Religious narrative · Nature & weather
An olive wreath that covered the earth
Susa, Persia · 481 BCE (as told)
Xerxes thought that he had been crowned with a wreath of an olive-branch and that the shoots growing from the olive-tree covered the whole Earth; and after that, the wreath, placed as it was about his head, disappeared.
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- Source
- The History of Herodotus (trans. G. C. Macaulay) — Herodotus; trans. G. C. Macaulay, 1890 (translation). Book VII, 19
- Record type
- Religious narrative
- Place
- Susa, Persia · Persian
- Date
- 481 BCE (as told)
- Uncertainty
- High — From Herodotus’s Histories (Macaulay translation, 1890); reported dream.
- Imagery
- Tree · Ruler · Flower
- Feelings
- Awe · Joy
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Storms, mountains and gardens in dreams are often traced to the day’s impressions or the sleeper’s physical state — Ellis connected a dreamed cyclone to a windy night.
Ellis (1911), ch. IV
Mythological
Sacred mountains and world-trees connect earth and sky in many traditions, from Olympus to Yggdrasil to Mount Kunlun.
Comparative mythology
Chinese traditions
Landscape — mountains, rivers, mist — is the setting of countless Chinese dream journeys, where the dreamer’s wandering mirrors the shan-shui painting tradition.
Li Bai, Dreaming of Tianmu
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- Three branches and Pharaoh’s cup Egypt (narrative setting) · undated narrative
- Birds ate from the basket on my head Egypt (narrative setting) · undated narrative
- The kingdom under the locust tree Guangling (Yangzhou), China · c. 802
- Planting fowls’ heads to grow chickens England · before 1911
- Easter morning, cattle on the graves Grasmere, England · c. 1819
- A tree reaching unto heaven Babylon · narrative set c. 6th c. BCE