Potter, John; Anthon, Charles [Hrsg.]: Archaeologia Graeca or the antiquities of Greece (New York, 1825)

27H

OF THE RELIGION OF GREECE,

Altera candentiperfecta nitens elephanio ■
Sed falso ad caelum miitunt insomnia Manes

Two gates the silent courts of Sleep adorn,
That of pale ivory, this of lucid horn ;
Thro' this true visions take their airy way,

Thro' that, false phantoms mount the realms of day. pitt.

In allusion to these gates, we are told by Philostratus, that it was cus-
tomary to represent any dream in a white garment, wrapped over a black
one, with a horn in his hand. And Eustathius, in his comment upon the
fore-mentioned passage of Homer, hath made several conjectures con-
cerning it, most of which are so frivolous that to mention them would
be lost labour. Such as desire farther satisfaction may consult the au-
thor.

The time in which true dreams were expected was Nuxtoj uftohybg' and
therefore Homer telleth us, that Penelope having an auspicious dream
concerning her son Telemachus, who was travelling in search of his
father Ulysses, rejoiced the more, because it appeared to her at that
time :

Kss§« Ijca§io;o. Qihw cTs01 «T0g <stv6«,

"flc o{ hzgyii ovsigov e^at/vsTo h/x.toj ti(/.o\ycp (1),

---upsprang

From sleep lcarius' daughter, and her heart

Fell heal'd within her, by that dream impress'd

Distinctly in the noiseless night serene. cowper.

What time that was grammarians do not agree : some derive it (saith
Eustathius) from the private particle a and f/-oXs'<», to walk, or fioysu, to
labour and toil, as (hough it were H^oXtg, or xfxoyog, and by Epenthesis,
u^eXybg, as though it should signify the dead of the night, in which people
neither labour not walk abroad. Others also think it may signify the mid-
dle, or depth of the night, but for a different reason : for c*(AoXyos (say
they") is the same with #uxv«g, i. e. thick, or close compacted; and Hesiod
hath used the word in this sense, when he saith,

That is, as Athenaeus expounds it, -roifis/Atxy «jm,fxiai'a, a thick cake, such as
the shepherds and labouring men eat. Others allow it the same signifi-
cation, but for a third reason : A^ioXyog (say they), according to the glos-
sographers, amongst the Achaeans, is the same with uxny, which signifies
the midst or height of any thing, as xxptj S-sgxg, that part of the summer,
when the heat is most violent, midsummer; and men are said to be ev dwfi,
when they are in their full strength ; and therefore d^okylg, or dx^ vux-
to£, must be the depth or midst of the night. But this signification con-
cerns not our present purpose, for I nowhere read that dreams had more
credit because they came in the dead of the night. It must therefore be
observed, that di^thyli was used in another sense ; for the time in which
they used to milk cattle being derived from a/xsXyw, to milk; and then
d^oXyog vuxtU, must signify the morning, in opposition to s}f«e£as dpoXyog,
or the evening milking-time. That it was used in this sense is evident
from Homer's twenty-second Iliad, where he saith the dog-star (which
riseth a little before the sun) appears e'v vtwros «>otyf' His words are
these;

(DFineOdyss, iv.