dream figure, crying for him to wait tor her. But her own voice wakes her, and she screams: “‘The queen Alcyone is nothing, nothing, dead with Ccyx.’” Ovid’s portrait o f the dreamworld insists on its equivocality. In a twi­ light realm. Sleep, called the “mildest o f gods” and “the spirit s comforter,” sends as his soothing message a counterfeit, his shape-shifting son, living phantasm of the dead Ceyx. Morpheus, unsubstantial yet somehow alive as the drenched ghost o f the king, speaks, as Alcyone’s dream, what no living person could ever say literally: “I am dead.” Yet Alcyone knows in her sleep, conscious as she lies unconscious, that the tears arc real, though the dream cannot 1ч- seen in the lamplight when she opens her eyes. W hat is unreal is real the unsubstantial figment of the imagination (the “phanlasm") uMivevs the essential message. What is counterfeit is true, what is alive is dead, what is divine is human— and also the reverse. There is no final resting point, no end to the paradoxical turns in this story. Certainly in O vids presentation, the dream docs not dissolve reality but rather crystal 11/es it. I lie idea that a figurative language or, in contemporary terminology, a discourse o f tropes (a “tropical discourse,” as I lavden W hite would have '*

( >vul,

1 1 4 0 0 7 S 0 (trails. I lumphrics, |»|* 272 82)

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it10) might make one’s sense o f the real more rather than less crisp is directly related to antiquity’s association o f dreams and their interpretation with divination. Classically defined, divination, derived from the Latin d iv in are, “to predict,” has been called an “occult science” that assembles as a group such practices as “foretelling the future, interpreting the past, and, in general, discovering hidden truth (by way o f clairvoyance, precognition, telepathy, and other such phenomena).”11 The basic assumption upon which divination is usually said to be founded is that o f “cosmic sympa­ thy,” which views the universe as an immense living organism whose parts are intricately interconnected with one another, such that observation o f one part could lead to insight about other parts.12 This definition is fine as far as it goes, but it leaves out what is for my purposes a crucial aspect o f divinatory practice, namely, its function as a technique for reading the intersection o f the human condition and the natural world. Rather than highlighting the connection between divina­ tion and prediction, as is the standard scholarly practice, I prefer to under­ stand divination as an imaginal and poetic appropriation o f aspects o f the natural world (including human relationships and activities) toward the construction o f a language o f signs. As forms o f what could be called an ancient semiotics, these sign languages, because they are visually articulate, give shape and form and so a way to explore those hopes, fears, anxieties, and other feelings that simmer under the surface o f ordinal*)' consciousness and might, except for the imagistic patterning provided by divinatory techniques, remain inchoate and so “hidden.” T he A lex an d er R om ance, one o f the m ost popular novels from late antiq­ uity, offers a list o f some o f these sign languages. Karly on in the text, one o f the main characters. Queen Olympias, asks the prophet Nektanebos about methods for arriving at true predictions. H e replies: “ T h ere is a wide choice o f method, O Queen. There are horoscope casters, sign solvers, dream specialists, oracular ventriloquists, bird observers, birthdate examiners, and those called m aqoi, who have the gift o f prophecy.’ ”13 Diviners found their signs in animal bodies— the patterns made by flights o f birds, for example, o r the sheen o f an animal’s liver; they found their signs in cosmic space— the configurations made by stars and planets; and they found their signs in the images o f people’s dreams.14 10 Sec Hayden White, Tropics i f Discourse and Meenhistory for discussions o f the tropological character o f historical thought. 11 Georg Luck, A n a n a Mutidi, pp. 231, 229. 12 Ihid., pp. 2 3 0 31. Earlier classic studies o f divination are W. R . Halliday, Greek Divinatiou; André-Jean Festugicrc, I n Revelation d'Hermes Trisine/fisie, vol. 1; and Martin Nilsson,

Geschiebte derqneehaehen Relation, vol. 2. '•* I’scudo-Callisthcncs, The Alexander Romanee 4 (cd. Reardon, p. 657). A convenient summary «»I the various kinds o f I Icllcnistic divination, from thcnomancy to astrology to onciromaiKV. is given by Luther Martin, Hellenistic Relations, pp. 4 0 5 3 .

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I : IMAGES OF DREAMING

T he questions that people brought to the practitioners o f these sign languages tended largely to focus on such down-to-earth matters as love and marriage, health, and econom ic fortune.15 Given the carthincss o f such concerns, it is not surprising that people turned to “earthy” images o f their everyday surroundings— birds, stars, dreams— to gain insight into their own situations. Divination was solidly rooted in the ordinary; yet it was an ordinariness charged with a sense o f the extraordinary. Robin Lane l;ox includes as part o f his delightfully detailed chapter on divinatory practices the following story from Pausanias, which exemplifies divina­ tion s connection with the ordinary. H ie market-place o f Pharai |in Achaca] is an old-fashioned, big enclosure, with a stone statue o f I Icrmcs in the middle that has a beard: it stands on the mere earth, block-shaped, o f no great size. . . . They call it Market Hermes and it has a traditional oracle. In front o f the statue is a stone hearthstone, \\nil bmn/e lamps stuck onto it with lead. You come in the evening to consult ihe god, burn incense on the hearthstone, and fill up the lamps with oil; then you light i hem all and put a local coin on the altar to the right o f the god; and i lien you whisper in the god’s ear whatever your question is. Then you stop up your ears and g o out o f the market-place, and when you get out, take your hands away from vour ears and whatever phrase you hear next is the oracle . 16

Insight into life's situations can be gleaned from the chance phrase o f a passerby! In divination, almost anything— even so common a thing as an overheard remark— can be used to construct meaning. Insight floats on the surface o f everyday life— but it does so enigmatically and so needs a disciplined language to interpret it. From the philosophical— “Docs the soul survive death?”— to the economic “Will I lx- sold into slaver)'?”— to the poignantly personal— “ Does she love me?” the questions that people brought to diviners in­ volved pressing concerns.17 “ It was normal,” as Lane Fox has observed, “to prefer «liMn.ition to indecision.”18 Yet, however “normal” the recourse to divination and its techniques may have been, divinatory practice has typ-

1 » lu i tolle« lions ul samples Irom a wide variety o f divinatory practices may be found in I it oeiK inventions and bases Ins argnment on the lau «hat tIns image “did not lind liirther apphcation in I Ioniers dream episodes" (107).

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arc im portant in that they preserve an ancient connection o f speech with the ivory gate and sight with the gate o f horn, nonetheless Eustathius has made a distinction between true and false dreams which H om er did not make.14 T he issue o f the transparency o f the two materials, as in E u ­ stathius' third explanation, is the one that Amorv finds to be the likeliest basis for the contrast between them and the dreams that they usher forth— but not, as Eustathius has it, because ivory is opaque and horn transparent. Rather, it is a case o f contrasting kinds o f transparency: “x estosy applied to the smooth polished substance o f horn, and pristos, used o f the intricately carved and decorated substance o f ivory, both reinforce the contrast in transparency between the tw o materials.”15 She concludes with an affirmation o f the H om eric view o f the ambiguity o f dreams: “For the fact that neither substance is completely transparent corresponds to the fact that all dreams are by nature obscure, as Penelope says at the begin­ ning o f her speech.”16 Whereas Amory prefers the third o f Eustathius' explanations o f the two gates, I find his second explanation equally suggestive because it brings forward the association o f dreams with ivory, teeth, and language on the one hand, and horn, eyes, and vision on the other. For H om er, dreams were both linguistic and visual events, and they were linked spatially with village gates whose elaborately overdetermined meaning, growing out o f etymological puns and imagistic associations, certainly makes them fitting architectural monuments o f the dem os oneirdn. When the dem os oneirdn is undcrsttxxi not as a village of dreams but rather as the people o f dreams, another important feature o f I lomer's was o f figuring the figurative phenomenon o f dreams comes to the lore. The word that is usually used in Homeric texts to denote a dream is onetros, which designates a dream -figu re (and not the more generalized idea o f dream-experien ce).17 As Dodds notes, “this dream-figure can be a g|>. 5 8 , 101, 273. ,s Charles Boer, Ovid's Mctmnovplmcs, xix. u* Ahl, Mctajbnuatiotis, p. 6 0 , quoting Meta. 11.634. 1 Ihid., p|». 5 9 6 0 ,K Ihid., quoting Mem II 626. Ahl. Mctnfonuniums, p 101

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landscape o f the dreamworld is simultaneously a psychological landscape is the story o f the dreamer Bvblis, a young woman delirious with love for her brother. In the beginning o f her story she did not recognize her passion: “she was long deceived by the semblance |u m bra] o f sisterly affection.”50 I lowevcr, repressed desire found its outlet— in dreams o f sexual love. Caught between the dictates o f sexual mores, on the one hand, and passion­ ate desire, on the other, Bvblis longs for the dream o f physical union to return again and again: “ ‘A dream lacks a witness, but does not lack a substitute joy |im ita ta m ln p tas]'" she says.51 Ovid is playing here with the notion o fth e shifting status o f what might lx* considered real. The u m bra— shade, shadow, uninvited guest— is invited in; as a dream, the guest becomes host to a sensuous pleasure that is all the more real for being an imitation, and all the more an artifice for being imaginal, “only” a dream. Bvblis asks herself, “ ‘But what weight have dreams? o r have dreams weight?’ ”52 In the Ovidian world, dreams do have “weight” by virtue o f their ability to shift the grounds o f perception and to give shape tc >emotion. Indeed, they a r e the shifting o f the ground, mimick­ ing the many forms o f a pluralizcd reality. ( H id maintained the H om eric connection between dreams and death not only in his placement o f the dreamworld in an under- o r otherworldly cavern but also by means o f a further wordplay carried in the name o f the gsed. S tatu es that a rc fashioned fro m a su bstance th a t is hard and incorru ptib le a s, to r exam p le, th o se th a t are m ad e o f g o ld , silver, b ro n ze, ivory, sto n e, am ber, o r e lx »in', a re au sp iciou s. S tatu es fashioned fro m an y o th e r m aterial as, fo r exam ­ ple. th o se th a t a re m ad e fro m terra c o tta , clay, plaster, o r w ax, those th a t arc p ainted, an d the like, a re less au spiciou s an d often even inauspicious. W e m u st also bear in m ind th a t it is auspicious t o see th e statu es o f go d s w h o signify som et h in g g o cx l in them selves o r th rou g h th e ir statu es, if th e statues are n ot sm ashed to bits o r broken . B u t i f th e go d s them selves o r th e ir statu es indicate so m e th in g b ad , it is auspicious to see th eir statues disappear.82

Clearly, it is n o t enough simply to dream o f a statue o f a god. Attention must also be given to the substance, the material out o f which the statue is formed, because imaginal substances “matter” m ore, carry more signifying weight, than do the objects themselves. Furthermore, these imaginal sub­ stances carry what Gaston Bachelard called the “individualizing power” o f matter: they are finely wrought, and ever)' detail counts.83 Again, Artemidorus: W h en ev er the g o d s a re n o t w earing th eir cu sto m ary attire, w henever they are n ot in ih eir p ro p e r place, an d w h en ev er they are n o t co n d u ctin g them selves as they sh o u ld , ev ery th in g th a t they say is n o th in g but a lie and a d eception . T h e re lo re o n e m u st take ev erything in to co n sid eration at th e sam e tim e: the M " Miller, "T he Critic as H ost,” p. 219. Hl The following comments o f Lane Fox arc pertinent: "Were the gcxls also seen openly without a formal invocation? Here, too, we touch on patterns o f psychology which o u r own modern case histories may not d o much to illuminate: in antiquity, unlike our own age, ‘appearances’ were part o f an accepted culture pattern which was passed down in myth and the experiences of the past, in art, ritual anil the bewitching ptx'try ol I lomer" (Pagans and Christians, p. 117). 82 Onir. 2 .3 9 (ed. Pack, p. 176; nans. White, pp. 123 24). HA Ciaston Bachelard, / 7inn ft les H em , p. 3

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speaker, what is being said, the place, the conduct, and the clothing o f the speaker.84 This statement makes clear the difference between H om er and the tradition that followed him concerning the people o f dreams. These Graeco-Roman figures are not in disguise; rather they are truly p arosm ia, capable o f signify­ ing both similarity a n d difference at once. T he deciphering o f meaning lies with the aesthetic astuteness o f the observer. Artcmidorus says that these dream-statues speak, move, wear clothing, and so on. This kind o f mobile ¡conization draws on a widespread under­ standing among Graeco-Roman polytheists about the relationship between statues and deities. Ramsay MacMullen has written that these people “thought first to touch the gods through images, because that was where the gods lived, o r at least to images they could be brought by entreaty, there to listen and to act.”85 Indeed, the many reports from this era o f statues moving, trembling, winking, and so on suggest that these objects had been conceptualized in such a way as to endow the aesthetic with life.86 In his third century c.E . work on statues, Callistratus wrote o f a statue o f Asclepius that “the god infused his own powers” into it; within the statue “the power o f the indwelling god is clearly manifest . . . in a marvelous way, it fathers p ro o f that it has a soul; the face, as you look at it, entrances the senses.”87 Similarly, the character Lucius in Apuleius’ novel M etam orphoses character­ izes statues o f the gods as “breathing images” (sim u lacra spiran t in ), as did the author o f the H ermetic treatise A sclepius, who thought them to be “pleines de souffle vital,” to quote the French translator’s pungent phrase.88 Theorists o f the role o f images in religion knew that what was involved in this view o f statues was not mere magic. The Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus, w riting like Callistratus in the third century c .E ., had this to say about statues: I think that the wise men o f old, who made temples and statues in the wish that the gods should be present to them, lking to the nature of the All, had in mind that the nature o f soul is everywhere easy to attract, bur that if someone were to construct something sympathetic to it and able to receive part o f it, it would o f all things receive soul most easily. That which is sympathetic to it is H>1 Ontr. 4 .7 2 (cd. Pack, p. 2 9 3 ; trans. White, p. 214). Kfl MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Umpire, pp. 5 9 - 6 0 . Ibid. p. I75n .42 for examples. K7 Callistratus, likphrascis 10 (text in Fairbanks, p. 411; trails. Lane Fox, Pagans and Chris­ t u m p. 160). In the same passage, Callistratus goes on to describe the statue as not merely a replica or outline (tripos) but as a “ligure ol truth” (tes alethcias plasma). Apuleius, Meta. 11.17 (ed. CJrilliths, p. 9 0 ) ; C.orpus llermetieum, Asclepius 24.11 (cd. Nock, trans. Fcstugierc, 2 :3 2 6 ).

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what imitates it in some way, like a mirror able to catch [the reflection of] a form.89 In this view, the statue as mimetic object provides a sympathetic space for the prcsencing o f the gods. The animate world o f soul can be reflected in the inanimate world o f matter when the latter is formed aesthetically. As Françoise M cltzcr has aptly observed, in an imaged religious sensi­ bility such as this, “the representational, o r highly mimetic sim u lacra will . . . cause the sensory to mirror meaning, and celebrate the te c h ie and lifelike quality o f sacred art.”90 The blunt statement o f the author o f the ( Anftus H crm eticu m underscores this view: “Statues are adored because they contain in them the forms |id eas ] o f the intelligible world |ton noctou kosm ou |.”91 The sensuous image can “contain” such forms because that which is bodiless {asín n ata) is reflected in bodies (som ata) and the reverse is also true: the world o f the senses (ton aistheton) is reflected in the noetic world ( ton nocton I’osm on).92 T he reflecting process between what is intangible and what is tangible is a two-way dynamic; as the nexus o r connecting point between the two, the image is the message. I argued earlier that divination at large was a poetizing process. So too was this way o f conceptualizing the role o f statues in that it involved an imaginai appropriation o f the natural and the supernatural worlds. Further­ m ore, as a semiotic construction, this “language” o f statues had a decided tendency toward enabling people to situate themselves more comfortably and securely in the everyday world around them. By “entrancing the senses,” as Callistratus said, statues could provide emotional comfort. An Epicurean o f the second century c .E . wrote, “Some gods are angry with fortunate m en, as the goddess Nemesis seems to be to most people. But the statues o f gods should be made cheerful and smiling so that we may smile back at them rather than fear them.”93 W hen the statue smiles, we smile back; this is a poetry o f the invisible that lifts the weight o f the world with an aesthetic touch. Italo Calvino has called this dynamic “a lightness o f ibought ful ness,” a perspective echoed by Porphyry’s sense that making an image ol a friend o r a statue o f a gr iwliv nmipliiirnni 2H (traits I amltcnon, p 36).

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the other a path o f ascent. . . . He invokes the poem o f 1lomcr as a witness to the two chasms . . . when it sings o f “the gates o f the sun and die people of dreams" \Od. 24.12), calling the two tropical signs the “gates of the sun” and the Milky Way the “people o f dreams,” as he claims. For he also says that Pythagoras in his obscure language called the Milky Way “I lades” and “a place o f souls,” for souls are crowded together there. . . . Furthermore, he claims that Plato, as mentioned, is describing the gates in speaking o f the two “chasms” and that in describing the light that he calls the “bond o f heaven” he is really referring to the Milky Way. . . . He claims the signs o f the Tropics, the double chasms and the two gates are different only in name, and again that the Milky Way, the “light like a rainbow” and the “people o f dreams” are all one— tor the poet elsewhere compares disembodied souls to dreams. . . .,07 In his wonderfully lucid discussion o f this passage, Robert Lambcrton has pointed out the tw o sets o f identifications that have been assembled here. O ne set identifies the I lomeric “gates o f the sun” with the Platonic image o f tw o cosm ic chasms through which souls travel; these have been further identified with the astrological signs o f Capricorn, the passage taken by souls traveling out o f this world, and ofC ancer, the passage taken by souls as they enter this world. The other set identifies the Homeric “people o f dreams” with the Platonic image o f the rainbow, “the light that binds heaven” (Rep. 10.6 1 6 c); the people o f dreams are then further identified with the Milky Way and with disembodied souls.108 T he idea that the soul is a dream was not developed further in N eo­ platonic writings. It sits enigmatically in a corpus of I lomeric exegesis that was more interested in establishing than in exploring the teasinglv sugges tivc metaphoric connections that it spun out. Yet there is in this same cxcgctical tradition a hint that might help toward understanding how a transfer o f meaning between soul and dream might have been possible. At one point in his treatise on the river Styx, Porphyry is commenting on the passage in the Odyssey that describes Odysseus'meeting with the ghost o f his mother Anticleia. In this passage, ghost, dream, and soul appear to be metaphors for each other. I |Odysseus |bit my lip, rising perplexed, with longing to embrace her |Anticleia), and tried three times, putting my amis around her, but she went sifting through my hands, impalpable .is shadows are, and wavering like a dream. "> IVoclus, In r a n publunm 2 .1 2 8 .2 6 130.14; 2.130.15 16; 2 .1 3 1 .8 -1 4 (text and trans. in l.amlx'rton, Homer the Theologian, pp. 6 6 67). ,UM 1-ambcrtiMi, Homer the I heohyinvi. p. 70. l w ( M II 2 0 4 8 (cd. Stanford, p. 174; ir.ms Fir/gcrald, p

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Anticlcia answers: All mortals meet this judgment when they die. No flesh and bone are here, none bound by sinew, since the bright-hearted pyre consumed them down— the white bones long exanimate— to ash; dreamlike the soul flics, insubstantial.110 Porphyry had this to say about these “images o f dead men” (brotdu ciddln kam ôn tôn ; O d. 11.476). The idea is that souls are like the images [/«¿v cidôlois] appearing in mirrors and on the surface o f water that resemble us in every detail and mimic |m im eitai] our movements but have no solid substance that can be grasped or touched. This is why he calls them “images o f dead men.”111 In this passage. Porphyry has described the soul with many o f the same terms and ideas that were used to describe dreams. The soul is a ghostly image, insubstantial yet nonetheless in movement, and it works by means o f mimesis, reflecting us to ourselves “in every detail.” Apparently it was these shared characteristics that made possible a metaphoric resonance between the soul and the image o f the “people o f dreams.” Although the exegetical context o f this Neoplatonic juxtaposition o f soul with H om er’s “people o f dreams” did not allow for an exploration o f the connection between the two, the fact o f the coming together o f these two phenomena is telling. In the dream theory o f late antiquity, soul and dream were intimately connected. The next chapter explores the ways in which dreams were conceptualized as one o f the major imaginative languages o f the soul. 110 Ibid., 1 1 .2 1 8 -2 2 (cd. Stanford, p. 175; trans. Fitzgerald, p. 192). 111 Porphyry, Pen Stytjus /T he Styx/, in Stobacus, Ecloqae 1.41.50 (text and trans. in Lamberton, Homer the Theologian, p. 114 and n.100).

