Artemidorus' method: theorematic and allegorical dreams, the six elements

Artemidorus did not simply draw up lists of images and meanings. At the beginning of the Oneirocritica he sets out a real method, with definitions, distinctions and rules of caution. It is this theoretical framework, even more than the individual interpretations, that made his book a model for later centuries, in both the Byzantine and the Arab worlds.

Enhypnion and oneiros

The first distinction concerns the very nature of the dream. The enhypnion is the dream that arises from the present condition of the sleeper: the hungry dream of eating, the lover sees the beloved, those who fear something relive it in sleep. For Artemidorus these dreams announce nothing, because they merely reflect the state of body and mind and vanish on waking.

The oneiros, by contrast, is the dream proper, the one which, according to the author, points to something that has yet to happen. Only this kind concerns the interpreter. The distinction was old and appears, under Latin names, in Macrobius as well, but Artemidorus makes it practical: the first task of anyone judging a dream is to establish whether it is really worth interpreting.

Direct dreams and allegorical dreams

Within the oneiroi Artemidorus distinguishes two further families. Theorematic dreams come true exactly as they were seen: someone who dreams of a shipwreck and is then shipwrecked has had a dream of this kind. Allegorical dreams, far more numerous, show instead an image that points to something else, through likeness, wordplay or traditional associations, and they require genuine work of decipherment.

A famous example, also reported by Plutarch, concerns Alexander the Great during the siege of Tyre: the king dreamt of a satyr dancing on his shield, and the seer Aristander split the Greek word satyros into sa Tyros, meaning «Tyre is yours». The wordplay shows how closely ancient allegory was bound to the language and culture of the dreamer.

The person before the symbol

Perhaps the most modern principle in Artemidorus is this: the same dream does not mean the same thing for everyone. The interpreter must know the dreamer's sex, age, profession, free or servile status, health and habits. A dream that is favourable for a poor man may be unfavourable for a rich one, and what announces joy to a slave may announce harm to a magistrate.

Artemidorus also lists six elements against which to judge whether an image agrees with or contradicts the order of things: nature, law, custom, art or trade, names and time. A dream in harmony with these criteria was held to be a good omen, one that contradicted them a bad omen, with exceptions that the author discusses case by case.

This attention to context explains why the Oneirocritica is still read by historians of ancient mentalities. Artemidorus also advised never to judge a dream without knowing every detail of it, and to distrust interpreters who answer in haste. Behind the individual interpretations, now remote from our sensibility, one can glimpse a serious attempt to give rules to an art that by its very nature escaped them.