Religious narrative · Death & the departed
My son would be killed by an iron spear
Sardis, Lydia · c. 550 BCE (as told)
First there came and stood by him a dream, which showed to him the truth of the evils that were about to come to pass in respect of his son.
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- Source
- The History of Herodotus (trans. G. C. Macaulay) — Herodotus; trans. G. C. Macaulay, 1890 (translation). Book I, 34
- Record type
- Religious narrative
- Place
- Sardis, Lydia · Lydian
- Date
- c. 550 BCE (as told)
- Uncertainty
- High — Croesus tried to keep his son Atys from all weapons, and lost him anyway in a hunting accident.
- Imagery
- Child · Ruler · War
- Feelings
- Unease · Grief
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
- Two women yoked to my son’s chariot Susa (setting) · 472 BCE (play)
- The illness became two little boys Jin (Shanxi), China · 581 BCE
- A mother praying for a father who never returns Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- A lying dream in the likeness of Nestor Troy (setting) · c. 8th century BCE
- My father sinking into a lake of mire Ayodhya (setting) · c. 5th–4th c. BCE (epic)
- A plague of certainty Siberia, Russia · 1866 (novel)