Literary dream · Cities & buildings
The third day hence to fertile Phthia
Athens, Greece · 399 BCE
There appeared to me the likeness of a woman, fair and comely, clothed in bright raiment, who called to me and said: O Socrates, ‘The third day hence to fertile Phthia shalt thou go.’
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- Source
- Crito (trans. Benjamin Jowett) — Plato; trans. Benjamin Jowett, 1871 (translation). Crito 44a
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Athens, Greece · Ancient Greek
- Date
- 399 BCE
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — Socrates in prison, awaiting execution, as written by Plato (Jowett translation).
- Imagery
- A stranger · Light · Road
- Feelings
- Calm · Awe
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Houses, corridors and endless stairs are frequent dream settings. Some writers read buildings as figures for the self; others note simply that dreams rebuild the spaces we move through every day.
cf. Stevenson, A Chapter on Dreams (1888)
Mythological
Labyrinths, towers and underground cities appear in myths from Crete to Babel — built places where people lose their way, reach too high, or find hidden kingdoms.
Greek myth; Genesis 11
Chinese traditions
Tang tales like “The Governor of Nanke” place a whole kingdom of palaces inside a dream, only to reveal it as an ants’ nest — a lasting image for the brevity of worldly glory.
Li Gongzuo, c. 802
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- My own vast shadow England (countryside) · before 1911
- The skull that spoke in a dream On the road to Chu, China · c. 3rd century BCE
- Come over into Macedonia, and help us Troas, Asia Minor · c. 49 (narrative)
- The shop assistant who had moved England · before 1911
- A lying dream in the likeness of Nestor Troy (setting) · c. 8th century BCE
- Ask what I shall give thee Gibeon · undated narrative