Hector’s ghost before my sight

Troy (setting) · 19 BCE (poem)

When Hector’s ghost before my sight appears: A bloody shroud he seem’d, and bath’d in tears; Such as he was, when, by Pelides slain, Thessalian coursers dragg’d him o’er the plain.

Original text — The Aeneid (trans. John Dryden), Virgil; trans. John Dryden

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Source: The Aeneid (trans. John Dryden) — Virgil; trans. John Dryden, 1697 (translation). Book II
Rights: Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type: Literary dream
Place: Troy (setting) · Roman
Date: 19 BCE (poem)
Uncertainty: High — Virgil’s Aeneid, in John Dryden’s 1697 translation.
Imagery: The dead · War · Horse · Friend
Feelings: Grief · Horror

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Dreams of the dead returning are widely reported after bereavement. Ellis noted how such dreams often move, over years, from disbelief to quiet acceptance; many people describe them as comforting rather than frightening.

Ellis (1911), ch. VIII

Mythological

In Homer, dreams pass through gates of horn and ivory; across many cultures the dead were believed to visit the living in sleep, and dreams were a place where the two could meet.

Odyssey XIX

Chinese traditions

Chinese poets wrote dreams of the departed as acts of remembrance: Su Shi’s “Ten years, living and dead” and Du Fu’s “My old friend entered my dream” are read to this day as elegies.

Su Shi (1075); Du Fu (759)

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images

You sleep, Achilles, and have forgotten me Troy (setting) · c. 8th century BCE
The white horse at dawn Tokyo, Japan · 1908
Two women yoked to my son’s chariot Susa (setting) · 472 BCE (play)
My dead brother with bleeding fingers England · before 1911
A masked man asked for his bone back Huangkeng, China · c. 795
A postcard written partly in Latin England · before 1911