C H A P T E R

TWO

Theories o f Dreams

L a t e a n t i q u i t y at large was a culture that invested much energy in theoretical explorations o f the intangible presences that presided over ev­ eryday life. Gods, angels, daemons, souls— all were subjected to scrutiny, the mechanics o f their movements diagramed, their composition dissected, the principles governing how their messages were to be understood intri­ cately set forth. Dreams, to o , gave rise to an extensive theoretical litera­ ture. This literature was embedded both in psychology, that is, in theories that explored the soul’s capacity to govern thought and emotion and to produce images o f its activities, and in theology', in cases where dreams were seen as appurtenances o f a divine sensibility. Oneiric theory- also drew on what would today be called literary- criticism because, in order to be subject to interpretation, a dream had to be told o r written. In the most immediate sense, dreams were phenomena o f language as well as o f psy­ chic imagination and divine intention. Two vignettes drawn from ancient theories about dreaming will help to situate the discussion in some o f the theoretical issues that seemed most pressing to late-antique thinkers. In each case, a theoretical position on dreams from the period prior to late antiquity will serve as a foil for a lateantique position in order to highlight the latter’s distinctiveness. T he first vignette concerns the relation between the soul and dreams. T he foil is Plato. Unlike Aristotle, Plato did not write a sustained essay on dreams, but comments on them, often contradictory, are scattered throughout his works. In the T intaeus he turns his attention to prophetic dreams as one feature o f the art o f divination given to human beings by the gods: N o m an achieves tru e an d inspired divination w h en in h is rational m in d, but o nly w hen th e p ow er o f his intelligence is fettered in sleep o r w hen it is d istrau g h t b y disease o r by reason o f so m e divine inspiration. But it belongs to a m an w hen in his rig h t m ind to recollect an d p on d er b oth the things spoken in d ream o r w aking vision by the divining an d inspired n atu re, and all th e visionary- fo rm s th at w ere seen, an d by m eans o f reason in g to discern a b o u t th em all w herein th e y ¿»re significan t.1 I’l.ito.

it m iu ' u s 7

II. (trails. Bury, p. 1X7).

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Plato docs not deny that dreams can signify truly; however, their meaning can only be discerned when the dreamer wakes from the mantic frenzy o f sleep. Dreaming is portrayed here as a phenomenon o f the irrational part o f the soul, which is the medium for the perception o f p h an tasm a ta, the “visionary forms” o f inspired sleep.2 Bight centuries later, a Christian bishop in Alexandria, Egypt, was still engaged in theorizing about connections between the soul and dreams. I lowcver, Athanasius used the experience o f dreams as proof that the soul is rational and immortal! When i lu* IxkIv is still, at rest and sleeping, a man is in inner movement— he contemplates \tbcdrei\ what is outside himself, he traverses foreign lands, he meets friends, and often through them (the dreams] he divines (mantnuiHinios \and learns in advance his daily actions. What else could this be but .1 rational soul |psitchc lojfike|?3 I »teams break the barrier between the soul and a much larger (normally unseen but very “real") world “outside”— a world o f foreign lands. It tends, and true beholding (tbcored). Further, in sleep the soul imagines, it sees phantasmal sights (p b cin tazetai), and those phantoms o f the night embody the basic, because immortal, logic o f the psyche. For Athanasius, it would seem that, p ace Plato, one sees most clearly only in the dark. Athanasius shared with his predecessor a vocabulary that designated oneiric phenomena as mantic and phantasmal, and a conviction that dreams are properly situated in theories about psychic experience, partic­ ularly in terms o f the soul’s connection with the world o f the gods (whether through divine inspiration, as with Plato, or through ontological status, as with Athanasius’ comment about immortality). W hat is astonish­ ing is the complete reversal o f opinion concerning rationality. For Ath­ anasius, dreams were not products o f our wild-eyed, irrational selves; on i he contrary, they were evidence and guarantee o f our powers o f under­ standing. Across the gap o f this difference o f opinion lies the late-antique preoccupation with theories about the mechanics o f the production o f dreams as well as about the status o f dreams with regard to issues o f epistemology and ontology. I he second vignette concerns the autonomy of dreams as well as their connection with visual articulation o f meaning. T he foil from early antiq­ uit v comes from the Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus o f Ephesus. Two o f his statements are pertinent: I lie waking have one world in common, whereas each sleeper turns away into a private world o f his own.4 See Gallop. "Dreaming and Waking in I’lain,** pp. IKK 80 ■' Athanasius, Contra Crufts 31.38 44 (cd and nans. Thomson, p. 87). • Heraclitus, It. IS (Diels Kranz 80) (trails Wheelwright, p. 70).

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Man in the night kindles a light for himself. Though his vision is extinguished. . . ,s As both these fragments show, for Heraclitus sleep and the dreaming state attendant upon it were intensely private experiences. The dreamworld turns the dreamer away from community, away from the “one world in com m on,” and directs the vision inward. One commentary on the second o f these fragments intensifies its sense o f inwardness. About the image o f kindling a light in a world o f one's own, Kcsscls suggested that Heraclitus may have meant that during sleep the eyes, made o f fien' material, “turned round and directed their beams towards the human interior.”6 T he dream­ world is here envisaged as one o f private illumination. Quite different from the cocoon-like sense o f Heraclitus’ dreamworld was that o f St. Augustine. For Augustine, dreams could take the dreamer in to communal conversation and shared experience, as the following pas­ sage from T h e C ity o f G od shows: I believe that a person has a phantom which, in his imagination or in his dreams, takes on various forms through the influence o f circumstances of innumerable kinds. This phantom is not a material body; and yet with amaz­ ing speed it takes on shapes like material bodies; and it is this phantom, I hold, that can in some inexplicable fashion be presented in bodily form to the apprehension o f other people when their physical senses are asleep or in abeyance.7 An example o f this phenomenon, which, Augustine assures his readers, he has gotten on good authority from someone w ho would never lie, con cerns a man who reported that in his own house, at nighttime, before he went to bed, he saw a philosopher coming to him, a man he knew very well; and this man explained to him a number o f points in Plato, which he had formerly [that is, in person) refused to explain when asked. Now this philosopher was asked why he had done something in the other’s house which he had refused to do when requested in his own home, and he said in reply, “I did not do it, I merely dreamed that I did.”« “This shows,” says Augustine, “that what one man saw in his sleep was displayed to the other while awake by means o f a phantom appearance.”9 Augustine had no doubt that the dreams we see in sleep have an indepen­ dent existence (and are even capable o f philosophical erudition!). This s Heraclitus, fr. 4X (l)icls Kran/. 26) (trails. Marcovich, p. 244). ° Kcsscls, Studies on the Dream in Creek l iterature, p. 195. 7 Augustine, D efin ía te Dei IX. IX (trails, Ucttcnson, pp. 7X2 83). MIbid. (trails Bcttciisnn, pp. 7X3 X4) '* Ibid, (trails. Bcttciisnn, p. 7X4).

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particular kind o f dream may be a phantom, but it is a phantom with a public persona that functions to put people in touch with each other, to make their one world more common. Heraclitus and Augustine agreed that in sleep a world is constructed, but there has been a stunning reversal from the isolated privacy o f Heraclitus' image to the public intelligibility and autonom ous movement o f Augustine’s oneiric figures. Across this gap arose the issues o f decipherment and classification o f dream images, issues that were based in part on theorists’ view that, in dreaming, people had a world in com m on. This chapter focuses on theories that pertain to the etiology o f dreams, while Chapter Three deals with strategics for oneiric interpretation and classification.

DREAMS AND T H E SOUL: PSYCHOBIOLOGICAL TH EO RY As the first vignette suggested, dream theorists in antiquity usually con­ nected the phenomenon o f dreaming with a psychic dynamic, whether the soul was viewed as receptive o f the visions o f dreams, o r productive o f them, o r both. In a very real sense, dreams were not distinguishable, in theory, from the movements by which they were traced. Basically, there were tw o ways o f conceptualizing the “mechanics” o f the production o f dreams. O ne was psychobiological and attempted to naturalize the phe­ nomena of sleep and its attendant phantasms; the other was theological and connected the dreaming soul with an invisible but very real realm o f spiritual beings— angels, daemons, gods. Although these views were op­ posed to each other, both were haunted by a persistent question regarding the status o f the human imagination and its ability to construct distinctive patterns o f meaning. T he naturalist position was neatly summarized in a brief comment by I’linv the Elder, who wrote his N atu ralis H istoria containing “2 0 ,0 0 0 important facts” in the first century c .E .10 One o f those “facts” was a definition o f sleep: “Sleep is nothing but the retreating o f the soul into its own mil 1st" ( Est a n t cm som nus n ih il a lin d fju am an im i in m edium sese reoww/.v).11 T he soul retires into itself as into a nook o r secret recess. Pliny »munines his brief statement by adding that it is obvious that “ besides human beings, horses, dogs, oxen, sheep, and goats dream.”12 This cata­ logue of animals that dream shows that Pliny had read his Aristotle, for in H istoria an im aliu m ( 5 3 6 b 2 7 - 3 0 ) Aristotle cites the same list as examples of quadrupeds that dream. Pliny was one o f a handf ul o f Graeco-Roman authors w ho carried on Aristotle's psychobiological views o f dreams, l*liny, Naturalis historia, praef. 17 (text in R.ickli.im, 1:12). " Ibid. 1 0 .9 8 .2 1 1 (text in R.kklum, 3 :4 2 6 .) Ibid, (text in Rackliam, 3 :4 2 8 ).

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which persisted as a minor leitmotif in late-antique dream theory well into the fourth century c.E . A brief recounting o f Aristotle’s theories will help provide context for the perspectives o f his successors. Aristotle did not accept the Homeric view that dreams are messages from the gods o r in any way connected with divine presence.13 H e viewed them instead as images prcxluced by interconnecting physiological and psychic processes. F o r Aristotle, sleep and the dreams that occur during it are essentially products o f the digestive process, during which heat rises and falls though the body. Once asleep, the primary perceptual capacities o f the soul, having been “cooled,” cease to function; the eyelids droop, yet some sort o f perception continues to occur nonetheless.14 As he explains it, “sense-objects corresponding to each sense-organ provide us with per­ ception. And the affection produced by them persists in the sense-organs, not only while the perceptions are being actualized, but also after they have gone.”15 W hat the soul sees during sleep are the “appearances” {p h an ­ tasm ata) and “residual movements deriving from sense-impressions” per­ ceived previously when the soul— and the body— were awake.16 Thus Aristotle defines a dream as “an appearance [p h an tasm a] that arises from the movement o f the sense-impressions, while one is in the sleeping state.”17 Body and soul work together to produce simulacra that mimic ordinary perceptual images. Dreams, then, arc traces o f waking perception and, as David Gallop has explained it, they are “a sort o f replay o f previous waking experience, sometimes bizarrely scrambled as a result o f physiological experience.”1819 Further, they are products o f the imagination (to p h an tastikon ).IV Ii is this activity o f the soul that weaves together its perceptual traces to produce 13 Aristotle, D e divinatione per somnum 4 62M 2 2 6 (text and trans, in Gallop, pp. 102. 107). 14 Aristotle, D e somno 4 5 6 a 3 0 - b l l ; 4 5 6 b l7 ; 4 5 7 a 3 3 -b 2 6 ; D e insomniis 4 5 9 a I - 2 2 (text and trans, in Gallop, pp. 6 9 - 7 1 , 7 5 - 7 7 , 85). 15 Aristotle, D e insom. 4 5 9 a 2 4 - 2 8 (text and trans, in Gallop, p. 87). 16 Ibid. 4 6 1 a l 8 -2 0 (text and trans, in Gallop, p. 85). 17 Ibid. 4 6 2 a 2 9 -3 1 (text and trans, in Gallop, p. 101). ,H Gallop, Aristotle on Sleep anti Dreams, p. 19. 19 Aristotle, De insom. 4 59a 1 5 -1 7 (text and trans, in Gallop, p. 8 5 ). Sec Gallop's extensive discussion o f the complicated role that phantasia, imagination, plays in Aristotle’s thought (IS 2 5 ). Gallop suggests that Aristotle’s conception o f imagination should be interpreted “not simply as a capacity for mental imagery, but as one whereby something ‘appears to,' o r is interpreted by, an observer in a certain way. Ac its broadest, it will be a capacity that enters into all o f a creatures perceptual and cognitive engagement with the world around it" (21). With regard to dreams in particular. Gallop notes, “Aristotle distinguishes ‘imagination’ (phantasm) from ‘judgment’ (ilaxa), which may either endorse o r oppose imagination’s deliv­ erances, o r which may d o neither. In dreaming it simply fails to oppose them, so that the apjKaranccs presented to the subject gain acceptance by delimit (D e insom. 461b 29 - 4 6 2 a 8 , cf. 4 5 9 .16 8, 4 6 Ib 3 7 )" (Gallop, p. 2 1 1

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p h an tasm ata, the appearances that are dreams. Aristotle does not doubt that to p ban tastikon can produce true dreams; for example, direct visions o f one friend by another arise from their mutual engagement with and recep­ tivity to each other.20 Overall, however, he felt that dreams that are fulfilled happen only by coincidence, luck, and good guessing.21 Thus Aristotle’s view o f dreams had two major tendencies. O ne was to ro o t the phenome­ non o f dreams solidly in the soul's participation in the biological process; the other was to undercut the role o f dreams in divinatory practice. Karly in the Graeco-Roman era, the m ost outspoken proponent o f the kind o f oneiric theory proposed by Aristotle was Cicero. In his long treatise on divination, he uses Aristotelian psychobiological arguments to explain the dream as a naturalistic phenomenon; from this standpoint he exposes divination by dreams as an inexact pseudo-science that trades on human credulity and on an erroneous set o f assumptions about the gods. Ila.su ally, ( iceros argument was as follows: llv n a iu ie I m ean th at essential activity o f th e soul |a n im u s|o w in g to w h ich it n o n stands still, an d is never free fro m so m e agitation o r m o tio n o r oth er. W hen in co n seq u en ce o f the lan g u or o f the b od y it is ab le to use n eith er the lim bs n o r th e senses, it falls in to varied and u ncertain visions th a t arise, as A ristotle says, from the clin gin g rem nants o f th e th in g s the soul did and th o u g h t w hile aw ake. S tran ge kinds o f dream s som etim es arise from the co n fu sio n |caused by th e rem n a n ts].22

Like Aristotle, Cicero argues that dreams occur when interconnecting psychic and physiological processes are set in motion. The ever-active soul produces confused relics o f its daytime activities when the body is weary, no longer able to support active sense-perception.23 Cicero even uses the same kinds o f examples— tricks o f vision— to show that the visioncs, the “apparitions" of sleep, are illusory and so untrustworthy as sources o f meaning. ’4 “Why need I mention,” says C icero, “how many false things .11« seen by drunks and crazy men?"25 11 is explanation ol dreams according to the tenets o f scientific empiriusm is i he basis upon which Cicero proceeds to lampoon divinatory pi a» lu es based on dreams. 1laving demonstrated, at least to his own satislaition, Ihat dreams are psychobiological phenomena, he can then assert "• Aiim i .i I» Dr iliv 4 6 4 a 2 7 hS (text and trans, in (¡allop, p. 111). ’’ Ibid. 4 6 3 a 3 l 4o3l>22 (text and trans, in (¡allop, pp. 107 9). " ( i«cm , D r thnmilionr 2.128 (ed. Pease, pp. 5 5 4 55). ■' Ibid. 2 .1 3 9 4 0 (ed. Pease, pp. 5 6 9 7 0 ); cf. Aristotle, D r insom. 4 6 l a l8 23 and Arislotle, D r iliv. 4 6 3 a 2 l 3 0 (text and trans, in (¡allop, pp. 9 5 , 105). ’ ■ D r tin- 2 .1 2 0 (ed. Pease, pp. 5 4 4 4 6 ) ; Aristotle, Dr initmi. 461631 462a5 (text and trans. ( iallop, p 99). if> Ibid. 2 .1 2 0 (ed. Pease, p 545).

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with confidence that “there is no divine power that creates dreams.” 26 In fact, it is demeaning to suppose that the gtxis communicate with human beings through such phenomena, and for several reasons. Are we really to imagine, asks C icero sarcastically, that immortal gods spend their time flitting about the beds and pallets o f mortals and that, “when they find someone snoring, they cast before him tortuous and obscure visions which awaken him out o f sleep in terror so that he has to consult a diviner?”27 The truth o f the matter, says Cicero, is that most people don't even re­ member their dreams; do the gcxls then care for people by sending them crucial information in vain packages?28 Furthermore, if the gcxis really wanted to communicate with us in this way, why wouldn't they send messages in ordinary, everyday speech instead o f in obscure and enigmatic images? According to Cicero, the proponents o f dream-divination put the gods in the position o f a d octor w ho prescribes for a patient “an earthborn, grass-crawling, bloodless creature that carries its house on its back” instead o f simply saying, “a snail.”29 Having shown that dreams are ill-suited to a respectful characterization o f the gixls, C icero then turns his scathingly critical remarks against the diviners themselves. His strong suspicion is that the interpretation o f dreams is geared m ore toward displaying the sagacity o f the interpreter than it is toward demonstrating the connections between dreams and natural law.30 In fact, he says, interpretations and reality only coincide by virtue o f a hit-or-miss procedure based on chance and luck, just as Aris­ totle had argued.31 Cases o f opposing interpretations o f the same dream clinch his argument. One example is that o f a runner who dreamed that he was carried in a chariot drawn by four horses. O ne interpreter said he would win his race, because winning was implied by the strength and speed o f the horses; another interpreter, however, said he would lose, because the four horses indicated that four ran ahead o f him. A similar case involved a woman w ho wanted to conceive a child. When she dreamed that her womb had been sealed, she wondered whether she were pregnant and so consulted tw o interpreters. The first told her that she was not pregnant, because conception is impossible when the womb is sealed; but the second told her that she was indeed pregnant, because it is against custom to seal something that is empty.32 On the basis o f such evidence. Ibid. 2 .1 2 4 (cd. IV;»sc, p. 551). 2T Ibid. 2 .1 2 9 (cd. Pease, p. 556). 2M Ibid. 2 .1 2 5 (cd. Pease, pp. 551 52). ^ Ibid. 2 .1 5 3 (ed. Pease, pp. 5 6 0 - 6 1 ). M Ibid 2 .1 4 4 (ed. Pease, p. 574). " Ibid. 2 .1 0 8 ; 2.121 (cd. IVasc, pp. 5 2 5 . 5 4 6 47). 12 Ibid. 2 144 4 5 (ed. Pease, pp 5 7 4 7n.f>.

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Cicero concludes that the art o f dream-interpretation consists in using ones talent to defraud.33 The only area in which Cicero was willing to allow dreams a useful function was in medicine: T h e y say th a t from so m e kinds o f d ream s the physicians even can gath er in d icatio n s c o n ce rn in g a p atien t’s h ealth , as w h e th e r the internal h u m o rs o f the Ix x ly are excessive o r deficien t.34

In allowing a role for dreams in medical evaluations o f a patient's health, Cicero appears to he relying on a H ippocratic tradition that viewed dreams as indicators given by the soul that reflect the state o f the body.38 Since the I lippocratic corpus was the foundation for all medicine in antiq­ uity, it is not surprising that Cicero might appeal to this well-known literature, especially because it underscored his own view o f dreams as products o f a psvchobiological dynamic. ( uero's view o f dreams as scrambled figments o f the souls perceptual apparatus did not achieve widespread acceptance in late antiquity. Even in the medical establishment, one could find a view o f dreams that did not lollow the Hippocratic view o f them as only diagnostic pictures o f the body's condition. T he eminent second-century physician Galen accepted the diagnostic usefulness o f dreams but found that they could also be useful in other ways. Indeed, on the basis o f a dream from a god, Galen wrote his treatise on the use o f the parts o f the body.36 H e found dreams enlightening in another way as well: S o m e p eop le sco rn d ream s, o m e n s, and p o rten ts. B u t I know th a t I have o fte n m ad e a d iagn osis from d ream s a n d , guided h v tw o very clear dream s, I o n c e m ad e an incision in to the artery betw een th e th u m b and th e index finger o f th e rig h t h a n d , an d allow ed th e b ltxxl t o flow until it ceased flow in g o n its o w n , as the d re a m h ad in stru cted . I have saved m an y people by applying a cu re p rescrib ed in a d re a m .37

< Ic.irly !i Galen, and other ancient doctors as well, dreams were not always lied to physiology but could operate as autonomous signifiers in a way very different from their diagnostic use.38 Among interpreters o f dreams, the idea that dreams are the result o f " D r dir 2 .1 4 5 (cd. Pease, p. 576). “ Ibid. 2 .1 4 2 (cd . Pease, p. 572). ‘ ■ See IVase, cd ., M . Tulli Currants Dc Dn'inatwnr, p. 5 7 2 n .l; lor a discussion o f the connection between Hippocratic medicine and dreams m the CJracco-Roman period, see .

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mind is inactive. Thus released from the rational, guiding activity o f the mind, the nutritive part o f the soul is set free, and it gives “echoes and shadows” o f perceptual activities that occurred when mind and body were awake.46 Thus, in sleep, the dreamer is lost in imagination ( plm n tasiou tai), wandering am ong confused hallucinations.47 G regory softens somewhat this hallucinatory view o f dreams when he appropriates Plotinus’ metaphor o f the musician playing a lyre to explain how mind, soul, and sense-perception interact during sleep. Plotinus had used this metaphor to explain how the mind, the musician, uses and cares for the body, the lyre.48 Gregory has transformed the metaphor so that it refers to internal relations o f the human faculties during sleep. Just as a m u sician, w hen he strikes th e p lectru m against th e loosened strings o f a lyre, p n »duces n o rh y th m ic m elody, fo r th a t w hich is n o t d raw n tig h t will n ot si »sii ion 11 he nc»tes, but n o sou nd o c c u rs , excep t only so far as it p ro d u ces an uulisi un i an d irregu lar h u m m in g in th e m o v em en t o f th e strin g s— s o in sleep, w hen i he co n d itio n o f the p ercep tu al o rg an s is relaxed, eith er the m usician is lo in p lciclv ai rest sin ce the in stru m en t is totally loosen ed d ue t o satiety o r to rp o r, o r |th e results o f his action s will be] weak an d faint, th e perceptual o rg a n n o t allow ing fo r skillful p recision .49

In ibis extended metaphor, and in the explanatory passage that precedes it, Gregory has qualified his earlier statement that intellect is inactive during sleep. Because, as he explains, the mind is never severed from that with which it has once been joined, including even the less rational, nutritive part o f the soul, it can continue to operate during sleep, though less attentively than during waking periods.50 This is an important qualification, because it is here that Gregory diverges from the psychobiological tradition that he has been following to this point. It is precisely the minds ability to remain .k live, however faintly, that leads Gregory to accept the possibility that dreams may contain foreknowledge (prognosis) o f things to com e.51 The kind nl< »neirie signification that Gregory is talking about is not the kind o f i 13.15 16 ( /Y ; 44.1 7 2 1 ) I73B). See i he disi ussion by Brown, Hu M u kniti of'l.ntr A nlu/utlv, p 6 5 , on the ease ol access to the divine world olfered bv dreams.

