Literary dream · People & kin
Two women yoked to my son’s chariot
Susa (setting) · 472 BCE (play)
A dream I had: two women nobly clad Came to my sight, one robed in Persian dress, The other vested in the Dorian garb
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- Four Plays of Aeschylus (trans. E. D. A. Morshead) — Aeschylus; trans. E. D. A. Morshead, 472 BCE / 1908 (translation). The Persians
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Susa (setting) · Ancient Greek
- Date
- 472 BCE (play)
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — Queen Atossa’s dream in Aeschylus’s The Persians (Morshead translation); her son Xerxes is thrown from the chariot.
- Imagery
- A stranger · Horse · Ruler · War · Child
- Feelings
- Unease · Grief
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Family members, friends and strangers populate most dreams. Freud read many such dreams as wishes in disguise; contemporary researchers emphasise continuity with waking relationships and concerns.
Freud, Dream Psychology (1920)
Mythological
Dreams in epic and scripture are often addressed to someone — a wife waiting for a husband, a son receiving a vision for his family — and are told aloud to be understood.
Odyssey XIX; Genesis 37
Chinese traditions
Confucius lamented that he no longer dreamed of the Duke of Zhou; in Chinese letters, dreaming of someone is a measure of how much they are on one’s mind.
Analects 7.5
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- My son would be killed by an iron spear Sardis, Lydia · c. 550 BCE (as told)
- A lying dream in the likeness of Nestor Troy (setting) · c. 8th century BCE
- The white horse at dawn Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- Riding with Achilles Vienna, Austria · c. 1900
- I no longer dream of the Duke of Zhou State of Lu, China · c. 5th century BCE
- Thou art but a dead man Gerar, Canaan · undated narrative