Oneiros Personifications of dreams, called
Oneiros (,
pl. Oneiroi), had several minor references in ancient sources and would sometimes appear in myths delivering messages to mortals in their sleep. In
Hesiod's
Theogony, the "tribe of Dreams" was descended from
Nyx and were, among others, brothers of
Hypnos (sleep) and
Thanatos (death), also residents of the underworld. The Oneiroi, who dwelt on the dark shores of the western ocean, Euripides' Oneiroi differ from the nearly playful
Homeric Dreams that are seen bending over the dreamer's head and engaging in conversations. They are described as being born out of the Earth's dark womb; they descend not from the nourishing agricultural mother
Earth, but from a darker, more primordial version, known as Chthon. In Homeric texts, the Dreams are not represented as an experience, a product of an individual's subconscious, but rather as visual images, human-like figures that present themselves to the dreamer. As such, the Homeric characters speak of 'seeing' a dream, rather than 'having' one.
Location and description The Greek word
demos is translated in English-language literature with various names, such as "the Land", "the District", "the Village", "the Province", or even "the People" [of Dreams]. In Homer's
Odyssey, the Land of dreams is located spatially in an imaginal landscape closely situated to the
realm of the dead. It lies past the stream of
Oceanus, which represented the boundary in cosmic space, beyond which the real world ends and the land of phantasy and ghosts begins. Book 24 of the Odyssey opens with a description of the journey taken by one of
Penelope's slain suitors to the underworld. The gates of the Sun (
Helios) are typically identified as the gates of the
underworld. They seem to have several parallels in Homeric texts; the souls (
psychae) enter the underworld through the gates, the same ones as the sun when it sets, while
Hades himself is described as
pylartes ("the gate-closer"). On the contrary, the "White Rock" (rock of Leucas) finds no particular parallel in Homeric diction. Regarding its association with dreams, it appears parallel to the expression found in
Alcaman's
Partheneion "from dreams underneath a rock". In general, the White Rock was often used in ancient Greek tradition
allegorically, in order to symbolise the boundary that delimits the conscious and the unconscious, be it a
trance,
stupor,
sleep, or even
death.
Gates of the dreams Similar to the gates of the underworld, the Land of dreams, as a district or a village, is described as having its own set of gates, through which the Dreams pass in order to visit the world of the humans. In a passage of the Odyssey, Penelope is pictured as "slumbering sweetly in the gates of dream", while in a later passage, she supplies a much more detailed description of this construct. The 'wise Penelope' explains how "the dreams are by nature perplexing and full of messages which are hard to interpret", and goes on to describe the two gates of the evanescent dreams; the truthful gate of polished
horn and the deceitful gate of sawn
ivory. The dreams here are not labeled adjectivally as 'true' or 'false', but rather are distinguished with verbal phrases describing what they do after they have passed through either one of the two gates. This passage has raised a great deal of scholarly debate, starting already from antiquity, particularly regarding Homer's choice of words in order to describe the material of the gates. Some have interpreted the passage as referring to the qualities of the materials; the horn being transparent, whereas ivory is blurred and opaque. This Homeric choice, however, is most commonly explained by the resemblance in sound between the Greek words
k[e]raino ('accomplish') and
keras ('horn'), and similarly between
elephairomai ('deceive') and
elephas ('ivory'). This resemblance either made it seemingly appear as if the verbs were etymologically derived from the respective nouns, or perhaps the choice was merely a
word play for literary purposes, which subsequently cannot be preserved in English. == Ovid's
Metamorphoses ==