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imagination and its possible influence on human life. H e seems at once enticed by and war}' o f the dreamy eiciola that haunt the soul. H e was not alone in his bemused fascination with such imagistic constructions; but others in late antiquity, among polytheists as well as in his own monotheistic tradition, were more willing to give such constructs a place in processes o f ordinary human understanding.

DREAMS AND T H E SOUL: TH EO LO G ICA L TH EO RY Investigating the mechanics o f the production o f dreams from the perspec­ tive o f theology takes one into a late-antique thought-world whose atm o­ sphere is dense with spiritual powers. As E. R . Dodds observed, by the second century c .E . ‘Virtually every one, pagan, Jewish, Christian, o r Gnos­ tic, believed in the existence o f these beings and in their function as media­ tors, whether he called them daemons o r angels o r aions o r simply ‘spirits’ ( p n eu m ata).”61 Similarly, Peter Brown, in his memorable portrait o f the late-antique “friends o f gcxl" w ho were able to establish contact with these powers, describes the situation in the early centuries o f the era as one in which “the boundaries between the human and the divine had remained exceptionally fluid. T he religious language o f the age is the language o f an open frontier.”62 Agreeing with Dodds's view that dreams were the most widespread means o f establishing contact with the powers. Brown desig­ nates the dream as “the paradigm o f the open frontier: when a man was asleep and his bodily senses were stilled, the frontier lay wide open between himself and the gods.”63 Lane Fox has joined company with Dodds and Brown, referring to late-antique dream-experience as a “nightly screening u understanding o f the future, and his characterization o f fate as a syntax is an appi* »priate description o f the lexicon o f signs that structure communit at ic>n Ixrt ween the soul and the ordering principle o f the cosmos. I lowever. Ins insistence on the objectivity o f divinatory practice, particularly in light o f i lie contrast he draws between ancient interpretation o f dreams and Freud’s understanding o f dream interpretation as “the translation o f a temporally c be an appropriate reflection o f the entanglement ofdivinatorv p i.u iiic with life's real emotions.85 In Stoic theory, dreams allow the soul to stand outside its immersion in the everyday and to reflect on its course m a broader context, conceived theologically as a cosmic structure H" lieurge Steiner, “The Historicity «>1 Dreams (Two Questions to Freud).’* p. 13. Kl M artin. “Artemidorus: Dream Theory in I-tie Antiquity." p. 104.

« Ibid . p 108 w Ibid. Kl Patricia ( i n Miller. “ Re imagining the Sell in Dreams.” pp. 3 8 39. MS < icero, D r dir. 1.68 (cd. IVa.sc. p. 213).

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undcrgirdcd by the greams are one o f the expressions o f the daemonic imagination. On his cosmic map, Plutarch located all daemonic phenomena, including dreams, in i he region o f the m oon. Subject to waxing and waning, the moon was a lining locale for the transformative negotiation o f boundaries signified by i he daemonic.92 In his work T h e D ivine V engeance, Plutarch provided a striking description o f this locale, a description that forms part o f a sight­ seeing journey o f a disembodied soul in the middle region o f the cosmos. 1 1 < saw in th e d istance w hat h e to o k to be a large cra te r [m ixin g bow l] with siiearns p o u rin g in to it, o n e w h iter than sea-fo am o r snow , an o th er like the \ it »let o i l he rain lx >w, an d o th ers o f different tin ts, each having fro m afar a luster n| us o w n . O n th e ir ap p roach the cra te r tu rn ed o u t t o b e a deep ch asm in the am b ien t, an d as the co lo rs faded, th e b rightness, excep t to r the w hite, disap­ p eared .

I le beheld th ree d aem o n s seated to g e th e r in th e form o f a triangle,

co m b in in g th e stre a m s in certain p ro p o rtio n s. . . . “T h is [says th e soul-guide | is an oracle shared b y N ig h t and th e M o o n ; it has n o o u tlet anyw here o n earth n o r any single seat, b u t roves everyw here th ro u g h o u t hum ankind in dream s an d vision s; fo r this is th e so u rce fro m w h ich dream s derive an d dissem inate the u n ad orn ed an d tru e , co m m in g led , as y o u see, w ith the colorful and d e cep tiv e ."93

Pictured here as products o f a cosmic mixing bowl in which the true and the deceptive are mingled, dreams partake o f the necessary ambiguity o f the damn mu sensibility in which only close examination can distinguish be­ tween the deceptive colorations of the surface and unadorned insightfulness 9 * II daemons represent for Plutarch the potential for living a life I'Iiii.ii 1 11. D r nemo Sonntis 5911) K, 5 9 3 F (text and trails, in D c Lacy and Einarson, pp 1/1. -183) riiii.iuli. D e f io I lot I) (text and trails. Babbitt, pp. 3 8 4 , 3 8 6 ); the phrase "sombre ligui.itit>n" is tin m 1« ill .i i*Kin by Wallace Stevens (in Opus Posthumous, cd. Morse, p. 6 6 ). I «n a ionieni|K»rary discussion o f somber figuration as it pertains to an iniagina! realm that mediates between mind anil experience, see David I.. Miller, Christs, xxii-xxiv. ' Plutarch, Def. or. 116( I (text and trails, in Babbitt, pp. 3 8 4 8 8 ); sec the discussion by Dillon, Middle Plntomsts, pp. 216 17. Plutarch, l)e invidtn et odio 566B ( ' (text and trails in I >c I acy and Einarson, pp. 2 8 6 8 8 ). 94 On the colors ol the daemonic streams that mingle to form dreams,*De I acy and I-mars« >u remark that "the white corresponds to the mull in dreams, the varied colors to then

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well-examined in the midst o f its alternating rhythms, then the means o f examination must themselves also be closely examined; only then will the "flower and radiance” o f the sours power o f discernment be disclosed.*95 W riting in the mid-second century, some lift)’ years after Plutarch, Apuleius used his predecessor s ideas in the development o f his own demon­ ological theory, although he was more systematic in his attempt to define the nature and activities o f the daemons.96 A Latin writer, Apuleius nonetheless adopted the Greek term daem on as the most appropriate designation for these aerial beings in his major work devoted to them, D e deo Socratis.97* Elsewhere, however, he experimented with Latin names—gen iu s, num cn, deus, lem ur, m anes, larv a, la r.98 This is an intriguing list, because it shows Apuleius' tendency, m ore explicit than Plutarch’s, to understand daemons as deeply embedded in human affairs. Several o f these terms— lem ur, larva, and m anes— refer to ghosts o f the dead, ancestral shades, while la r refers to domestic deities and g en iu s to an individual’s tutelary spirit. In light o f this list, daemons appear to be those factors that enlarge the sphere o f the merely personal by putting it in touch— "ghosting” it— with the collective wisdom o f the human community. Apuleius’ generic name for the daemons in D e deo Socratis—potestates— has been characterized as "a personalization o f power,” but I think that Apuleius’ conceptualization o f these “powers” can be more adequately con­ veyed if they are understood as psychic “abilities.”9910This is so because Apuleius describes the guardian daemons, in whom he is most interested, as "lodged like an intimate guest deeply in the mind,” where they “inspect all and know all, like the conscience” (om nia visitet, om nia in tellegat, in ipsis penitissinus m en tibu s vice conscientiae deversetu r).100 It is this superior class (*1 deceptiveness; at a distance, (that is, when one docs not examine closely), the deceptive and many-colored is more prominent; close at hand the white predominates" {Plutarch's Moralin, 7 :2 8 9 , note e). For a discussion o f the term poikilos, "many-colored," as a description o f the world o f movement, multiplicity, and ambiguity, see Marcel Dctienne and Jean-Pierre Vcrnant. Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, pp. 1 8 -2 0 . 95 Plutarch, Dcf. or. 4 3 2 C (text and trans. in Babbitt, p. 466). 96 For a comparison o f Plutarch’s and Apuleius’ theories o f the daemon, particularly as they apply to the daemon o f Socrates, see P. G. Walsh, “Apuleius and Plutarch,” pp. 2 0 - 3 2 . For a detailed discussion o f Graeco-Roman thought on daemons, including the theories o f Plu­ tarch and Apuleius, see Frederick E . Brcnk, S. J., “ In the Light o f the M oon: Demonolog)' in the Early Imperial Period," pp. 2 0 6 8 -2 1 4 5 . 97 Apuleius, De deo Socratis 6 .1 3 3 (ed. and trans. Beaujcu, p. 26). 9K See the discussion by Brcnk, “ In the Light o f the M oon: Demonology in the Early Imperial Period,” p. 2 1 3 4 , and by Jacqueline Amat, Songes et Visions, pp. 1 6 1 -6 3 . 99 Brcnk, “In the Light o f the M oon: Demonology in the Early Imperial Period,” p. 2134. The word in question, potestates (De deo Soe. 6 .1 3 3 ), "powers," can also mean “abilities." Sec Lewis and Short, A hitin Dictionary s.v. potestas. 100 Apuleius, De deo Soe. 16.156 (ed. Beaujcu, p. 3 6 ; my translation). The verb deversor carries the sense o f “tarrying" o r “1«nlging anywhere as a guest.” See I .ewis and Short, A Latin Diet¡опту, s.v dcirrsor.

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daemons, says Apulcius, that “furnish each person with witnesses and guardians o f everyday life, continually present as watchers o f our acts and thoughts.”101 Apulcius mentions by name only two o f these mental guests— A m or, “love,” and Somnus, “sleep.” 102 Sleep is important in this context because, as Apulcius had noted earlier in his discussion, one o f the important offices o f the daemons as interpreters is the fashioning o r skillful shaping o f dream s.103 Sleep, then, is as important an activity as love, because ii provides the occasion for the “intervention” o f oneiric signs, particularly in situations o f distress, obscurity, and danger.104 Thus for Apulcius as for Plutarch, the placement o f oneiric phenomena in a daemonic context was not a demotion o f dreams to irrationality. Instead, his daemonizing o f dreams was based on his view o f such “sign languages” as an important psychic apparatus with distinctive ethical overtones, “promuting the good,” as Apulcius says, by encouraging an interpretive, selec­ tive, meditative style o f perception.105 Dreams retained their connection wit h the future, but, as with the Stoics, it was a future conceived in the mode s Bussell, The Methot! a n d Message o f Jewish Afocnhftu, p. 163. nh < >n the phenomenon «»I the invasive dream, see Patricia ( o x Miller, “ ‘All The Words Weie liighOul Salvation By Oreams in the Shepherd o f Hennas," p. 3 2 9 . A thorough disiiissMin nt the m otif o f the heavenly journey in late antu|ue texts, imluding especially ap oi j I v |>i i i texts, ian I k - lound iii lames l> Tabor, Things Unutterable, pp. 5 7 III ,iv A good example is I he Testament of'htvt 2 .5 8.1 9 , which is a lengths conversation between l e u and a dream angel (ed and trails. Hollander and IV Jonge, pp 132 55) An interesting early < hristian example ol a dialogue In-twecn a dreamer and angek is The Visum iflhnvtheus (cd and trails Kessels and Van IV i ll«»ist, in V C II |I987| 313 59

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tion aims at teaching both the standards and the rewards for ethical behav­ ior. 130 The conversational quality o f many o f these angelic dream-journeys, as well as the mobile view o f the mind that they seem to imply, appear to me to be important indicators o f how the human being is conceptualized in an oneiric context. Driven by a dialogical dynamic, consciousness is permeable (even if it has to be invaded!) to reflection on the constituents o f a qualitative life, one not enslaved to the vagaries o f the everyday. The use o f angels as a way o f picturing interior conversations o f the self with its own, “higher,” ideas was current among Christian writers as well. H ennas, a Roman Christian o f the late first century, wrote about his “angel o f repentance,” a permanently indwelling figure that instructed him in dreams about moral issues.131 In the third century' another Roman, Natalius, had been misled into theological error, embracing a heretical view o f the Christ as merely human. Often warned in visions about the danger o f this erroneous stance, as the church historian Eusebius reports, Natalius “was at last scourged all night long by holy angels” and, displaying his dream-inflicted bruises, he went to the bishop to repent.132 In the next century', the distinguished exegete Jerome reported a dream in which he, too, was whipped by a “judge” as punishment for his enjoyment o f pagan literature.133 Apparently this kind o f interaction with a dream-angel was a technique for confronting a bad conscience, a re-viewing o f one’s intentions with the goal o f redirecting them and so minimizing inner turmoil. As in the magical papyri, dream and angel function together as tropes for an interior dialogue in which heartfelt anxieties are explored. Despite all o f the foregoing testimony to the conviction that dream speech is angelic, some in late antiquity' did not share this perspective. As Lane Fox has observed, “To the Jews, demons were not the ambiguous intermediaries whom pagans placed between gods and men; they were outright agents o f evil, the troupe o f Satan himself.” 134 The splitting o f the daemons into unambiguous bands o f good and evil forces— already evi­ dent, it would seem, in Philo’s preference for the Biblical term an gel— is clear in the following statement from the Talmudic tractate B erakotb: W hen Sam uel had a bad dream , he used to say, “T h e dreams speak falsely.” W hen he had a good dream , he used to say, “D o the dreams speak falsely, seeing no $ cc fo r example, the many passages o f judgment and exhortations to righteousness in 1 Enoch and The Testament i f I.e n , as well as the discussion by Tabor, Things Unutterable, pp. 7 5 - 7 6 , and his bibliographical notes 1 and 3 3 on pp. 9 8 . 102. ,- short, thus immod■ " Milli e "Ke Im.ij'inmg the Sell’ in Dreams," \\ 39. I am h»\, Vafliun ami Christians, p 150. f hi 4 .7 9 5 8 0 7 (ed Stanford, \\ 7 1 ; nans, lit/gerald, p. 78). " Meta 11.400 7 5 0 mans. Humphries, pp. 2 7 2 82}. " " See pp 3 3 3 5 above. 1 ( 'outra ( ¡atIt's 31 3 8 4 4 (ed. and n ans Thomson, pp. 8 6 87). ,s" Amat, Sonjfes ct Visions, p. 100

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cstly exposing her neck ro public view, an act that, in Tertullian’s view, was tantam ount to advertising her sexual availability. This improperly veiled woman dreamed that an angel struck her on the nape o f her neck while making sarcastic remarks about the elegance o f her “nudity.” 151 For Tertullian, the importance o f this dream went beyond its function o f chastizing the questionable behavior o f a fellow parishioner; rather, the dream o f an individual provided a theological charter o f social demeanor for all women.152 In this regard, Tcrtullian’s biographer Tim othy Barnes has aptly observed that, “as was his constant practice, [Tcrtullian] related his appar­ ently abstruse reasonings to the familiar context o f life in Carthage.153 Tcrtullian did have “abstruse reasonings” about dreams. He was, in fact, the first late-antique Latin author to compose a sustained oneiric theory, which occupies several chapters o f his work O n th e S ou l.,54 Tertullian’s pronouncement that “just about the majority o f people get their knowledge o f God from dreams” surely puts the dream on solid theological ground.155 Relying heavily on Stoic ideas about the salutary nature o f sleep and the perpetual mobility o f the soul, Tcrtullian argues that sleep is a natural state, part o f the rational work o f God (ra tion ale aliqttod opus d ei esse).156 No further p ro o f o f sleep as a natural state is needed than the biblical prototype o f Adam, who slept as well as ate and drank. But there is more to this scriptural prf: Adam’s sleep was the type o f the death o f Christ: “ For as Adam was a figure o f Christ, so Adam’s sleep was a figure o f the death o f Christ.” 157 Sleep is “so salutar)' and so rational” because sleep is an image {exem plar) o f the divine dispensation.158 As Waszink has observed, for Tcrtullian “the activity o f the soul during sleep is an image o f its sur­ vival after death, and its reanimating o f the body after sleep a symbol (; 6 6 .I2 9 7 A ; trails Fitzgerald, p 340).

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however, they move from the static to the dynamic and are put in m otion.187 Imagination creates the world, and there is no perception apart from it. As the “borderland” between unreason and reason, the body and the bodiless, p h an tasia is an uncanny dynamic, “taking from both extremes as from neighbors and so imagining in one nature things that dwell far apart.”188 As uncanny, imagination is “difficult to comprehend” because “it borrows any­ thing suitable to its purposes.”189 In the human realm, imagination is the basis o f consciousness; it is a “ halfway house between spirit and matter, which makes communication bet ween the two possible.”190 As the proper activity o f the sou\,p h an tasia is, according to Synesius, “a sort o f life in itself,” and he explains further that the imagining that happens in dreams is the most valuable, for whereas davtime knowledge comes from teachers, the knowledge in dreams comes Irom g o d .191 Neither sense-perceptive nor intellective— that is, neither sheerly empirical nor shccrly metaphysical— dream-knowledge provides the path lor ascent to what is most hidden in things. And what is most hidden is not abstruse ideas o r buried gold, but new ways o f coping with everyday problems and situations— not only how to tone down one’s own ml lamed rhetoric but also how to devise strategems for hunting and for dealing with o n es political enemies.192 Thus, once again, the dream func11ns as a technique for imagining the world well, so as not to be ensnared by its literalisms. Reinforcing his view o f dreaming as part o f the souls imaginative activity, Svnesius says, “If to look upon a god with one's own eye is a happy thing |here he refers to the sun as a visible god|, the approach to god by imagina­ tion is the more magnificent.”193 T h at is to say, fantasy provides the only access to divine speech, at least from the perspective o f dreams. The Synesian view that imagination is the basis o f human consciousness was part o f a widespread disposition in late antiquity concerning the construction o f meaning I he idea o f the imaginal basis o f consciousness came to expression paiiuulaiiv when the issue concerned human knowledge o f a divine or spmtti.il register ! the real, that is, in the context o f a desire to probe the depths ol the visible. To offer just a few examples: Plutarch remarked that ilu gods spe.ik m poetic circumlocutions, in image and metaphor; Philo spoke ol Hacking the scent of the divine through symbols and dreams; 1*1«»tnms said, Tvervw hcre we must read ‘so to speak,'” suggesting that Ibul I 5 ond to the features o f Artemidorus’ theo­ rematic dream. For discussion, see A.H.M Kcsscls, “Ancient Systems of Dream Classification," pp. 3 9 5 96. *M In sow Sup 1.3.8 II fed. Willis, pp. 10 II; tram Stahl, p. 90).

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\a¡iatum] since h e observed the estates to which the souls o f o thers |aliorum \ w ere destined. It is social since he learned th a t fo r m en w ith m erits sim ilar to his th e same places w ere being prepared as for himself. It is public since he foresaw th e victory o f R om e and the destruction o f C arthage, his trium ph o n the C ap itolinc, and th e com in g civil strife. And it is universal since by gazing up and down he was initiated in to the wonders o f the heavens, the great celestial circles, and the harm ony o f the revolving spheres, things strange and unknown to m ortals before this; in addition he witnessed the movements o f th e stars and planets and was able to survey th e w hole earth.92

By so situating the “Dream o f Scipio” such that it is both a fictional allegori­ cal text and an actual person’s dream subject to several taxonomic categories, Macrobius both underscores the text’s semiotic protiiscness and creates the space for his own interpretive intervention. T he procedural method that Macrobius used to compose his commentary demonstrates why it was important for him first to establish the massive signifying potential o f the Ciceronian text that provided the occasion for the commentary. H e begins by excerpting a phrase o r a longer passage from the “Dream o f Scipio” and positions it at the beginning o f a chapter o r a group o f chapters. His own interpretive uncovering o f the meaning(s) o f the excerpted passage then follows. Macrobius’ work belonged to a genre o f commentary, used by other latc-fourth- and fifth-century Ncoplatonists, which has been described as “a very liberal genre” because it allowed for “the clarification o f preliminary explications and the introduction o f new per­ spectives, in order to arrive at a long digression that can take on the appear­ ance o f a veritable treatise.”93 The long digression that becomes a treatise in its own right is certainly a feature o f Macrobius' commentary. Indeed, as Stahl has observed, the text o f the interpretive commentary is sixteen or seventeen times as long as that o f the “Dream o f Scipio.”94 Macrobius' initial framing o f the Ciceronian text in terms o f literary-philosophical and oneiric interpretive strategies that ensure the explosive semiotic quality o f that text thus provided a necessary rationale for his method o f commentary. As I suggested in the introduction to this chapter, allegorists operated out o f an expectation o f textual polysemy and so delighted in the convergence o f infinite relationships that oneiric images set in motion. However, those relationships are not in fact as infinite as the interpretive strategies that produce them might seem to lx*. There was a control on the semiotic play o f textual images, and that control was provided by the ideational context o f w Ibid. 1.3.12-13 (cd. Willis, p. I I; trans. Stahl, pp. 9 0 -9 1 ). ‘M |.Ki|iKs H jiiu iu , Macrobe ct le Neo I’laionisme I Mm, a la Fin du I V'Siede, p. 153; see pp MX 54 lor a discussion o f the currency of this genre o f commentary in Neoplatonic t irclcs. '** Stahl, Macroinns: ( '.onmicntarv on the Dream o f Scipio, p 12

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the interpreter. Macrobius was steeped in Neoplatonic learning, and in his hands, Cicero’s text expands by means o f those treatise-like digressions until it encompasses a synthetic presentation o f Neoplatonic philosophy- As a recent interpreter has phrased it, Macrobius’ C om m en tary on th e D ream o f Scipio offers a “harmonious heritage o f Roman, Greek, and oriental values, bathed in Neoplatonic light.”95 According to Macrobius, an entire Neoplatonic encyclopedia lay en­ coded in this brief dream-text. Because Cicero hinted at “profound truths . . . with amazing brevity, concealing his deep knowledge o l things beneath a concise form o f expression,” Macrobius tk as his task the patient unfolding o f the depths o f knowledge lurking in these alluring hints.96 H e proceeded systematically by following the topics introduced in the “Dream o f Scipio” in the order o f their appearance. For example, C ic­ e ro s mention o f the dreamer Scipio’s destined age (“seven times eight rec lin ing circuits o f the sun”) leads Macrobius into a lengthy recitation o f Pythagorean arithmetic; mention o f the just ruler produces a catalogue o f 11le virtues; a brief description o f the celestial spheres issues in a very detailed presentation o f astronomical theory; and so on.97 Macrobius covers three o f the four sciences o f the qu adriviu m , mathematics, music, and astronomy, and partially covers the fourth (geography being a part ofgeom etry), as well as giving a passionate and lengthy disquisition on Neoplatonic views o f the origin, nature, and immortality o f the soul.98 Possessed o f a finely tuned sensibility for the signifying value o f Cicero’s dream-text, Macrobius exploited that text’s cryptic images in order to display the philosophical erudition o f the Neoplatonic tradition to which he belonged. Just as a diviner might inspect the spots on an animal's liver, so Macrobius scrutinized the signs o f Scipio’s dream. Allegorical interpreta­ tion might indeed be considered as the linguistic parallel o f divination, because it is a procedure that traces the convergence o f textual relationships just as divination traces the convergence o f relationships in the natural world. As in dream divination, so also in allegorical “divination” o f dream­ iest s, human subjectivity is shaped by the enlargement o f its sphere o f ref erence. Artemidorus’ divinatorv technique enlarged the sphere o f refer­ ence o f his clients bv enlightening them about the conundrums o f their social situations, but Macrobius’ technique was infinitely more expansive, taking his readers outward as tar as they could go, to the edges o f cosmos itself. ,,s Mamant, Mncrobc et le Nfo-Plntnnisme Latin, p. 686. ’*• In sow. Seif). 2 .1 2 .7 (cd. Willis, p. 131; trails. Stahl, p. 223). Ibid. 1.5 6 (arithmetic; cd. Willis, pp. 14 .34); 1.8 (virtues; cd. Willis, pp. 3 6 3 9 ); I 17 22 (astronomy; ctl. Willis, pp. 6 6 94). See Mamant, Maavbc et leNeo-Platimisnte Latin, p. 6 9 4 (Appendix), lor a convenient eliari o f the correspondence between Ciceros and Macrobius’ texts. ,,M Mamant, Ataerobe et le Neo Platoniswe Latin, p. 167.

