Literary dream · Death & the departed
You sleep, Achilles, and have forgotten me
Troy (setting) · c. 8th century BCE
Presently the sad spirit of Patroclus drew near him, like what he had been in stature, voice, and the light of his beaming eyes, clad, too, as he had been clad in life. The spirit hovered over his head and said— “You sleep, Achilles, and have forgotten me
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- The Iliad (trans. Samuel Butler) — Homer; trans. Samuel Butler, 1898 (translation). Book XXIII
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Troy (setting) · Ancient Greek
- Date
- c. 8th century BCE
- Uncertainty
- High — Epic poem, in Samuel Butler’s public-domain translation.
- Imagery
- Friend · The dead · War
- Feelings
- Grief · Longing
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
- Hector’s ghost before my sight Troy (setting) · 19 BCE (poem)
- The white horse at dawn Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- Woken from a dream a thousand li long Southern Song China · c. 1138
- A postcard written partly in Latin England · before 1911
- Father, don’t you see that I am burning? Central Europe · before 1900
- Iron cavalry, silent as water Shu (Sichuan), China · c. 1173