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Although a concern for the tight management and ordering o f oneiric images does not appear on the “surface” o f Mac robins’ text as it does on Artemidorus’, there is nonetheless in Macrobius’ commentary a systematiz­ ing o f the textual images o f Scipio’s dream that limits their signifying poten­ tial. Despite the encouragement to polvsemous play that allegorical and oneiric theory provided, o f which Macrobius certainly took advantage, the play o f images in his text was confined to a specific playground, bounded by the tenets o f Neoplatonic philosophy. Other allegorists o f oneiric texts were also caught in this curious interpre­ tive dynamic whereby the explosive semiosis o f textual images was both affirmed and curbed by ideological conviction. O ne o f the most interesting chapters in oneiric allegory concerns the interpretive legacy o f Jacob’s dream o f a heavenly ladder in the biblical book o f Genesis. In the allegorical tradition that this dream fostered, the interplay o f oneiric trope and reli­ gious ideology yielded a very dense sphere o f reference, both for the text and for the reader. The text o f Jacobs dream reads as follows: Jacob left Beer-sheba, and w ent toward H aran. And lie came to a certain place, and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one o f th e stones o f th e place, he pu t it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. A nd he dream ed that there was a ladder set up o n th e earth, and the top o f it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels o f G od were ascending and descending o n it! A nd behold, the Lord stexxi above it and said, “I am the L o rd , the G od o f Abraham your father and the G od o f Isaac; the land o n w hich you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust o f the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the cast and to the north and to the sou th ; and by you and your descendants shall all th e families 1 th e earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; fo r I will n o t leave you until I have done that o f w hich I have spoken to you.” T h en Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely th e L o rd is in this place; and I did n o t know it.” And he was afraid, and said, “H ow awesome is this place! T h is is none o th er than th e house o f G o d , and this is the gate o f heaven.” S o Jacob rose early in the m orning, and he ux>k th e ston e which he had put under his head and set it up fo r a pillar and poured o il o n th e to p o f i t . "

The allegorical, interpretive tradition attached to this dream singled out three o f its images as particularly rich tropes: Jacob himself, the stone that he used for a pillow and later anointed with oil, and the ladder with its ascend­ ing and descending angels. In the work of the allegorists, each o f these images is productive o f further images bv the process o f allegorical associa­ tion. T h at is, each o f these becomes a figure for vet another figure in a w ikn

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constant displacement o f terms that one theorist has called the “lateral dance o f interpretation,” “an incessant movement from one displaced figural point to another.”100 From their textual ground in Genesis, Jacob, the stone, and the ladder become, allegorically, sites o f centrifugal chains o f figures as their signifying power is multiplied and disseminated. W hat follows is an ex­ cursus, an allegorical journey through Jacob's dream. First, Jacob. Philo o f Alexandria, w ho gave this dream o f Jacob its length­ iest allegorical treatm ent, and the rabbinic M idrash R a b b a h both took Jacob io be a type o f the virtuous man, and both associated his character closely with 1Iaran, the place in which the dream occurred. For Philo, “Haran” is a coded term for one o f the elements o f human knowing, sensory perception {m sthesis). As he explains, the senses are “understanding’s messengers” (ani¡elni ilim w ins) and “bodyguards o f the soul” (don tphoroipsiiches); they are a refuge lor the person who cannot yet understand directly with the mind a lo n e 101 Jacob, the “lover o f virtue,” uses the senses in a disciplined way ( Philo calls him an asketes, an “ascetic”) in order to find a path to the “city o f intellect."10-' Philos philosophical program o f coordinating scripture with tlu tenets of Middle Platonism is clearly evident here, as he uses Jacob as a ligui e o ft he cpistrophe o r turning o f the soul from material to metaphysical rcalitv.lo < Put there is more to Haran than this. In the Greek text o f the dream 1 Jacob that Philo is quoting, Haran is called a “place” (topos), a word charged with religious connotations.104 Although the word is given three allegorical meanings, the one that defines Jacob’s position designates this topos as a space filled by the divine words {logoi) o f G od, the healing angels linked with dreams.105 Thus Jacob, as a figure for this topology, is not really a person but a cipher for an epistemological process whereby the forces o f the human mind moving from sensory to divine wisdom are explored. Phe M idrash R a b b a h arrives at its estimation o f Jacob by asking a more caithbound set o f questions. Exploring the statement “And Jacob went o u t," the authors o f this text wondered. Was In then the only one who went out from that place? How many ass-drivers ami i aim I drivers went out with him! Said R. ‘Azariah in the name of R. Judah h Simon and R I lanan in the name of R. Samuel b. R. Isaac: When the " H' ) I lillis Miller, lictioii unit Repetition, p. 127; Vincent Lcitcli, Deconstructin' Criticism, p I'M 92. I,M D r мчи I 2 7 aiul 4 4 (text and trails, in Colson and Whitaker, pp. 3 0 8 9 ; 3 1 8 -1 9 ). lo ’ Ihid I 4ft If» (text and trails. ( iolson and Whitaker, p. 318 19); the Greek word askesis means "exorcise," "practice," o r "training.” ,,M See Rolicrt Here liman. Prom Philo to Ori/jen, pp. 172 7 6 , l«»i Philo's dependence on Middle Platonic epistemology. ,,M l;o r Philo's use o f the word place to designate a space o f divine revelation, see Segal, Dw Pimm m 11ca n //, pp If* I 6 4 . ■u ‘ Dc sow. 1.61 7 0 (text and trails in Whitaker and Colson, pp. 3 2 8 3.3). See Ch. 2, pp f»l r>2 above lot Philos linking ot angel, tonus, and dream

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righteous man is in the town, he is its luster, its majesty, and its glory; when he leaves it, its luster, its majesty, and its glory depart.106 As the editors o f this text note, the point o f this passage is that the statement in question, “And Jacob went ou t,” is superfluous, because the fact that he went elsewhere makes his going out obvious and so leads to misleading questions about camel-drivers. Given the apparent superfluity o f the state­ ment, there must be something significant about the fact that it was Jacob w ho went o u t— hence the meditation on the righteous man, o f whom Jacob was a type.107 “Place” is also important in the rabbinic interpretation. Using a typical strategy o f piling up scriptural verses that mention “place” such that each succeeding verse supplants its predecessor in a metonymous chain o f signification, Jacob's “place” takes on dense religious overtones as a space o f divine revelation and prayer.108 Among Christian interpreters, Origcn o f Alexandria was closest to Philo in his troping o f Jacob as a figure for the quest for knowledge. Having moved through moral and natural philosophy, “Jacob practises the inspec­ t é e science, in that he earned his name o f Israel [“the one who sees”] from his contemplation o f the things o f God, and saw the camps o f heaven, and beheld the house o f G od and the angels' paths— the ladders reaching up from earth to heaven.”109 As for Philo, Jacob signifies the ability to see through the riddling aesthetic surfaces o f things to their transcendent im­ p ort.110 Other Christians interpreted Jacob by using typological exegesis, in which theological affinities between the two Testaments o f the Bible were uncovered by a juxtaposition o f images, the earlier images being understood as préfigurations o f the later.111 For example, Justin M artyr took Jacob to be, figuratively, a spiritual father o f Christians, both because Christians traced the lineage o f the Christ through Jacob and because the dream had promised that Jacob's heirs would bring blessings to all the families o f the earth.112 For Ambrose, Jacob was a type o f Christ, because o f his obedience, while for Tertullian he prefigured Christians because, in his dream, he had seen “Christ the Lord [where Christ is the visible manifestation o f G od in the dream ], the temple o f G od, and the gate by which heaven is entered.”113 While the dreamer Jacob seems to have been unusually productive o f 106 Midrash Kabbah 6 8 .6 (cd. and trans. Freedman and Simon, p. 619). i°7 Freedman and Simon, The Midrash Kabbah, p. 619n.3. 108 Midrash Kabbah 6 8 .9 (cd. and trans. Freedman and Simon, pp. 6 2 0 - 2 2 ) . ,h’s ickv pillow because only austere sleeping conditions will yield such superhuman visions.115 For Philo as well, Jacob and his stone become em­ blematic o f a rigorous ascetic program. Engaging in a lengthy diatribe against those addicted to material com forts, he takes Jacob’s stony recline as an indicator o f the ethical benefits o f philosophical discipline.116 As usual lor Philo, the stone’s signifying potential is not limited to ethical reflection. Recalling that the place where Jacob lay is a “holy land full o f incorporeal words,” Philo takes the stone to be the best o f these words; thus the sleeping Jacob is actually awake, reposing on the divine logos.117 A final turn on the figure of the stone comes from Christian typology, in which the rock was seen as a préfiguration o f the Christ. The link here depended on a linguistic pun , la« «>b had “anointed” the rock after awakening, just as the Christ was ih« "anointed one” (messiah) o f God. Thus Jacob, by sleeping on the anointed rock, could be seen in another sense as the precursor o f ( Inisiians ,,H I inallv, i he ladder. The M idrash K a b b a h first allegorizes the ladder and its angels m terms «»f the temple and its cult. In this sense, the ladder represents i he M a i l way leading to the altar; the fact that this ladder reached to heaven is 1,1 M uir ash Hu/rial>68.11 (cd. and trans. Freedman and Simon, pp. 6 2 3 - 2 4 ) . ,ls t lemeni «•! Alexandria, Vaedaflogus 2 .9 .7 8 (ed. and trans. Mondésert, 2:157). ,,ft D r win I 120 2 6 (text and trans. in Colson and Whitaker, pp. 3 6 0 - 6 5 ). II Ibid. I 127 2 9 (text and trans. in Colson and Whitaker, pp. 3 6 4 67). " K Justin, Dial. 8 6 .2 (ed. and trans. Archambault, p. 6 2 ) ; Cyprian, A d Quirwum 2.16 ( C ( 7 3 :5 2 ).

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taken to designate the upward wafting o f sacrificial odors; the angels are the High Priests, ascending and descending the stairs to the altar. N ext, the scriptural ladder is taken as a préfiguration o f another scriptural scene, the com ing o f Moses and Aaron to Sinai. Now the ladder is the mountain, and Moses and Aaron are the angels. A final twist makes Jacob himselfthe ladder upon whom angels move: “Som e were exalting him and others degrading him, dancing, leaping, and maligning him "— a curious scene o f glorifica­ tion and punishment in which Jacob is compared positively to a king when he does his proper job o f judging and negatively to the king when he sleeps, thus neglecting his duty.119 Tertullian also connected the ladder with judgment, but he placed the ladder in a Christian eschatological setting. The ladder itself is G od s deci­ sive judgment that some will enter the heavenly resting place and some will n ot; here the angels are ascending and descending human souls.120 Most Christians, however, followed the Gospel o f John in connecting the ladder with the Christ as a mediating figure between the human and the divine: “You shall see the heavens opened, and the angels o f God ascending and descending upon the Son o f M an.”121 Following this statement in the New Testament, patristic tvpologists juxtaposed the ladder (which they imagined was made o f wckkI) with the tree o f life and the cross o f Jesus in order to show the salvific function o f the cross and its préfiguration in earlier sacred texts.122 Philo’s psychological allcgorization o f the ladder has already been dis­ cussed, wherein the ladder designates the soul as an interior stairway along which the lojjoi o f G od move, connecting mind with body.123 hut Philo gave this image many other tropological turns. One o f the most interesting, apparently drawn from Plato's picture o f the winged soul in the P hacdrns, takes the ladder to be the air between earth and heaven; this air is filled with souls in constant m otion, descending into bodies and then ascending back to the heavenly realm in an angelic flutter.124 Ultimately, for Philo, the ladder with its ascending and descending angels is a figure for the aijôn or ,lg Midrash Rabbah 68 .1 2 (cd. and trans. Freedman and Simon, pp. 6 2 5 - 2 6 ) . 120 A dirt'sus Mnnionem 3 .2 4 .9 (C C L 1 :5 4 3 ); Tertullian also used the ladder as an image o f the function o f persecution in the church— those ascending had stood the test o f persecution, while those descending hail not; see D e Fuqa in Versecutione 1.3 4 (C C L 2 :1 1 3 5 -3 6 ). 121 Gospel o f John 1.51 (RSV ). In this verse, Jacob’s ladder is equated with Jesus as the messianic Son o f Man. 122 Ircnaeus. Dcwonstratio 4 5 (ed. and trails. Fridevaux, p. 104); Hippolytus, On the I'assmrr 51 (cd. and trans. Nautili, p. 176); Ambrose, On Reliefin the Resurrection 100 (N PN F 10:190). ,2-* In sow 1.4 6 4 9 (text and trails m Golsou and Whitaker, pp. 3 1 8 - 2 1 ) ; sec Ch. 2, p. 6 1 , above. 121 In sow. 1.133 3 9 (text and trails in Colson and Whitaker, pp. 3 6 8 - 7 1 ) ; Plato, Vhaedrus 2 4 6 C 2561 ; (( Wetted IhaliHiues, pp. 4 9 3 502).

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struggle o f the mystic experiencing the ups and downs o f spiritual aspiration.125 Originally part o f a narrative in which a legendary forefather is historicized, the dream o f Jacob breaks o u t o f its contextual frame when, in alle­ gory, its images become autonomous signifiers available for use in the con­ struction o f oth er systems o f meaning. Thus loosened from the signified, Jacob, the stone, and the ladder multiply the interpretive operations o f inquiry and response. Like dreams themselves, dream-texts such as the dream o f Jacob and the dream o f Scipio were discourses that functioned mcdiatorially to lead the interpreter out into other, more richly nuanced regions o f apprehension. The qualities o f enigma, secret, and disguise that were attributed to such oneiric texts were enhanced by the fact that such texts were also dreams, riddling by definition. Texts like the dream o f Jacob were therefore doubly provocative o f the kind o f interpretive quests in which allegorists engaged. It was no accident, I think, that the two most sustained allegorical interpretations o f dream-texts extant from GraccoRoman antiquity— Macrobius’ commentary on the dream o f Scipio and Philos commentary on Jacob’s dream— were prefaced with detailed theoiet ical and taxonomic discussions o f the phenomenon o f dreams.126 Implic­ it l\, at least, these authors recognized the essential compatibility o f dream and allegory as functions o f the imagination that worked to tease the mind into active thought. The foregoing explorations o f the various interpretive strategies em­ ployed by Graeco-Roman onirologists and allegorists to decode the puz­ zling images o f dreams and dream-texts have suggested that the dream was both embedded in and productive o f an insistently figurative way o f viewing the social, psychic, religious, and philosophical dimensions o f life. W hat­ ever else one might say about late-antique habits o f mind, it seems clear that the various means o f manipulating oneiric phenomena attest to a wide­ spread interest in the development o f imaginal languages for use in situating and understanding self and world. In the case both o f classifiers and allcgorists, the decoding o f oneiric images amounted to a recoding, a “translai in" from image to image, and the emphasis lay on the interpretive process ii self and on the relational dynamic thus set in motion. The observation o f die philosopher Gaston Bachelard, that “we understand figures by their In sow. 1.1 5 3 - 5 6 (text and trails, in Colson and Whitaker, \\ 379). For a discussion o f ladder imagery in Graeco-Roman art as well as in texts, see G Nock, "A Vision ol Mandulis Aion," pp. 5 3 104.

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seized by the dream. Because this dream introduces elements that will be important in showing how Hernias’ text uses dreams to mediate conflicts between the pragmatic concerns o f life in the world and the spiritual concerns o f the Christian community, it will be quoted in full: D uring my prayer I saw th e heavens open and that woman o f w hom I was enam ored saluting m e with the w ords: “G reetings, H ernias!” W ith m y eyes fixed o n her, I said: “Lady, w hat arc you d oing here?” H er answer was: “I have been taken up to convict you o f your sins before the Lord.” T o this I said: “A re you m y accuser at this m om ent?” “ N o,” she said, “b u t you must listen to w hat 1 am ab o u t to tell you. G o d w ho dwells in heaven, the creato r o f livings o ut o f nothing, he, w ho increases and multiplies them to r the sake o f Ins holv ch u rch , is angry with you fo r your offenses against m e.” For answer I said: “( M enses against you! How so? H ave I ever made a coarse remark to you? I lave I not always regarded you as a goddess? D id I n o t always show you the res|>ect due to a sister? Lady, why d o you make these false charges o f wickedness and uncleanness against me?” W ith a laugh she said: “In your heart there has arisen the desire o f evil. Surely you think it evil that an evil desire arises in the heart o f a good man. It is a sin,” she said, “yes a great sin. l oi th e g o o d man aims at justice. And in this aim at justice his gom i nam e in heaven is secure and he keeps th e Lord propitious in every action o f his, while those w ho pursue evil draw death and captivity o n themselves, in particular those that reach o u t fo r this world and glory in their riches and d o n o t hold last to th e blessings to com e. T h e ir souls will be sorry, fo r they have n o hope. Instead, they have abandoned their |true] selves and their [real] life. As tor you, pray G od and he will heal you o f your sins, yours, your w hole house­ hold's, and those o f all th e saints.28

I bis oneiric figure is Rhode, a Christian woman (“sister” ) in whose housein »M I lermas had served as a slave before he was freed. As Hernias tells the reader, Rhode had once asked him, her servant, to help her out o f the I iber alter a bath, a gesture whose casual insensitivity toward the slave’s sexual lee lings “had not been calculated to increase our prophet’s peace o f mind.” as Brown remarks.29 Entranced by the sight o f Rhode’s naked loveliness, the married Hernias had felt adulterous longings which he had not repressed altogether successfully.30 The oneiric Rhode is thus a figura,M Vis 1 1 4 9 (trails. Mariquc, pp. 2 3 3 -3 4 ). ^ Vis I I I 2; on Rhode, see Brown, T he Body and Society, p. 7 0 , and Lane Fox, Pagans m id ( 'bustnws, p. 3 82. See Vis. 1.1.1 2 : “H e who brought me lip sold me to a certain Rhode at Rome. After many years I made her acquaintance again, and began to love her as a sister. After some time I saw her bathing in the river Tiber, and gave her my hand and helped her out o f the river. When I saw her l*eauiv I reflected in my heart and said: ‘ I should be happy if 1 had a wife of such beauty and character.’ Tim was mv only thought, and no other, no, not-one" (trails. Lake, p. 7).

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tion o f his erotic desire in dreamlike reality, and she charges I lcrmas with the sexual sin o f lust (“desire o f evil in the heart”) but counsels that prayer will bring healing. Although this dream shows Hernias to be an early witness to the con­ cern for self-control in sexual matters that Christians shared with others in the culture at this time, sexual misconduct is not the primary ethical di­ lemma that Hernias' text addresses.31 Hernias did not attempt to impose a program o f radical sexual austerity and idealized virginity on the Roman Christian community the way that Jerome did three centuries later; he was, after all, married and was addressing a community o f married house­ holders.32 Instead, Hernias was engaged in defining the Christian commu­ nity in terms o f a purity o f moral purpose that he constructed as a childlike simplicity not rent bv conflicting inner drives.33 As the above monologue o f the dream-within-a-dream suggests, the concern for ethical integrity was expressed in the form o f a critique o f the behavior o f the wealthy, whose secular business interests clashed with the spiritual neighborliness required for the cohesion o f the religious community. A second, very important, problematic in the area o f ethics was the issue o f repentance, later amplified as the doctrine that, after baptism (the first repentance o r forgiveness) one could sin and repent only once in order to receive salvation.34 It is important to remember that, in these attempts to negotiate the intersection o f world and church, o f business and the spirit, I Jennas’ own experience as a dreamer is presented as the paradigm for the resolution o f conflict. Hernias' text presents another instance o f the function o f dream­ ing in late antiquity as a strategy o f rhetorical indirection whereby the dreams o f an individual are taken to signify inferentially for a whole com ­ munity.35 A return to Hernias as dreamer will demonstrate how this strat­ egy o f indirection takes the reader at the same time into the divided heart o f the text's protagonist and that o f the reader as well. 31 For Hernias' preaching on continence, see M aud. 4.1.1 - 10 and the discussion in Brown, The Body and Society pp. 7 0 7 2 ; on practices o f self-control in the context o f sexuality, see Foucault, The History o f Sexuality, 3 :5 9 - 6 0 , 1 2 4 -3 2 . 32 Brown, The Body and Society p. 70. 33 Aland. 2.1: "H e |the shepherd | said to me: ‘Have simplicity and be innocent and you shall lx- as the children who do not know the wickedness that destroys the life o f men” (trails. Lake, p. 71). For discussions o f the theme o f purification in The Shepherd, see Maier, The Social Setlinji o f the Minishy, pp. 6 5 7 2 ; Brown, T he Body and Society, pp. 7 0 - 7 1 ; Lane Fox, Eaqans and ( 'l/ristians, p. 3X6. 34 Vis. 1.1.9; 2 .2 .4 X. On the interconnection o f the issues o f apostasy, wealth, and repen­ tance, see Maier, The Social Settinij o f the Ministry, pp. 5X 6 5 ; L. Will. Countryman, T he Rich Christian in the Church o f the Early Empire, p. 135. Carolyn Osiek, Rich and Poor in the Shepherd of11ennas, gives a thorough analysis ol the social context of the conflicts in Hernias’ communin'. 35 See above, < h. 2, pp. 6 6 6 7 , for a similar universalizing use o f a dream by the Christian theologian lertulli.in; on the rhetoru of indirection, see < 'll 2, p 73

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In Hernias' text, there is a metonymous movement from the literary consciousness o f Hermas as author to the oneiric consciousness o f Hermas as dreamer and on to the interpretive consciousness o f the individual reader and the communal assembly o f readers for whom the text operates as a mirror. This complicated structure o f writerly and rcadcrly perspec­ tives is reflected, for example, in the way in which Hermas as character in the text is presented as being invaded by dreams, while the author o f the text later represents himself as an avid seeker o f dreams and, as author, has assembled the dreams in a literary com position that charts a paradigmatic course o f moral progress. The unsuspecting Hermas o f the text differs from the author Hermas as moral prophet, and this doubled textual voice matches the doubled role o f dreams as instruments o f personal and social reform. Interestingly, the complexity o f the text is also reflected in the structure o f the first dream that visits itself upon our hapless hero: it is a dream within a dream , presented as having a strikingly tactile and autonomous existence. Attributions o f independence and sensuous presence to dreams were, o f course, as old as H om er; what is unusual here is that a dreamfigure like Rhode should appear within the frame o f another dream and, further, that such a dream-within-the dream should be doubled by the appearance o f a second oneiric revealer.36 As in the case o f this text’s implied affirmation o f its own angelic trope discussed earlier in this chap­ ter, so also here the text shows itself to be one that demands to be read as a referential structure in which form and content m irror each other. To return, then, to Hermas as dreamer. When the oneiric Rhode de­ parts, Hermas is back in the nightmarish outer dream, “shuddering and in grief.”37 H e begins an interior dialogue: “I f this sin is recorded against me, how shall I be saved?” The dream has created in Hermas a new— indeed, a shocking— awareness o f his situation. The fact that a dream might provoke enlarged o r deepened understanding o f one’s condition is not surprising to us as beneficiaries o f the depth-psychological insights initiated by Freud and his colleagues. N or would it be a surprise to such late-antique thinkers as Artemidorus, whose catalogue o f world-changing dreams is ample testi­ mony. So also, I suggest, for Hermas: the patterns o f connections woven by dreams will profoundly alter his understanding o f himself and his world. M‘ There are parallels to rhe phenomenon o f the dream-within-a-dream in The Sacred Tales o f Aristides. Be hr. Ae/ins Aristides and the Sacred Tales, observes that “the authoritative dream figure, for the ancients the vehicle o f the dream oracle . . . . has often become for Aristides an interpreter to explain the significance o f the dream action in the same dream sequence” (p. 195). See especially Sacred Tales 1.17; 3 .3 7 ; 5 .2 0 ; 5 .6 5 (trails. Behr. Complete Works, 2 :2 X 0 , 314. 3 4 3 , 351).

Vis. 1.2.1.

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At the close o f his conversation with himself. Hermas begins to doubt. His doubt introduces what will be another major problematic o f the text, an exploration o f the emotional and intellectual condition o f dipsūchos, o f being double-minded.38 As the dreams, and then later the mandates and parables, unfold, it becomes clear that double-mindedness and m etattoia, repentance, are intertwined issues in this text’s view. Meanwhile, in Hernias' moment o f doubt, a second dream-within-the-dream makes its appearance: While I was considering and doubting these things in my heart I saw before me a white chair o f great size made o f snow-white w ool; and there came a woman, old and clothed in shining garments with a book in her hand, and she sat down alone and greeted me: “Hail, Hernias!” And I, in my grief and weeping, said: “ Hail, Lady! ” 39

The old woman, feigning ignorance, asks Hermas why he is so gloomy. He explains about the fears aroused by Rhode, she reveals her knowledge o f his sorry state, and then she offers to read to him from the book in her hand. At this point. Hernias' doubt turns to fright.40 The dream announces that the words she will read will be “the glory o f God.” Hernias' response to the glory o f God is as follows: “ I heard great and awesome things which I cannot remember; for all the words were frightful, such as a man cannot bear.”41 As the old woman reveals, the frightful words are words addressed to “heathen and apostates.” Perhaps what Hernias finds so terrifying is his own apostate self, given the devastat­ ing critique that he has already suffered at the hands o f both dream figures, devastating because o f its demand that he face aspects o f himself that he would rather not see. As Lane Fox has remarked, I Jennas' visions are “a printout o f Christianity’s impact on a sensitive Christian soul.” 12 Also, as the author— the ethical double o f the character Hernias— later 38 On this issue see Oscar J. F. Seitz, “Antecedents and Signification o f the Term Dipsychos," pp. 131-40. •w Vis. 1.2.2 (trans. Lake, p. 11). Lane Fox has pointed to Hernias' indebtedness to “the imagery o f divination and pagan inquiry, in which a man, whether Jew or pagan, could ask the gods and angels for advice. It is this tradition which explains details o f his visions o f the Church. The chair and ivory bench, their coverlets, the sitting position, the use o f a stall', the words o f greeting and inquiry: these features can all lx* matched with the patterns o f inquiry which we find in pagan texts o f oracular spells aixl in questions to an attendant divinity” (Pagans and C'hristians. p. 389). *° Vis. 1.2.2 3 . 3 . 1lermas fright is not surprising. As Artcmidorus remarks. “A lxx>k |in a dream | indicates the life o f the dreamer” and Hernias has just been worrying precisely about the conduct o f his life (Artcmidorus, Onir. 2.45 |ed. Pack. p. 179; trans. White, P *25|). •" Vh 1.3.3 (trails. Lake, p. 15). Lane h ix. Pagans and Ctnistinin, p 3 8 9

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shows by means o f the parabolic images o f the shepherd, the community o f the church is also the object o f the old woman’s words. In the misuse o f financial patronage by its wealthy members, as well as in the community’s schismatic quarrels, the Roman church is vulnerable to the charge o f heathenish and apostate behavior.43 In any case, this is not the only time that Hernias will have trouble with the old woman’s words. Yet she leaves him cheerfully, saying “Play the man,” as though to suggest that if he will listen to her dream-words he will be a man and no longer the miserable and confused boy that he is at this mom ent.44 About a year later, Hcrm as is again seized by the spirit and taken to the same oneiric country as before. Again the old woman appears, reading aloud from a little book. She asks Hermas to take this verbal message to his community, but he can’t remember it all so she gives the book to Hermas to copy. I lermas comments: “I took it and went away to a certain place in the country, and copied it all, letter by letter, for I could not distinguish the syllables.”45 Hermas is not yet astute enough to understand this dreamwriting. The syllables that he cannot distinguish are, o f course, part o f the total oneiric image, by which he is baffled; yet, by the end o f this cycle o f dreams, he will be able to read and distinguish those “syllables,” the dreamimages themselves, very well. Thus part o f Hermas’ therapy— his initiation into repentance, and so into salvation— is literacy: he must learn to read the images o f dream, just as the author’s community must read the words o f T h e S hepherd. W hat the text presents as a painful autobiographical journey to ­ ward enlightenment is also a practical theological handbook for a commu­ nity that is in danger o f falling under the sway o f a corporate angel o f wickedness. A dramatic turning point for Hennas occurs some fifteen davs after this exercise in copying. Another dream reveals “the knowledge o f the writing” ; as it happens, the syllables were descriptive o f Hermas himself!46 Further­ more, the teaching about m etanoin is delivered in no uncertain terms: All the sins w hich [Christians| have form erly com m itted shall be forgiven them . . . up to this day, if they repent with their w hole heart and put aside double-m indedness from their heart. I f there lx* still sin after this day has been fixed, they shall find n o salvation; fo r repentance fo r the ju st has an end.47 “ Sun. 2.1 10; 9 .1 8 - 2 3 ; see Maicr, 7 be Social Setting o f the Ministry, pp. 6 4 , 6 6 - 6 8 . 44 Vis. 1.4.3. 45 Ibid. 2.1.4 (trails. Hike, p. 19). Taken literally. Hernias’ reference is to the continuous script o f early manuscripts in which there were no divisions between words; in the present context, his inability to read the oneiric writing has a metaphorical as well as a literal significance. •'* Ibid. 2.2.1. 47 Ibid. 2 .2 .4 5 (trails. Fake, p 21).

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Following this dream, which has unlocked the meaning o f images in an­ oth er dream just as the text o f T h e S hepherd unlocks the meaning o f Chris­ tian ethics, Hernias moves from uncertainty o r “doublc-mindcdncss” about his dreams to curiosity. Indeed, so curious does he become, pestering the old woman for the meaning o f his dreams' every detail, that she becomes exasperated with his continual questioning. Nonetheless, she explains Hilly the oneiric images o f the tower, the stones, the maidens, and so on.48 The dreams are teaching Hermas his “letters'’; that is, dreams are instruct­ ing him in the interpretation o f dreams. The dream-text interprets, and the interpretation is the dream-text. Furthermore, Hermas has suffered rnctan oia, the repentance that consists in a change o f consciousness. H e is now involved hermeneutically with the dreams, which not only teach him about salvation but themselves constitute his haven o f safe return from ignorance, doubt, and self-division. Leading up to the moment when the shepherd is bestowed on him as a permanent companion, Hermas has a whole series o f dreams. I will focus on three o f them. In the first, the old woman appears to Hermas; this time, she is the framing dream.49 She directs Hermas to g o into the country, where he finds, surprisingly, an ivory couch sitting in the wilderness. The woman appears in the company o f six young men, whom she directs to “go and build.” Hermas begs to know about this and thus commences the dreamwithin-the-dream, the building o f the tower. When this inner dream is over, Hermas, back in the outer dream, asks its meaning: “Lady, what does it benefit me to have seen these things, if I do not know what they mean?” She explains that the inner dream about the building o f the tower is a parable and that, further, she herself is the tower, which is also the church.50 Old woman, tower, and church exist in a metamorphic relation to each other; as images, they move in a kinetic swirl o f signification that again underscores the reflexive density o f this text. For the reader, it becomes difficult to distinguish which dream-image is frame for the other as the signifying ground continues to shift. Inner and outer change place and are multiplied mctonymically; this, I suggest, is one o f the text's signals that the reader is being led by an oneiric pedagogy into a form o f consciousness in which multiple perspectives can be entertained and analyzed. Having said that dream is parable, the old woman cautions Hermas: “D o not be double-minded as to what you sec.”51 In order not to be double­ 48 Ibid. 3 .2 .3 —8 .1 1. The phenomenon o f dream-images interpreting each other appears again later in the text; the parables that the shepherd dictates to Hermas are often further explications o f the earlier visions. See, for example. Situ. 9.1 3 , in which Hernias' dream o f a tower in Vis. 3 .2 .4 9 is interpreted in detail ••'I bid. 3.1 10. 50 Ibid. 3.1.1 8 (trails. Lake, p. 29). 51 Ibid. 3 .3 .4

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minded— that is, in order not to waver between two simplistic points o f view one must see parabolically; one must n o t be afraid o f multiple mean­ ing, the gift o f oneiric consciousness. As the Lady herself says, the doubleminded are those who doubt the visions o f dream .52 This is an important moment in I formas’ education into the literacy appropriate to the country of dreams: its visions arc mobile, many-faceted, metaphoric, and, like para­ ble, they shatter the kind o f literal-minded consciousness that would ask fse images are to be read in such a way that they provide contexts for each «»ther; lexi and context, image and meaning, exist in a continuously fruitful relationship. When the i »Id woman tells 1Icrmas not to hesitate o r waver on the issue o f the validity c»ft he dream as a vehicle for the representation o f meaning, she is giving a levs« >n in hermeneutics not only to the character Hermas but also to the community o f the authorial Hermas. As a figure not only for oneiric ievelati< »n but also for the church, she speaks with the voice o f ecclesiastical authority; her validation o f dreams is also a validation o f Hermas' dreamlx»ok, I b e Shepherd, as an authoritative guide for the Christian community. ( )ncc again, the self-reflexive strategy o f this text is evident. Furthermore, the lesson in hermeneutics also pertains to the condition o f double­ mindedness, which is frequently raised as a problem by this text. Double­ mindedness is not only a negative ethical stance, but also a negative interpretive stance that resists the use o f dream and parable as resources for the construction o f religious identity and meaning. It is in this context that this text's complicated strategy o f self-validation is situated. ( )ne of the striking features o f T h e S hepherd is that the double-minded businesspeople o f Hermas’ community are being invited by the text to evaluate their status as members o f the communin' in terms o f dreams and pai able As I have tried to suggest, there is a mimetic appeal operative in the text. u heiebv the reader is asked to see his o r her own condition mirrored in tin plight o! the main character, Hermas. Because the bulk o f Hermas' dieam instructions com e in the form o f parables, the reader, likewise, is being, invited io "read” his o r her thoughts and actions with a poetized eye. Indeed, in «»ne i \ statements that lie is presenting texts written by the martyrs themselves. IVipi mi,is •li.n \ lomposcs sections 3 10 o f the Passio, and Saturus’ dream, sections 11-13; sci lions I 2 .m On authors preface, and 1 4 -2 1 recount the martyrs’ deaths. " l*oi a discussion o f the genre as well as o f the Pass. Perp. in the context o f other martyrdoms, see Amat, Sonjjes et Visions, pp. 5 2 - 5 5 , 6 6 8 6 ; also Dulacv, l x Revc, pp. 4 1 - 4 6 . 1 ’ Polycarp and < 'vpri.ui are notable examples o f other martyrs who received premonitory dreams concerning their own deaths; for discussions ol these martvr dreamers, see Dulacv, lx Hew. pp 12 4 4 ( ( ’.ypriaii) and Amat, Sotigcs a Visions. pp. 62 6 6 (Polycarp); see also Pierre ( ourccllc, l.rs Confessions dr Saint Angnstm dans la tradition littrraire, pp. 127 30. Ul Amat, Sonnes et Visions. pp. 5 3 , 6 7 68.

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|osten datu r] if it is to be suffering unto death o r a passing thing.’ ” “And I,” she continues, “w ho know I was in dialogue with God \ejjo qu ae m esciebam fa b u la r i cum D om in o], whose great benefits I had experienced, promised him faithfully, saying. Tom orrow I’ll tell you.' And I asked for a vision, and this was shown to me.”17 Characterizing herself as one who could “talk with God” (fa b u la r i cum D om in o), Perpétua betrays her oneness with her culture, which understood dreams as a form o f communication with heavenly figures. Perpétua is one o f those whom her contemporary Car­ thaginian, Tcrtullian, might have included in his remark that most people get their knowledge o f God from dreams.18 W hat Perpétua asks to see is first called a visto, a technical onirological term designating a prophetic dream; later her oneiric experience, here and elsewhere in the diary, is further specified by verbal forms o f the noun ostensio, a term that carries a symbolic o r figurative sense in late-antique texts. As Amat has observed, “for Perpétua, as for Apuleius, the word [ostensio] appears to designate a striking scene, close to prodigious, that manifests divine power com ­ pletely”; it denotes a type o f figurative revelation that explains divine secrets.19 The figurative quality o f Perpetua’s vision is also conveyed im­ plicitly by the word she uses to characterize her speaking. F ab u lari, from fa b u lo r, “to converse” o r “chat,” not only suggests that dreaming is a linguistic event, a kind o f discourse; it also suggests that the dream is a p a rticu la r kind o f discourse, one associated with imaginative story-telling, with a “fabled” o r poeticized perspective.20 Again like Tcrtullian, who thought o f dreams as parables, Perpetua’s language implies an understand­ ing o f dreams as imaginai events. Prom antiquity to the present, commentary on the dreams has generally located Perpetua’s oneiric imagination in the context o f her roles as cate chumcn and martyr. As the following summaries o f reflections on her diary will show, the dreams have been construed as texts that mirror theo­ logical ideas and cultural praxis; curiously, their function as oneiric experiences— that is, as expressions o f transformations o f self-identity and deepened self-consciousness— has been largely neglected. A notable ex­ ception to the dominant interpretive perspective is that o f Peter Dronkc, who cautions that “Perpétua did not intend to construct spiritual allcgo17 Pass. Perp. 4.1 2 (cd. Van Beck, pp. 10 12). 18 For Tcrtullian’s oneiric theory, sec pp. 6 6 - 7 0 above. ,v Amat, Sonjfcs et Visions, p. 6 8 ; for farther uses o f ostensio to designate oneiric experience, see Pass. Pap. 7 .3 and 8 . 1 (cd. Van Beck, pp. 2 0 . 22). The religious intensity o f dreaming was underscored by a later passio that used the Pass. Pap. as its model. In the Passio M ariant et lacobi, the narrator exclaims, “(> sleep more intense than all our waking hours!" and remarks about the martyr-dreamers in his text that, while their companions cared for them by day, Christ cared lor them by night in dreams (7 .5 ; 6 .2 , cd. and traits. Musurillo, pp. 2 0 5 , 201). See Lewis and Short, A Palm Dtelivnan, s.v. fabulor, fabula.

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rics for the benefit o f later Christians."21 The tendency o f the scholarly tradition has been nonetheless to isolate the various images o f Perpetua's dreams and to amplify them in terms o f theological materials exterior to the texts o f the dreams themselves.

DREAM ONE In response to her brother’s recognition o f her visionary' ability and his suggestion that she ask for a dream to discern her and her companions' late, Perpetua had the following dream: I saw a bronze ladder, marvellously long, reaching as far as heaven, and narrow too jKople could climb it only one at a time. And on the sides o f the ladder every kind o f iron implement was fixed: there were swords, lances, hooks, cutlasses, javelins, so that if anyone went up carelessly or not looking upwards, she would be torn and her flesh caught on the sharp iron. And Inm ath tlu ladder lurked a serpent o f wondrous size, who laid ambushes for those mounting, making them terrified o f the ascent. But Saturus climbed up lust (he was the one who at a later stage gave himself up spontaneously on .к cfus he had built up our courage and then, when we were arrested, had been away). And he reached the top o f the ladder, and turned and said to me: “Perpetua, I’m waiting for you— but watch out that the serpent doesn’t bite you!" And I said: “He won’t hurt me, in Christ's name!” And under that ladder, almost, it seemed, afraid o f me, the serpent slowly thrust out its head— and, as if I were treading on the first rung, I mxl on it, and I climbed. And I saw an immense garden, and in the middle of it a white-haired man sitting in shepherd’s garb, vast, milking sheep, with many thousands o f peo­ ple dressed in shining white standing all round. And he raised his head, looked at me, and said: “You are welcome, child." And he called me, and gave me, и seemed, a mouthful of the cheese he was milking; and I accepted it in boih mv hands together, and ate it, and all those standing around said: “Amen ” Ami ai the sound o f that word I awoke, still chewing something indefinable and sweet. And at once I told my brother, and we understood that it would Ik- mortal suffering; and we began to have no more hope in the w«»rid.22 In a general sense, the commentaries on this dream have taken their clue from Perpetua's remark that she and her brother realized that their future would be one of suffering (in tellcx im u sp assion an essefn tu ra m ). T he dream has been construed as participant in a martyrological tradition o f premoni21 Dr« Hike, Women Writers ofthe MtddU A/jes, p 7. 22 Pass 1‘n-p 4 .3

10 (cd. Van Beck, pp. 12 14 1

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tory dreams, in which the dream serves to prepare the martyr psycho­ logically to withstand the forthcoming ordeal.23 Dreams like this one o f Perpetual have been compared with the dreams o f prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World W ar; in both cases, visions o f sumptuous, paradisal scenes serve to protect the dreamer from the horrors o f the real world in which he o r she is living.24 From the perspec­ tive o f Perpctua’s role as martyr, this dream has been said to have a double thematic: the image o f the dangerous ladder, bedecked with weapons o f war, prefigures the martyr’s present and future torture, while the image o f the shepherd in the garden prefigures the martyr’s delivery to another world where peace and blessing prevail.25 Ancient commentators also appropriated the dream as a witness to the phenomenon o f m artyrdom , although they placed it in a theological rather than a psychological context. Augustine, who preached three sermons on the festal days marking the commemoration o f the martyrdom o f Pcrpetua and Felicitas, emphasized the dedication to the faith that the martyrs’ actions demonstrated and situated their witness theologically with a vo­ cabulary dominated by the categories o f virtue and triumph.26 In com ­ ments on this particular dream, he noted its ascensional aspect: the ladder was “that by which the blessed Pcrpetua went to G od.”27 Augustine, o f course, no longer had to worry about governmental per­ secution o f Christians and so was free to use the testimony o f Perpetua’s diary in a generalized way as an ideal model o f Christian ethics and dedica­ tion. Earlier in the African Christian tradition, however, Tcrtullian was not free o f such worries, and he focused his theological vision more narrowly on this dream as p ro o f o f the privilege enjoyed by martyrs after death. In his D r a n im a, Tcrtullian included a long section on Christian views o f hell, and it was in this context that he referred to the dream o f Pcrpetua.28 According to Tcrtullian, hell is a vast and deep space in the interior o f the earth to which all souls, even those o f Christians, descend at death, there­ to stay imprisoned until released at the second coming o f the Christ. 2-' Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an A ge o f Anxiety, p. 5 0 ; Dronkc, Women Writers o f the Middle Ages, pp. 7 - 8 ; Amat, Songes et Visions, p. 5 0 ; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, pp. 4 0 0 - 4 0 1 . 21 Dulacy, h e R et*, pp. 4 4 - 4 5 . 25 Amat, Songes et Visions, p. 6 7 ; Dronkc, Women Writers o f the Middle Ages, pp. 7 - 8 . 20 Augustine, Sermons 2 8 0 - 8 2 , collected in Van Beck, cd., Passio Sanctorum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, pp. 149’ 154* ( PL 38 .1 2 8 0 1286). Barnes notes that, in Augustine’s era, the Pass. Perft. was read in church and regarded by some as canonical (Tcrtullian, p. 7 9 ) ; see Augustine, D c natūra et origine anitnae 1.10.12, in Van Beck, p. 154* ( = C S E L 60.312). 27 Augustine, Sem i. 280.1 (in Van Beck, p. 150*). iH Tcrtullian, D c an. 5 5 58 (cd. Was/ink, pp. 73 8 0 ); lor detailed discussions o f Tcr­ tullian s views o f the afterworld and hell, sec Was/ink, lertulliani De anima, pp. 5 5 3 - 9 3 ; Amat, Songes el Pries, pp. 148 53

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Arguing against Christians w ho asserted that Christ’s descent into hell had relieved them o f that underworldly sojourn, Tcrtullian counters with a reference to Pcrpctua’s dream: if all Christians g o immediately to paradise at death, how is it that Perpetua saw only Christian m artyrs there?29 Seiz­ ing upon the dream's image o f “many thousands o f people standing around [the shepherd]” (circum stantes can d id ati m ilia m u lta), Tcrtullian apparently took can d id ati to refer to martyrs as “candidates” for paradisal beatitude.30 Thus he appropriated the dream for a theological program that extended to martyrs alone the privilege o f entering paradise imme­ diately after death, a program that may well have been influenced by the high esteem accorded to martyrdom by Montanism, a prophetic move­ ment whose tenets Tcrtullian eventually embraced wholeheartedly.31 “The only key to paradise is your own blood,” is Tertullian’s terse summary o f his view o f Pcrpetua’s dream.32 While contemporary scholarship has noted the martyrological aspects o f ilus dream as well as the other three, it has given more attention to the div.tins as representative o f Pcrpctua’s status as a catechumen, that is, as one newly converted to and instructed in Christian doctrine. Thus the images ol the dreams have been scrutinized for evidence o f both Pcrpctua’s recent immersion in Christian belief and writings and her “pagan” past ( because the author o f the Passio described her as lib era liter in stitu ta, “welleducated,” she can be presumed to have been familiar with polytheist practice and belief). W ith regard to this first dream, commentators have ! narrow for more than one being to in1 K i d s , I'iinim and ( 'Jnistian in an A /je of'Anxiety, p. 5 1 ; to the contrary, Amat, Sonnes et l ‘mom, p. 75. Dodds, I‘m inn a nit Christm u in nn A jft of Anxiety, p. 51. ,l Dronkc, Women Writers o f tire M iddle A jin . p 9.

M Ibid.

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I realized th a t I was entitled to ask lo r a vision ab o u t him ,5354and that I ou g ht to ; and I began to pray fo r him a lot, and plaintively, to G od . T h at very night, this is w hat I was show n: I saw D inocrates com ing o ut o f a dark place, where there w ere many people. H e was very h o t and thirsty, his clothes d im - and his looks pallid— h e still had o n his face die same wound as when he died. W hen alive lie had been m y brother, w h o at the age o f seven died wretchedly, o f a cancer o f the face, in such a way that everyone saw his death w ith revulsion. S o I prayed for him , and betw een him and me there was a great gap, such that w e could not com e near each other. Beside D inocrates was a pool full o f water, with a rim that was higher than he. And D inocrates stretched up as i f to drink. I was full o f sorrow that, even though th e pool had water, the rim was s o high that he could n o t drink. And I awoke, and realized th a t m y brother was struggling. Yet I was confident th a t I could help him in his struggle, and I prayed fo r him every day, till we moved to th e m ilitary prison— fo r w e were destined to fight in the garrison-gam es: they were on Em peror G eta’s birthday. D ay and night I prayed fo r D inocrates, groaning and weeping that my prayer be granted. O n a day when we remained in fetters, I was shown this: I saw the place I’d seen before, and there was D inocrates, clean, well-dressed, refreshed; and where the wound had been I saw a scar; and th e pool I’d seen previously had its rim lowered: it was down to the boy's navel. And he was drinking from the pool incessantly. A bove the rim was a golden bowl full o f water. D inocrates came near it and began to drink from that, and the bowl never ran dry. And when he had drunk his fill, he began to play w ith the water, as children d o, lull ol happiness. A nd I awoke: I realized then that he’d been freed from pain ■1

Comm entary on this dream has centered on determining the status 11 he dark place in which the hot and thirsty Dinocrates first appears and, in consequence, on deciding which structures o f religious praxis best explain Pcrpetua’s intercessory power. Those who see the scene in terms o f Per petua's Christian beliefs place it in the context o f the parable o f the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 1 6 :1 9 -3 1 , which envisages an uncrossable abyss be­ tween the abode o f the blessed (“Abraham’s bosom” ) and Hades (presented as a hot place with no water). Tertullian’s use o f the same parable to reinforce his belief that Hades will not be opened until the second coming o f the 53 Musurillo, Acts o f the Christian M artyn, p. 115, translates this passage as follows: “At «»nee 1realized that I was privileged t«> pray for him” \et cojjm ui m estatim diqnam esse et pro co peterc tieberc\. Dronkes translation, "I realized that I was entitled to ask for a vision about him,” distinguishes between petere, “to seek o r request,” and orationem faccrc, “to offer prayers," in the next sentence; Dronkes translation maintains a structural analog)' between ihis scene and l’crpctuas request lor a vision in Dream One and is, in my view, the more appropriate ol the two translations. 54 Pass. Pap. 7.1 X.4 (cd. Van Beck, pp IX 2 2 ).

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Christ is petitioned as p ro o f o f the authentically Christian quality o f the oneiric construct o f the first o f these two dreams, in which Perpetua and her brother are separated by a great gap (although Tertullians dismissal o f appearances o f the dead as demonic fictions seems to me to disqualify his the>ught as a useful theological context).55 The second o f the two dreams has been constructed as Christian on the basis o f Perpetua s apparent reference, when she remarks that Dinocrates now appears “refreshed" ( refrig eran tem ), u> early Christian belief in an otherworldly refrigeriu m o r locus refrig erii, a “cooling" o r “refreshing” place.56 Further, the pool from which Dinocrates is .11 first banned, but in which he later plays, may recall the scriptural image of i he healing o f the paralytic by the side o f the pool at Bethsaida.57 There has been some question about whether the dark place in which the suffering Dinocrates is first located represents a prototype o f later, more developed ideas about purgatory; a place for the chastisement o f Christians who have sinned after baptism.58 Augustine assimilated the plight o f Dino»i .ues io his theological view that unbaptized children, even babies, were damned. According to his interpretation o f these tw o dreams. Dinocrates must have been baptized (even though evidence from the diary' suggests that most members o f Perpetua’s family were not Christian), o r else Perpetua could not have interceded for him successfully; the child was in an othcr\\i other symbolic associations o f the baton, see Marrinc Dulacy, “Le Svmltolc .lc la baguette Jan s Part paleo chretien," pp. 3 - 3 8 . * Amat, Sonnes cl l 'm om , p. 80. 11*1.1 . pp 8 2 8 3 ; Robert, on the other hand, sees the presence o f the Egyptian in the .beam as an ascurate reflection o f the participation o f large numbers o f Egyptians in athletic competitions in the imperial era (“Une Vision de IVrpetue martyre a Carthage en 2 0 3 ," pp 2 7 2 7 3 ), Dronke, referring to Graeco Roman avsociations o f Egypt with “pagan sacred wisdom," suggests that the Egyptian represented lor lYrpetua an “Egypt o f the mind" which, altei her conversion to Christianity, she was struggling to overcome ( Women Writers o f the Middle Ajjes, p. 14).

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product o f Pcrpctua’s Christian training by offering a unique exegesis o f the opening o f the dream as a reminiscence o f the fifth chapter o f the biblical Song o f Songs. Perpetuas dreaming has been influenced by early Christian mystical readings o f the scenario o f the Song’s bride awakened, called, abandoned by her lover-brother, and tormented as “a moment o f divine visitation, both summoning and harshly testing the soul that loves G od.”80 Despite the debates over the sociocultural o r religious derivation of the individual elements o f this dream, commentators agree that the outstanding theme o f the dream is the martyr’s courageous resolve to remain faithful to her new religious commitment. Facing physical death, Perpctua dreamed o f spiritual life. T h e foregoing interpretations o f Pcrpctua’s dreams exemplify the way in which the interpreter’s choice o f perspective and context will to a large extent determine the kind and range o f readings that a given text can yield. When the dreams are interpreted from the perspective o f martyrdom, the texts yield a reading o f Pcrpctua’s psychological condition as well as a view o f her historical situation as one at the nexus o f a rcligio-political conflict. O n the other hand, when the dreams are interpreted from the perspective o f Christian catechetical training, the texts yield a reading o f Perpctuas reli­ gious consciousness either as one immersed in Christian scripture and cultic practice, o r as one that reflects the persistence o f “pagan” literary and reli­ gious forms in the thought-patterns o f the new convert. In their various ways, these interpretive stances read Pcrpctua’s dreams as mimetic to the culture in which they occurred; this is part of their attempt rc> reproduce the text’s (and Pcrpctua’s) meaning. However, as John Winkler has pointed out, such attempts to reproduce an authors meaning are in volvcd in an important methodological issue: “Should we concede that much authority to the writers we read? I f our critical faculties are placed solely in the service o f recovering and reanimating an author’s meaning, then we have already committed ourselves to the premises and protocols of the past”— a past whose structures o f cultural violence, such as the metanarrativc o f patriarchy that I will explore in the following pages, continue to exert a pernicious influence in the present.81 Winkler recommends the strat­ egy o f “reading against the grain” o f conventional interpretive positions as a means to engage such protocols and also as “an occasion to struggle against the tacit, conventional, and violent embrace in which we are held by the past.”82 The reading o f Perpetua’s dreams that 1 will offer is such a “reading KO Dronkc, Women W ritcn o f the Middle Ayes, p. 13. Kl Winkler, The Coturnmts o f Desire, p. 126. ** Ibid.

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against the grain” which views the dreams as expressions o f a Christian wom an, as differentiated from conventional readings o f them as expressions o f a C h ristian woman. In so doing, I d o not mean to displace o r deny other readings but rather to add to the range o f interpretive possibilities that these texts present. Using, as context, a perspective that dreams are vehicles for the forging o f new understandings o f self-identity, I will read Pcrpctua’s dream-diary as both reflective o f a n d resistant to the sexual politics o f her community, a community in which there was a power struggle that was engendered in male and female terms. When read as a critique o f culture rather than only as a mirror o f it, Pcrpctua’s diary offers a powerful articula­ tion o f a woman’s struggle to establish her own voice in the context o f patriarchal devaluations o f female witness. In what follows, the term p atriarch y will be used to designate a metanarrat in'c . A metanarrative is a system o f thought, o r a structure o f thinking, that .suppresses difference in order to legitimate its own vision o f reality; because it makes totalizing claims to universal validity, a metanarrative suppresses o r devalues discourses that are “other,” that are different. As a metanarrative, patriarchy supports the dominance o f the paternal metaphor in the estab­ lishment o f meaning. I am going to argue that Perpctua’s diary, written in such a patriarchal context, can be read as an expression o f difference, a voice o f otherness that questions the dominance o f maleness in the construction o f meaning. In order to enable this voice o f difference to speak from the diary, I will use interpretive strategics taken from French feminist writers. My own strategy in this endeavor is not to do violence to the historical specificity o f an ancient text by replacing, and so erasing, its categories with those o f a contemporary discourse, but rather to show another integrity' in the text that is also consonant with contemporary discourse. T he writers whose literary and feminist theory provide the interpretive position o f the discussion that follows are Julia Kristcva and Luce Irigaray, both o f whom aic in the vanguard o f an ongoing critique o f monological values in Western culture. In an evsav entitled “Word, Dialogue and Novel,” Kristcva presents and develops the idea o f “earnivalesque discourse” introduced by the Russian the« >i ist Mikhail Bakhtin.83 In contrast to linguistic practices that are univoial anil prohibitive o f polysemy, carnivalcsquc discourse is discourse that ai Ineves a poetic logic: “By adopting a dream logic, it transgresses rules o f the linguistic code and social morality as well.”84 In the discourse o f the carnival, words are poetic, “polyvalent and multidctermined,” and they conloi m to a “logic exceeding that ofcodified discourse,” coming to expres­ sion fully only in the margins of culture.8S H* Kristcva, “ W oril, Dialogue anil Novel,” pp. 64 91. M' Ib id ., p 70. Hs Ib id ., p 65.

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Carnivalcsquc language is thus language that constitutes an ‘'other” side o f the discourse that is dogmatic, determined by what Kristeva calls Law and Definition. In the carnival, authority is challenged because words arcfreed from presupposed values; carnivalcsquc discourse is rebellious and subversive insofar as it allows the articulation o f marginal, misunderstood, o r repressed perspectives to emerge.86 Transformation o f values in language is the experience o f the carnival. T he exuberance suggested by the metaphor o f the carnival has, however, its sinister aspect. As Kristeva says, "Pathological states o f the soul, such as madness, split personalities, daydreams, dreams, and death, become part o f the narrative.”87 Such pathological elements— dreams, split personalities, death— are pertinent to carnivalcsquc discourse because "they destroy man's epic and tragic unity as well as his belief in identity and causality; they indicate that he has lost his totality and no longer coincides with himself.”88 In the carnival, one dreams subversive, irreverent dreams and in the process sees his o r her identity split, dead, no longer “total.” Further, in the carnival a transformation o f identity is taking place, and that transformation is ac­ complished through the polysemantic discourse o f a perspective that has been repressed o r marginalized by univocal structures o f discourse usually attributed to Law, G od, and Father— that is, to the metanarratives o f patriarchy. It has been noted by interpreters o f Perpetua’s diary that, in the course o f discussions with her father and the judge at her trial, Pcrpctua gives up her name. “C h ristian a s u m ” she says: “I am a Christian/1 am Christiana.”89 She thus loses— even denies— the identity given her by the dominant culture.90 Interestingly, in th e A cta m inora., a shorter, somewhat later version o f Per petua’s story, the "carnivalcsquc” quality o f Perpetua’s change o f name is reinforced by the following statement attributed to her. In reply to the judge’s question whether she is a Christian, she says, "I am a Christian, and I follow the authority o f my name, that I may be perpetual” (C hristian a sum , c t nom inis m et sequ or au ctoritatcm , nt sim p erp etu a).91 H er embrace o t the 86 Ibid., pp. 7 0 , 7 8 - 8 0 . 87 Ibid., p. 83. 88 Ibid., p. 83. 89 I ’ass. Pcrp. 3 .2 ; 6 .4 (cd. Van Beck, pp. 8, 18). 90 On the status o f the name Christian, Peter Brown observes about the martyrs that “friendship with C od raised the Christians above the identity that they shared with their fellows. The nomen Cl/nstiiunini they flaunted was a ‘non-name.’ It excluded the current names o f kin and township. . (T he M aking o f I .ate Antiquity, p. 5 6 ). Sec also Dronkc,

Women W riters o f the M iddle Ages, p. 5, lor his characterization o f Perpetua’s insistence on her new name as a kind o f “grammatical Platonism” for which “names are not arbitrary; there is a primordial, divinely ordained harmony between names and things.” 1,1 Actu nim oni 5 .0 : “ Proconsul ad I’crpetuam dixit: ‘Quid dicis, Pcrpctua? Sacrificas?' Pcrpctua icspoiuht: ( hnstiana sum, et nominis mci sequor auctoritatcm, ut sim pcrpctua” (cd. Van Beck, p. 6 6 )

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Christian “non-name,” which is itself a “new” name, at the same time reveals another dimension o f her “old” name.92 Curiously, to follow the authority o f the name is to flout authority. Per­ petual new name sets her free from paternal and social definition. In Kristevas terms, this name is a word from the carnival, because in the carnival words are freed from presupposed values and so are subversive o f the master narratives o f established authority. Luce Irigaray might agree, but she would describe this scene differently, arguing not from literary theory but rather from a feminist perspective. The purpose for bringing these tw o theorists, Kristeva and Irigaray, together is to show that there is a feminist dimension o f carnivalcsquc discourse— o r better, to suggest the wavs m which the language o f the carnival is particularly pertinent to female discourse and, more basically, to female presence in language. In her book T his Sex W hich Is N ot O ne, Irigaray argues that, because o f male dominance in language and culture, the female has been reduced to a kind of “shadow” o f the male. She quotes the psychiatrist-philosopher |ai ques I acan to this effect: ‘“There is no woman who is not excluded by the naiuieof things, which is the nature o f words. . . . ’”93 This means that “th e fem in in e occurs only w ithin m odels a n d law s devised by m ale su bjects Women, i hen, are “objects” deprived o f an authoritative discourse o f their own. Irigaray does not resolve the problem o f feminine silence at the hands o f masculine definition, but she does provide gestures toward possibilities o f the expression o f the feminine in language; these arc the points at which her theory makes contact with Kristevas notion o f the carnivalcsquc. Irigaray writes that if there were to be such a thing as “feminine syntax” in language - that is, an “order” o f discourse not organized by conceptual, representational thinking— “there would no longer be either subject or object, ‘oneness' would no longer be privileged, there would no longer be proper meanings, proper nam es,'proper'attributes. . . . It would preclude any distinction o f identities, any establishment ofownership, thus any form o ! appropriation.”98 Surely this is what Kristeva describes as carnivalcsquc discourse, which precisely splits identity and subverts totality. As with Pcrpetua, proper” names break apart and reveal dimensions not authorized by I athci oi Law. Indeed, when Perpetua declares C h ristian a sum , her father lushes .11 her as though to pluck out her eyes, and the judge condemns her to the beasts.9** I Icr discourse, however, declares that she will not be owned by masculine definitions o f what it means to be “Perpetua.” lo r Irigaray, the issue in the “issue” o f a feminine presence in discourse is

”94

Brown, ih c Makbtfl o f Late Antiquity p. 56. " ' I no- Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Nor One. p. 87. Ihiil., |*. 8 6 (italics in original).

I bill., |>. 134. Pass. Perp.

3.3; 6.5 6 (cd. Van Ikck, pp. 8. 18).

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not the elaboration o f a “new theory o f which woman would be the subject o r the object, but o f jamming the theoretical machinery itself, o f suspending its pretension to the production o f a truth and o f a meaning that are exces­ sively univocal.”97 The idea o f “jamming” discursive practices that depend upon such distinctions between subject and object will be pertinent to my analysis o f Perpetuad oneiric discourse as one in which subject and object, author and text, are confabulated as “author” becomes “character” in her ow n narrative, which, as dream, is not univocal but polyvalent.98 If there were to be such a thing as “her language,” what would it be? For Irigaray, it would be “somewhat mad from the standpoint o f reason, inaud­ ible for whoever listens to [it] with ready-made grids, with a fully elaborated cod e in hand.”99 Further, “one would have to listen with another ear, as if hearing an ‘other meaning,’ always in the process o f weaving itself, o f em­ bracing itself with words. . . . ”100 The “other ear” hears a whisper o f an “other” that lies waiting within fixed, congealed perspectives: the laughter o f the carnival, but also its discourse o f dream and death. According to Irigaray, w’omen are outside the system. O n the one hand, this means that “woman does not have access to language, except through recourse to ‘masculine’ systems o f representation which disappropriate her from her relation to herself. . . . ” 101 On the other hand, being outside the system gives her critical leverage on it— even if her only means o f expressing something different from the system is the dream-speech o f the carnival. Perpetua wrote her diary in a time and place in which the masters o f discourse were men and maleness was the determinant o f meaning. In order to understand how feminist theory can be useful in eliciting a reading o f Perpetua’s diary that allows her voice to b e heard as a woman's voice, some attention to the patriarchal narratives that dominated the sexual politics o f her social and religious world is necessary. Foremost among the representatives o f the patriarchal perspective in Perpetua’s own community in Carthage w'as Tertullian, arguably the most prominent Latin Christian theologian o f his day. In his writings, the patri­ archal contours o f the context in which Perpetua professed her faith can be clearly discerned. Tertullian’s m ost basic dictum on woman is his characteri­ zation o f her nature in theological terms. The truth o f woman’s condition, he says, should be enacted bodily: she must avoid elegant dress and wear rags, thus presenting herself as a mourning and repentant Eve.102 Tertullian 97 Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not O ne, p. 78. 9K This is where Perpetua’s characterization o f her dream-speech with the verb fabulor assumes its importance as a perspective on oneiric constructions; see p. 151 above. w Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 29. Ibid. Irtl Ibid., p. 85.

102 Tertullian, De enltu feiiiinartwi I I I (('('I IJ4.V).

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thought that woman’s outer appearance should match her inner nature, indelibly tainted by “the disgrace o f the first transgression and the odium o f the ruin o f humankind.”103 Everywoman is Eve, and she lives under the judgment o f G od. In a famous piece o f rhetoric, Tertullian says: “You arc the devil’s gatew ay; you are she who unsealed that tree; you are the first deserter o f divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the devil was not able to bribe; you easily destroyed the image o f G od, the man Adam.”104 This is a blunt articulation o f the univocal discourse o f representation in which a masculine “subject” judges a feminine “object,” depriving her o f access, except through male discourse, to relations with G od, herself, and (as we shall see) to speech as well. In Irigarav’s terms, Tcrtullian's construc­ tion o f woman exemplifies the sexual logic that privileges the paternal meianarrative.105 I lie« »logically, woman is defined sexually, and her sexuality is negative; it is sw These qualities are the proper character o f women’s dress that most appropi lately signify her inner condition.106 Tertullian presents his defini­ tion nl w< »man as though it had the character o f theological law. How could a w< »man like Pcrpctua com e to terms with such a definition? H ow could a lemale martyr acknowledge the value o f a Law that stigmatized her as “the devils gateway”? There is a striking passage in Perpetua's diary that might speak to these questions. Perpetua reported that, following her baptism while under ar­ rest, “the spirit enjoined me not to seek from that water any favor except physical endurance” (su fferen tiam ca m is Her inspiration pertained to endurance, perseverance, suffering o f the flesh. The meaning o f such a statement in the context o f her captivity seems clear: she wanted the si rengt h to live in order to testify. In the context that I propose, however, her statement speaks on another plane o f signification altogether. W hat might Millet ing the flesh connote fora woman whose “flesh” had been so degraded Ilu »>1«»giiallv? What might physical endurance mean in a condition o f captivuv to a discourse for which a female witness must surely have been a paradox, il not a contradiction in terms? One o f the most compelling o f h igai as s arguments revolves around what she calls “sexual indifference” : if

).107

" M Ibid " " Ibul I 1.2 (C C I 1.343». Ingaiav, 11ns Sex Which Is Not O ne, p. 90. Ibis is lertullian s argument throughout D e a ifliifh ii. See, for example, his concluding i liapier, in which he slates that il is not enough for ( Christians to be modest; they must also present a modest appearance. “((Christian modesty |must be complete to such an extent that it emanates from the soul to the clothing and bursts «»in from the conscience to the outer appearance" (l)c ailtn Ja n . 2.13.3 |< ’!s, see Page duBois, Som nq the Rudy, pp. 4 7 - 4 9 , 107 9 , 110 29. See also N or Hall, Tin Moon on d the Virgin, pp. 53 -58. 1,1 Lewis and Short. A Tntin Dietionnty. s.v. trem sjhv and tnmshuio M S Pass. Per/' 9 .2 3 (ed. Van Beck. p. 24)

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become more like a histrionic performance, which she was watching sadly but without any impulse to participation. T he last phrase— ‘I ached fo r his unhappy old age’— while voicing compassion, comes so abruptly after his extremes of pleading that it has a strangely dry effect. She has made herself deaf to him.” 146 Although I do nor want to deny the father's real grief, I would extend Dronke’s observations by adding that Pcrpctua had “made herself deaf” to her father as patriarch who had once tried to confine his daughter within the dictates o f a male econom y o f power; that patriarch is now powerless, prostrate, his face in the dust. This scene from the diary provides an appropriate context for Pcrpetua’s final dream, which repeats and intensifies the “doubled male” as well as the female desire o f earlier dreams. In this dream , maleness is again the major trope, so much so that Pcrpctua herself becomes male. In comparison with the other dreams, a striking transformation in the dream's masculine images has occurred. In the dream ol shepherd, ladder, and serpent, the two male images were equally huge; the sinister serpentine figure, significr o f phallic master}', was equal in size, and so in importance, to the kindly paternal shepherd. In this last dream. In »wever, the bestial opponent, the Egyptian, while still male, is reduced in size. This dimension o f mastery, associated with the phallic sword as instru­ ment o f death, is now seen by Perperua “rolling himself in the dust.” This figure is decisively defeated as Pcrpctua, dying, knocks him down on his face and steps on his head, just as she had done before with the serpent. Further, the Egyptian, like both her father and the serpent, is unable to threaten her stance, even though he tries to do so by grabbing at her feet. The transfor­ mative message is that, when the female is in the ascendant, elevated above the foul figure o f repressive structures, that foul figure succumbs to the liberating rebellion o f what it had marginalized. I he Egyptians oneiric double is Pomponius, equal in size to the Egyptian bin opposite him in the dream's valorization. Pictured by the dream as the i aunt' ileacc >n win >called Pcrpctua out from prison, Pomponius takes her to tin st cue ol the contest, assures her o f his presence, and disappears. Imme­ diately lwmg his disappearance, the Egyptian appears; in the dynamic o f tin dream, both aspects o f maleness have been quickly juxtaposed. It is sigmlii ant that Pmpst ic view o f the creation o f the world as a materialization o f the passions o f W isdom, mythologically conceived as the feminine Sophia.60 In the medic a I literature o f the time, care o f the body was one o f the practices o f concern lor the self, as Foucault has shown.61 D octors offered detailed regimens for eating, sexual intercourse, and exercise, all aimed at balancing the humours and so ensuring tranquility o f the spirit. M txlcration and selfcontrol were key ingredients in the manner in which Aristides' culture “produced” the body. As Brown has observed, “we are dealing with men whose gait must be measured, whose gestures were controlled, and who were advised by Plutarch in his A dvice on K eepin g W ell to maintain their health by reading aloud from harmoniously composed declamations, and to avoid ‘passionate and convulsive vociferations' o f any kind."62 Yet as detailed as were these practices that circumscribed the body for its own, and its psyche’s, good, it was nonetheless the case that undue attentive­ ness to the body was not commended.63 In this context o f restrained body and modulated desire, Aristides' affirmation o f his sick, out-of-balance body as providential, his flamboyant attentiveness to his body's every woe, and his i re abjectly, than does ,A> Irenaeus, Hiur. 1.4.2 (/IN/- 1:321). ol louc.uili. T he Histoty of Sexuality, 3:5 7 . 1,2 Brown, T he lloHv anil Society, p. IS. M Ibid., p. 27.

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his vomiting. In T h e S acred Talcs, Aristides presents his vomiting both as a sign o f his illness and as a practice o f his cure. Particularly telling is his understanding o f the need to expel as a token o f Asclcpius’ oneiric care.64 As his body was emptied, so his sense o f himselfwas expelled and refashioned. Dreams provided both the visualization and the technique for activating a change in self-understanding. In the section o f T h e S acred T ales in which the practice o f vomiting is most prominent, Aristides recorded tw o dreams that attest to the inner struggle to which his body was giving expression. In the first, he dreams that he is in the temple o f Asclcpius. “I examined |in this temple] a statue o f me. At one­ time I saw it as if it were o f me, and again it seemed to be a great and fair statue o f Asclcpius. Then I recounted to Zeno himself these things which appeared in my dream. And the part about the statue seemed to be very honorable.”65 In this straightforward fantasy o f identification, Aristides sees himself and the god as interchangeable figures. Such a vision o f the merging o f the human with the divine certainly lends itself to the psychol­ ogy o f ego-inflation that has so often been applied to Aristides, but another view is possible as well. I suggest that Aristides' ego, his “F\ is not inflated in this dream ; it is replaced. The “I" marks in the dream the place where the other speaks. Significantly, this “other” is a figure o f healing, and it is also a figure o f intimacy, manifesting its presence in the condition o f the dreamer's own body. ‘Phis dream o f identity with the god— and it is not the only one— suggests that Aristides no longer construed his identity in terms o f a public persona.66 Furtherm ore, his culture's view o f the well-tuned body as a nexus o f social relations and as a literal embodiment o f civic order was also expelled as Aristides' sick body tk him literally and figuratively inside the temple, where his body was an oneiric gift o f the god, and out o f the public arena.67 These tw o statements are true— but not quite. For Aristides’ story is suggestive o f a struggle between conflicting cultural tendencies— one in the direction o f the private, the introspective, and the ascetic, and the other in the direction of the public and o f the duties and rewards o f civic life. The fact is that the temple, while competing with the forum, had not yet replaced it M See Sacred ¡'ales 1.9, 15, 2 1 , 2 8 , 3 2 , 4 0 , 5 0 , 5 3 , 5 5 , 5 9 , 6 5 ; 3 .2 4 ; 4 .6 (trails. Bchr, Com plete Works, 2 :2 7 9 , 2 8 0 , 281, 2 8 2 , 2 8 3 , 2 8 4 , 2 8 6 , 2 8 7 , 2 8 8 . 2 8 9 . 312, 319). th saved the human body from destruction and brought knowledge o f the g< ids thuman consciousness. In T h e S acred Tales, written after long years o f oneiric experience, orator)’ is no longer the originary term ; it is Asclcpius. Now the gfavored Timocrates also because o f his “headlong style o f oratory,” lot when he declaimed, “the hair on his head stood up like a lion's when it spi mgs u >t he attack.”80 As Gleason aptly remarks, “In this contest between hirsute philosophy and depilated rhetoric . . . Polemo chose his paradigm a» i Or. 3 3 .2 5 , 2 7 (trans. Bchr, Complete Works, 2 :1 7 0 -7 1 ). Ibid. 3 4 .4 7 (trails. Relir, Complete Works, 2:181). on dancing as a sign o f effeminacy, sec Richlin, The Carden o f Priapus, pp. 9 2 , 9 8 , 101 ,#l O r 3 4 .4 8 , 5 6 , 61 (trans Belli, Complete Works, 2:181. 183, 184). ,,J Gleason, “The Semiotics ol Gender," p. 406.

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Aristides’ aspiration toward embodying male virtue in the specific arena o f his profession, o rato r); also expressed itself in his dreams. In one dream, he speaks to the Athenians as though he were Demosthenes, and in another he hears the emperors thank god to have known such a fine orator as he.93 Particularly revealing o f the competitiveness within whose purview the norms o f conformity assumed their significance is the dream in which Aris­ tides talks to Sophocles: “W hen we appeared to be at the front door, one o f the very distinguished sophists o f our time slipped and lay to the left a little apart from the dexjr.” In oneiric rever); the competition lies fallen, while Aristides alone remains to converse with the “handsome old man” Sopho­ cles.9** It was only in dreams, however, that Aristides towered over his rhetorical colleagues, and, as readers o f T h e S acred Talcs, we know that Aristides’ desire to comply with the cultural code was realized most fully onl\ in dreams as well. Outside the oneiric realm, his body rejected the «lemai ul t o a inform that was dictated by the coercive social process in which he was enmeshed by virtue o f his profession. His body registered nausea. If we take seriously his cultures view o f the body as a psychic text that could both register and reflect threats to self-identity, Aristides’ physical ailments present a text o f desire that opposes the desire to conform. Aristides’ most persistent physical afflictions were a constricted throat, blc»eked breathing, choking, and vomiting, all o f which made the practice o f his pr. 7 0 (C S h l. 54.7(H) 7 0 8 ) ; sec Kelly, Jerome, pp. 43 44

* ' David S. VVicscn, S t 3K Kelly, Jerom e, p. 43.

/ e t v m e n s n S a tir is t,

pp. 119 27; see also Kelly, J e r o m e , p. 43.

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sequences suggests that both arc authentic reflections o f Jerome’s divided state o f mind at that time in his life. He was suffering the return o f what he was trying to repress: Cicero and the dancing girls would not give way to Scripture and chastity. In the second place, there is the important fact that Jerome never denied the authenticity o f the dream. In the letter to Eustochium, he insists that his experience was not a van a som nia, an “idle dream.”39 It is true that, some sixteen years later, Jerome appears to have reversed himself, using his own dreams o f flying, dying, and so on as p roof that dreams are vanae im agin es, “vain imaginings.”40 However, Jerome wrote this remark in an apologetic treatise in which he was defending himself against an attack by his old friend, now turned enemy, Ruflnus. Ruflnus knew how Jerome had used his dream in the letter to Eustochium and had accused him o f subse­ quent l\ breaking his oneiric oath never to read secular literature again.41 In response, Jerome objects to being taunted with a “mere dream”; but he also sa vs that the promise made in the dream pertained to the future and that, if he still quotes secular literature, it is from memory, which he can’t erase, and not from his post-oneiric reading practices.42 Thus, in this defensive context, Jerome tried to occupy both sides o f the issue and ended in the curious position o f slighting dreams as airy fantasies while at the same time affirming, even heightening, the importance o f the impact o f one particular dream on his life. Jerome viewed his dream as divinely inspired, like the dream o f Practcxtata. Also like hers, Jerome’s dream was premonitory, and frighteningly so, because the avenging figure in his dream is not simply an angel but a figure o f the Christ as judge.43 Further, both o f these dreams are good examples o f the way in which dreams were viewed in Graeco-Roman culture as semiotic constructs that functioned as a means for articulating inchoate thoughts and emotions. Dreams provided a language for interpreting life’s experiences while one was in the midst o f living them ; it was a language that a llwcd for reflection on the meaning o f one’s actions.44 Thus Praetextata was, by Jerome’s account, shocked into a recognition o f the error o f her actions, while Jerome himself was presented with a forcefully articulate pii turc o f his own situation o f vacillation, a situation that the dream both reflects and reformulates. As a “detective o f his heart's secret,” the dream w V.p. 22.30.6 { C S E L 54.191). "* ( 1 K ill. 1.31 ( P L 23.423C ); see above, pp. 206 7. Kutimis, A p o l. 2 .6 -8 ( C C L 2 0 .8 7 -9 0 ). C K u j: 1.30-31 (PL 23.421 H 424A). 11 Amin, “Autour du songe de Saint Jerome,” p. 352, points out that the picture o f Christ as jtulge stems from Rom. 14.10 and 2 Cor. 5.10 M See pp. 54 63 above lor a discussion o f the reflective qualities o f oneiric language.

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made Jerome fully conscious, at last, o f his schizoid swing between denial and gratification.45 By his own testimony in his apologetic treatise against Rufinus, Jerome was a prolific dreamer. I lowevcr, he chose to emphasize only tw o o f his oneiric experiences, those that he recorded in his letter to Eustochium, and both are used as a vehicle for warning Eustochium about the difficulties o f the ascetic life. In the form o f his oneiric memories, Jerome presents himself as a counter-example o f the image to which he hopes Eustochium will conform . Furtherm ore, from his repertory o f dream-images he chose those that focused on the body, on his body, which he offers as a negative sign o f his attempt to reimagine the body along the lines o f an ascetic ideal that he viewed as a positive one. Particularlv telling in this regard is Je­ rom e s account o f the movement o f his flagellated bexly from oneiric into conscious reality. Bruised and battered, his body functions as a sign o f a dramatic change o f consciousness. In this oneiric image, which Jerome sets forth for Eustcxhium to “view” in the text o f his letter, the negative and positive values o f the bodv-as-sign coalesce. For Jerome, the physical body is also a psychic “body,” and both can carry positive and negative charges in the ascetic context in which they have meaning for him. Thus his blackand-blue body points to his abject condition, felt both literally and spiritu­ ally, as well as to his change in perspective, which again is not only spiritual but literal, involving a different practice o f reading. As his narrative construction o f both o f his oneiric experiences makes clear, Jerome directed his program o f ascetic reimagining not only at the body but also at the psychic makeup o f the self. In his dream o f flagellation, for example, it is clear that he conceived o f the oneiric body as the signifying ground upon which a new, ascetic version o f the whole person could be explored and constructed. .Similarly, the visions in the desert point as much toward psychic desire as they do toward bodily needs. Despite all o f his talk about the taming o f the physical body in order to harness it to the ascetic cause, however, that body remained a problem to Jerome, as his presenta­ tion o f his own IxxJv to Eustochium makes clear. This may be due to one o f the central problematics o f the role o f the bexly in asceticism, in which the body is both an object ofdisgust as well as a potential instrument o f personal transformation. As Geoffrey I larpham has observed, the ascetic s attem pt to escape the desirable world and to deny gratification to the bexly s senses actually “pitched the ascetic into the world o f desire,” in which the ascetic was flooded with images that held forth the very pleasures that he was trying to renounce.4* Materiality was hard to banish. As I larpham goes on to say, •*s h»r the view nl dreams as detectives o f the heart's secrets, see p. 59 above. Cieolfrey Cult I larpham. T h e A a r t i f I m p r in t n r m C u lt u r e m n l C r it ic is m p. 55.

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“T he desert docs not even provide a true refuge from the material world. Sartre speaks o f the ‘enchanted’ world o f desire as ‘a dcstructurcd world in which things have lost their meaning and jut out like fragments o f pure matter.’ Objects emerging under the ‘enchantment’ o f desire acquire not an ideality but a refined materiality.”47 As I will argue, the theory o f sexuality that Jerome sets forth in his letter to Kustochium can be conceptualized as a theory that attempts to transform the body precisely into “refined matter.” Gross physicalitv is rejected as contam inating, but this rejection makes the body available for use at the level o f figuration. It is in this context that Jerom es use o f dreams in the letter is significant. H e had ready-to-hand a transformative figurative lan­ guage in which his theory o f ascetic sexuality was both represented and f (RSV).

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In his discussion, Jerome has shifted his focus from the actual physicality o f women (whose grossness is apparent even, o r especially, in his carica­ tures) to bodily metaphors used to describe psychic states. It is at the level o f physical metaphor that Jerome’s rewriting o f the female body takes place, and it is there that he will construct an erotics o f asceticism. As Jerome distances himself from the libidinal contagion o f literal female bodies, the “ blaze” o f the body burns more brightly in the metaphorical constructions o f his text. W ith regard to Eustochium, whose body will be a sign o f Jerome’s own desire, it is the transmutation o f the physical body into a textual— specifically, a scriptural— body that is most striking, and that en­ gages Jerome's interpretive energy. Jerome begins by giving Eustochium the usual ascetic advice, encourag­ ing her in the course o f action that she had already undertaken. Counseling avoidance o f wine and delicate food, he pictures Eustochium's body reductively as “a rumbling stomach and fevered lungs,” both o f which are images that he has drawn rather arbitrarily from scriptural passages.73 Eu­ stochium's body is not only reduced to three o f its organs, it cannot even be understood apart from textual references. The body's physical needs, like eating and drinking, can corrupt the soul; in order for a soul to flee from its own Sodom, it must have a newly inscribed body, rewritten in scriptural metaphors. Much o f Jerome’s practical advice to Eustochium repeats this movement from the physical to the metaphorical. Paradoxically, the virginal body is achieved at the expense o f the actual physical body; biological femaleness is not overcome o r erased but tran sform ed by being absorbed into scriptural texts.74 O nce safely textualized, its materiality refined by a figural whitewashing, that body was ready for use as a signifier o f theological desire. It is when Jerome writes Eustochium’s virginity as such, as differentiated from advice on how to avoid losing it, that the displacement o f the physical by the metaphorical is m ost stark and also most voluptuous. The virginal body breaks the biblical curse: “Death came through Eve, but life through Mary. F o r that reason, the gift o f virginity comes forth more richly in women because it began from a woman.”75 T he virginal body is most essentially a female body, yet it becomes the site for Jerome's drive toward signifying his ascetic ideal, applicable to men as well as to women. Although physical woman, as Jerome so satirically shows, is “nothing,” her textual body is really “something,” and it provides the space for a stunning theo­ logical articulation o f desire.76 7-* lip. 22.11.1 (C S lil. 54.158). Jerome supports this image with a concatenation o f verses from Job, l\s., Cien., Kx., M an., I.k., and Iv/ek. 71 For a discussion ol other wavs in which Jerome attempted to transform the femaleness o f his friends, see ( lark, Jcnnnt, Chrysostom, and Vricnds, pp. 48 59. 7S lip. 2 2 .2 1 .7 {CSlil. 54.173). '• I owe this play on the words somrthinii and nothinji to I >a\id I Miller, “Why Men Are Mail! Nothing l-.iivy and the l ascration Complex," pp 71 79.

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Jerome accomplishes the transformation o f Eustochium's physical body into a metaphorical body by way o f tropes from the Song o f Songs. From the many images offered by this biblical poem, Jerome draws almost exclu­ sively on two kinds: images o f closure and images o f seductive sexual fore­ play. Eustochium is, as Jerome often says, God’s bride, and as such she lives in a “paradise o f virginity.” Textuallv speaking, paradise is found in a scrip­ tural love poem, where Eustochium is the Shulamitc, the bride, the black but comely one who, in Jerome’s words, has been “washed white” (d e a lb a ta )77 The coarse and disturbing physicality o f her bodv, characteris­ tic o f all women’s bodies, has been whitewashed in the course o f its transfor­ mation into a poetic body o f Jerome’s construction. It is an imaginal body that becomes a signifier o f desire precisely because o f its closure. Again practically speaking, Jerom e advises Eustochium to stay inside her house.78 Thus domestically sequestered, she is doubly enclosed, and the physical space o f her enclosure underscores the psychic significance o f her virginity. Jerome's imaginal articulation o f her enclosed body places her. In iwever, in the king s chamber o f the Song o f Songs.79 This is no ordinary room , but a bridal chamber, a space o f sexual love. Eustochium’s refined lx >dv is for Jerome “a garden enclosed, a fountain scaled,”80 but this closing o f the body does not end erotic desire. It intensifies it. Jerome's choice o f the kings bridal chamber and the enclosed garden as images that articulate Eustochium’s body leads directly to the other set o f images from the Song o f Songs to which he appeals. T he king desires his bride and will lead her into his chamber with his own hand; he will kiss her, and she will seek him by night; he will put his hand through the opening and her inner bodv will be moved for him.81 As Jerome remarks, “Desire is Ep. 2 2 .2 .1 . 6 .2 . 8 .1 ,1 6 .1 , 2 0 .2 . 2 5 .1 - 2 6 .4 (C SE L 5 4 .1 4 5 ,1 5 1 . 154. 1 6 3 .1 7 0 - 7 1 , 1788 2 ), **(«rv •Ibid , 15.23 17.3 (/*(» 4 6 .9 7 6 B 1 » , ed Maraval, pp. 193 97. ** Ibid , 17.9 18.22 (P (! 4 6 .9 7 7 B C ), ed and tram Maraval, pp 197 201 >'* Ibid.. 19 II 15 (/»G* 46.9K 0A ), ed and iraus Maraval, p 203

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237

sister, he understood that the dream referred to her: the relies were her glowing bones. Thus the dream not only predicted her death but also showed her translation to heavenly status in a transformed body, fragmen­ tary though it was. The spell o f this dream also influenced the way in which Gregory saw his sister after her death. After her body was prepared for burial, it was covered by a dark cloak; yet, Gregor}' reports, “she shone even in that dark clothing, no doubt because the divine power added such grace to her body that, just as in the vision in my dream, beams o f light seemed to shine out from her beauty.”30 Like Gregor}' Nazianzcn’s dreams o f his brother, G regor}' o f Nyssa’s dream o f his sister allowed him to sec through a dead body to a body that was lively in another register. Gregor}' knew that there was something special about his older sister. In his biography o f her, he reports that his mother, Emmelia, had had a dream about Macrina when her labor pains began. In the dream, repeated, like Gregory’s, three times, an angelic figure addressed the child as Theda; upon awakening, Emmelia knew that the dream prefigured the reality in which her child would live, and Thecla became Macrina’s “secret name.”31 T heda, a legendary figure whose cult was widespread in Asia M inor by the fourth century, was a patron saint o f the ascetic life, especially among women.32 Thus Emmclia’s dream was a mirror o f the ascetic vocation o f her daughter, herself a m irror o f the great Thecla, just as Gregory's dream mirrored the beatific result o f that vocation. Brown has remarked that, for Gregor}', Macrina’s body was “the untar­ nished mirror o f a soul that had caught, at last, the blinding light o f the katharotes, the radiant purity, o f G od.”33 Yet despite all o f his metaphors o f light, G regory seems reluctant to let Macrina’s body disappear in a blaze o f glory. H e insists that her dead body was a sign o f that paradigmatic radiance that marks the true identity o f the human, but the body is still there as a sign. About Macrina while she was alive, he wrote that “it was as if an angel had providentially taken human form , an angel with no attach­ ment to o r affinity for life in the flesh”; Macrina had not become ensnared by “the passions o f the flesh.”34 H e further describes her life as one poised on the boundary between “human life and bodiless nature.” 35 In Gregorys view, so close had Macrina come to that drastic transformation o f identity 30 Ibid., 3 2 .8 - 12 (P C 4 6 .9 9 2 C I>), ed. and rrans. Maraval, p. 247. 31 Ibid., 2 .2 1 - 3 4 (PC 4 6 .9 6 IB), cd. and rrans. Maraval, pp. 1 4 5 - 4 9 ; such annunciator)' dreams were common in late antiquity; see above, p. 2 0 8 and, for a list o f parallels o f dreams sent to pregnant women, see Maraval, Vie dc Sainte Macrine, p. !4 6 n l. 32 On the cult o f St. Thecla in Asia Minor, see Dagron, Vie el Miracles dc Sainte Thiele, pp. 5 5 - 7 9 ; Maraval, Vie dc Sainte Macrine, \\ I46n .2; see the discussion above, p. 117. 33 Brown, The Hody and Society, p. 300. 34 Vita S Маните 2 2 .2 7 31 (P C 46.9811) 984A ), cd. and nans Maraval, p. 215. lf* Ibid., 11.34 3 5 ( / 4 / 4 6 9 72A ), c l . aiul nans Maraval, p 179. On Ciicgory4 idea o f the niethoim, the houndarv, see lean Daniclou, "Methorim: l a Notion dc conlins chez Cirtfgoirc dc Nvsse," pp Ю1 8 7

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from the human to the angelic that she appears to have achieved what Gregor)' Nazianzen described as deserting the earth while still on it. As a shimmering object that mediated the gap between the paradigmatic worlds o f Adam and the resurrection, Macrina’s body provided a glimpse o f the transformation that all might hope for. H er body was thus a formal analogue to Gregory’s dream, itself a mediatorial vehicle that initiated Gregory, briefly, into a form o f consciousness in which fleshly eyesight is “blinded” by beatific vision. Indeed, Macrina’s body and Gregory’s dream can hardly be separated, because it was the dream that had given him “eyes to see” the truth o f his sister's body. When he was not dreaming, however, Gregory’s view o f bodies was not usually so generous. In his essay O n th e M akin g o f the H u m an B ein g, Gregory tries to envision the human person as a harmonious blend o f spiritual and physical parts. Using the metaphor o f a musician playing a lyre, he explains that as long as the lyre, the body, is ruled by the mind, the musician, the body can be viewed positively; it is only when the mind debases itself in following physical desires that the notion o f “flesh” as­ sumes a negative connotation.36 Nonetheless, our bodies are not like the body o f the archetypal Adam before the fall, a body untouched by the brutish physicality that characterizes the bodies o f the human beings now.37 For Gregor)', it was difficult to maintain the distinction between thoughts o f the flesh and the flesh itself because the tug o f the senses was capable o f dragging the mind down to bodily concerns so easily. In his treatise O n V irgin ity the distinction tends to collapse as he describes hu­ man physicality as “earthly wretchedness” and, like Gregor)' Nazianzen, he uses a metaphor o f injured eyesight to depict the sense o f estrangement that the body inflicts on us.38 W here Gregory Nazianzen had used bestial images, however, Gregor)' o f Nvssa uses images o f dirt: the “filth o f the flesh” now covers what was once a divine image, Adam, who in his original state “looked freely upon the face o f God” and mirrored that brilliance.39 Yet, despite this rather alarming view o f human physicality, Gregory’s real despair centered not on the literal body but on the fall o f human beings into time. As Brown has persuasively argued, Gregory thought that for the archetypal Adam, time had been infinitely open-ended, whereas now it was measured by a person’s lifetime, with death marking the end.40 Whereas Adam could have lived clear-sightedly into a “future” with no 36 O c bow. op. 8 .4 -1 2 .1 4 (/’(.’ 44.1441) 1 6 4 0 ). See also Gregory’s O r rirg. 13 (PG 4 6 .3 7 6 1 ) 381B), where it is the thought o f the flesh rather than the body itself that is pr77.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Index

Achilles, 1 9 - 2 0 , 3 5 Achilles Tarius, 11 Aclius Aristides, 6 6 , 128, 132, 134; on Asclcpius cult, 1 1 0 - 1 1 , 1 1 4 - 1 6 , 201; and codes o f masculinity, 1 9 6 - 2 0 0 ; composition o f The Sacred Tales. 1 8 7 88, 19 4 ; dreams o f Asclepius as statue, 3 4 - 3 5 , 195, 2 0 2 ; illnesses of. 1 8 4 -8 7 , 192, 1 9 4 - 9 5 , 2 0 0 , 2 0 4 ; in modern scholarship, 190 9 4 ; and oneiric ther­ apy. 1 8 4 - 8 5 , 1 9 1 - 9 3 , 195. 2 0 1 ; and oratory, 1 86, 1 8 8 - 8 9 , 196, 1 9 8 -2 0 2 Aeschylus, 21 aesthetics, 3 0 - 3 3 A lexander Romance. 7 allegory, 9 1 - 1 0 5 Ambrose. 10 1 , 1 0 3 n .l2 2 angels. 5 1 , 103, 1 09, 2 3 7 , 2 5 0 ; in magical dream theory, 5 9 - 6 0 ; in Origen, 9 4 9 5 ; in Philo, 6 1 - 6 2 ; punitive, in dreams, 6 6 - 6 7 , 2 0 8 - 9 ; in Shepherd of H ennas. 1 3 1 - 3 2 , 134, 146 Aphrodite, 1 82, 248 apocalypses, dreams in, 6 2 - 6 3 Apulcius, 2 8 n .7 3 , 3 1 , 5 5 , 5 7 - 5 9 , 117, 131, 151, 2 4 9 Aristotle, 4 2 - 4 4 , 4 7 , 8 2 n .3 2 , 158, 225 Artcmidorus, 2 9 - 3 1 , 3 3 , 4 7 , 7 5 , 9 6 , 127, 2 0 7 , 2 0 8 - 9 ; and classification o f dreams, 7 7 -9 1 asceticism: and Aclius Aristides, 193, 195, 2 0 4 ; and dreams. 2 0 5 - 1 3 , 2 2 6 - 2 7 , 2 3 0 - 3 1 , 2 3 2 ; and Gregory Nazianzcn, 2 3 2 - 3 5 , 2 4 5 - 4 9 ; and Gregory o f Nyssa, 2 3 2 - 3 3 , 2 3 7 - 4 1 ; Jeromes the­ ory of, 2 1 4 - 3 1 ; and Pcrpctua, 155; and sexuality, 2 1 3 - 1 5 ; and Shepherd o f H ennas. 137 Asclcpius, 6 6 . 2 4 5 ; in Aclius Aristides' dreams, 1 8 4 - 8 5 . 187, 1 9 5 - 9 6 , 201 3; cult of, 106 8, 109 17. 187. 190, 201, as oneiric statue. I I I , 195, 2 0 2 ; statues of, 1 0 9 10 Athcnagorjs, 6 4 Atlu iusms. 4 0 . 6 6 . 204

Augustine, 7 5 , 9 1 . 1 2 9 - 3 0 , 2 4 4 ; and cult o f St. Stephen, 107; on dreams and alle­ gory, 9 2 - 9 5 ; on Pcrpctua, 153, 160, 171, 174; and personal phantom, 4 1 4 2 , 130 Rerakoth. 6 3 - 6 4 , 7 4 , 8 4 n .4 4 , 87n .55, 88n .58 Bcsas, 120 binarism, 1 0 - 1 2 , 127 Callistratus. 3 1 - 3 2 Christ, 1 5 6 - 5 7 , 1 6 3 - 6 4 , 1 7 3 - 7 4 , 212, 248 Chthon, 2 0 - 2 1 , 25 Cicero, 4 4 - 4 6 , 5 2 - 5 3 , 9 5 - 9 9 , 2 1 0 classification o f dreams, 2 6 , 2 9 ; by Arte­ midorus, 77—9 1 ; by Jerome, 2 0 5 - 8 ; by Macrobius, 9 6 - 9 7 Clement o f Alexandria, 6 4 , 102, 2 5 0 Corpus H erm eticum . 3 1 - 3 2 , 135, 156 daemons, 5 1 , 5 5 - 5 9 Daniel, as dreamer, 4 9 , 9 4 demons, 6 3 - 6 5 , 6 8 , 2 0 7 divination: and allegor)', 9 8 ; and Cicero, 4 4 - 4 6 ; concerns addressed in, 8 ; defini tion of, 7 ; and emotional stabilit)', 11; as epistemology, 1 0 ; as irrational. 9 - 1 0 ; and poetizing, 3 2 ; and prediction, 7 ; as semiotics, 7 ; Stoic dream-theory and, 52 5 5 ; and sympatheia, 5 0 . See also fate; foreknowledge; future diviners: consulted by Artemidorus, 7 8 ; criticized by Cicero, 4 5 - 4 6 eidolon. 17, 1 9 - 2 0 , 71 enupnion, 4 7 , 8 0 - 8 1 , 2 0 7 Kpiphamus, 173 E r o s , 6 0 , 1 2 1 -2 2

eras, 122, 1 8 2 - 8 3 , 2 2 3 2 4 , 2 2 6 , 2 4 8 - 4 9 Euripides, 20 21 Eusebius, 117

Eustathius, 16 17 E s a g n u s o l Ponticus, 24 1

42

272

fate, 1 0 - 1 1 , 5 2 - 5 5 foreknowledge: in Apulcian dream-theory, 5 8 ; in Artemidorus, 8 1 - 8 3 ; definition of, in Stoic dream-theory, 5 2 - 5 4 ; in Gregor)’ o f Nyssa, 4 8 - 4 9 Freud, Sigmund, 8 1 n .3 1 , 127, 138, 158, 19 2 , 226 future, the: in Apulcian dream-theory, 5 8 ; in Artemidorus, 8 1 - 8 3 ; and fate, 11; and foreknowledge, 4 8 - 4 9 ; and pre­ monitory dreams, 1 5 0 - 5 1 . 1 6 2 -6 3 , 2 0 7 - 1 3 , 2 2 6 ; in Stoic dream-theory, 5 2 -5 4 Galen, 4 6 , 7 7 - 7 8 , 1 0 6 - 8 , 190 gates o f horn and ivory, 1 5 - 1 7 , 2 5 - 2 7 , 76 gods: and angels, 6 1 - 6 2 ; in dreams, 2 9 3 1 , 8 3 n .3 7 ; as oneiric statues, 2 8 - 3 5 ; in psychobiological theory, 4 3 - 4 5 ; role in dreaming, 6 5 - 7 3 ; in Stoic dream-theory, 5 2 - 5 5 . See also Asdepius; Christ Gregory Nazianzen: and asceticism, 2 3 2 3 5 , 2 4 5 - 4 9 ; dreams of, 2 3 2 - 3 6 , 2 4 7 4 9 ; oneiric metaphors of, 2 3 5 , 2 4 2 ; par­ ents' dreams, 2 4 2 4 4 Gregor)' o f Nvssa: and asceticism, 2 3 2 - 3 3 . 2 3 7 - 4 1 ; dreams of, 2 3 2 , 2 3 6 - 3 7 , 240; dream-theory of, 4 7 - 5 1 , 2 4 0 ; mother’s dream, 2 3 7 I leraclitus, 4 0 - 4 2 , 4 7 Hernias, 3 5 , 6 3 , 128, 15 6 ; ethics in The Shepherd o f H ennas, 137—4 0 , 1 4 2 -4 5 , 1 47; and oneiric shepherd, 1 3 1 -3 4 , 145 4 7 ; and oneiric women, 1 3 5 -4 3 , 1 4 5 - 4 6 ; and parabolic thinking, 141 — 4 7 ; and repentance, 134, 137, 139, 1 4 0 -4 1 , 1 4 6 -4 7 Hermes, 8, 1 1 9 - 2 2 Hesiod, 2 1 - 2 2 Hippocratic medicine, 4 6 Hippolvtus, 6 4 - 6 5 , I 0 3 ii. I 22 Homer, 2 8 , 3 1 , 3 5 - 3 7 , 6 0 , 6 6 , 7 6 , 1 2 0 2 1 , 2 4 4 ; and gates o f horn and ivory, 1 5 - 1 7 ; oneiric landscape of, 14; par­ odied by Lucian, 2 6 - 2 7 ; people o f dreams in, 17 2 0 , 2 4 2 5 ; village o f dreams in, 1 5 - 1 7 imagination, 3, 12, 14. 2 2 , 3 0 , 48 4 9 , 56, 6 9 , 7 6 , 9 4 , 127, 225 2 7 , 2 4 5 ; and

INDEX

meaning in dreams, 4 2 - 4 3 ; and poly­ semy in Artemidorus, 86- 9 1 ; in Svnesian dream-theory, 7 0 - 7 3 incubation, 1 1 0 -1 i, 117, 187, 190, 245 Irenaeus, 6 4 , 1 0 3 n .l2 2 , 194 Isaac, as dreamer, 9 3 - 9 4 Isis, 110 Jacob, dream o f ladder: in allegory, 99 104; in Cixous, 2 5 0 ; in Origcn, 9 3 ; in Pcrpetua’s diary, 1 5 4 - 5 6 ; in Philo, 6 1 62 Jerome, 6 3 , 128, 135, 137; ascetic theory of, 2 1 4 - 3 1 ; dreams of, 2 0 5 - 7 , 2 1 0 - 1 3 , 2 1 5 , 2 2 4 , 2 2 6 - 2 7 , 2 3 0 ; on dreams and asceticism, 2 0 7 - 1 3 , 2 2 4 , 2 3 0 - 3 1 ; and classification o f dreams, 2 0 5 - 9 ; on pre­ monitory dreams, 2 0 8 - 9 , 2 1 2 , 226 Joseph, as dreamer, 4 9 , 94 Justin Martyr, 6 4 , 1 0 1 -2 Lucian o f Samosara, 2 6 - 2 8 , 182 Macrobius, 4 1 , 7 5 , 9 1 - 9 2 , 9 4 - 9 9 , 116 magic: and demonic dreams, 6 4 6 5 ; func­ tion o f dreams in, 1 1 7 - 2 3 ; and oneiric angels, 5 9 - 6 0 Marcus Aurelius, 107 medicine, 4 6 , 5 0 , 190, 194 Midrash Rabbah, 1 0 0 -1 0 3 Montanism, 154, 1 7 2 -7 5 moon, 5 6 . 5 9 - 6 0 , 120. See also Selene Morpheus, 6, 2 3 - 2 4 , 66 Neoplatonism, 3 1 - 3 2 , 3 6 - 3 8 , 4 8 , 7 0 - 7 3 , 9 8 , 116 Nyx, 21 oneirokritica. See classification owiros, 17, 4 8 n .5 2 , 81 83 Origcn, 7 5 , 9 1 - 9 5 , 101 Osiris, 120 ostemio, 151 Ovid, 6 , 2 2 - 2 4 , 6 6 , 156 Patrod us, 19 20 Pausanias, 8 , 3 3 , 7 8 , 1 0 9 -1 1 Penelope, 1 4 - 1 5 , 1 8 - 1 9 ,6 6 , 76 people ot dreams: in Hesiod, 21 2 2 ; in Homer, 17 2 0 ; in Neoplatonism, 36 38

INDEX Pcrpctua: as catechumen, 1 4 9 - 5 0 , 154; and Dinocrates, 3 5 , 128, 1 5 8 - 6 1 , 174. 1 7 7 - 7 9 ; and dream o f ladder, 1 5 2 - 5 6 , 1 7 6 - 7 7 , 1 80; and dream o f gladiatorial contest, 1 6 1 - 6 5 , 175, 1 8 0 - 8 3 ; as mar­ tyr, 1 4 8 - 5 0 , 1 5 3 - 5 4 , 1 6 2 - 6 4 , 174, 176; and .Vlontanism, 1 7 2 - 7 5 ; and one­ iric apples, 1 6 2 - 6 4 , 182—8 3 ; and one­ iric serpent, 155, 162, 1 7 6 - 7 7 . 180; and oneiric shepherd, 1 5 3 - 5 4 . 1 5 6 -5 7 , 1 7 6 - 7 7 , 1 80; and paradisal cheese, 4, 152, 1 5 7 - 5 8 , 162; and patriarchy, 1 6 5 7 3 , 1 7 6 - 7 8 , 180, 182 8 3 ; and peti­ tionary dreaming, 134. 1 5 0 - 5 1 ; sex change, dream of, 1 6 2 - 6 3 , 171, 181 82 phantasmata, 4 3 - 4 4 phantom, 2 4 , 4 0 - 4 2 Philo, 7 2 , 7 5 , 9 1 ; on Jacob’s dream, 100, 1 0 2 - 4 ; on oneiric angels, 6 1 - 6 2 ; on oneiric images, 9 2 Philostratus, 7 7 , 113, 182, 198 phvsiognomv, 1 9 6 -9 9 Plato, 3 , 4 - 5 , 3 9 - 4 0 , 41 Pliny (the Elder), 4 2 Plotinus, 3 1 - 3 2 , 4 8 , 72 Plutarch, 5 5 - 5 7 , 7 2 , 131, 182, 194 Polemo, 113, 197 9 8 Porphyry, 3 2 , 3 6 - 3 8 , 73 Proclus, 3 6 - 3 7 psychobiological theory, 42 51 Ptolemy, 11. 78 Sarapis, 1 10 Scipio, dream of, 9 5 - 9 9

273 Selene, 59 6 0 , 119 2 0 . See also moon semiotics, 3 2 , 7 0 , 8 0 , 8 5 - 9 1 , 9 5 , 9 7 , 128, 218 Simon the Magician, 6 4 65 sleep, 1 8 - 1 9 , 4 2 - 4 3 , 4 7 - 4 8 , 5 8 , 6 7 - 6 8 , 7 1 ,8 1 , 133, 2 3 1 ,2 4 1 Socrates, 3, 4 , 5, 10, 127 soul: in Artemidorus' dream-theory, 8 1 8 2 ; in Augustine’s dream-theory, 9 2 ; and daemonic dreams, 5 6 - 5 7 ; as dream, 3 7 - 3 8 ; and dream interpretation, 9 4 9 5 ; in Philo’s dream-theory, 6 1 - 6 2 ; in psychobiological dream-theory, 4 2 4 4 , 4 7 - 5 1 ; in Stoic dream-theory, 5 2 - 5 5 ; and theological dream-theory, 3 9 - 4 0 , 6 6 -7 2 statues, oneiric, 2 8 - 3 5 . See also Aclius Aristides; Asclepius Stoics: dream-theory of, 5 2 - 5 5 ; influence on Tcrtullian, 6 7 , 7 0 ; on sympatheia, 50 Synesius, 7 0 - 7 3 , 76 Tcrtullian: attacks cult o f Asclepius, 117; dream-theory of, 6 6 - 7 0 , 2 0 6 - 7 ; on Jacob’s ladder, 1 0 3 ; as Montanist, 1747 5 ; patriarchal constructions o f women, 1 5 9 - 6 0 , 169 7 2 , 175; on Pcrpctuas dream o f ladder, 153 5 4 ; and punitive oneiric angels, 6 6 - 6 7 , 2 0 9 ; shepherd imagery in, 157 Theda, St., 117, 2 3 7 , 245 Virgil, 2 4 2 6 , 8 1 . 156, 2 1 0 it o , 9 3 , 133, 151