Berghahn Books

Aelius Aristides and the Technology of Oracular Dreams Author(s): Luther H. Martin Source: Historical Reflections / Rflexions Historiques, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring 1987), pp. 65-72 Published by: Berghahn Books Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41298873 . Accessed: 17/02/2014 16:58
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Aelius Technology

Aristides

and

the Dreams

of Oracular Luther H. Martin

Two important texts on dreaming survive from antiquity,both from or Science of Dreams the second century AD: the Oneirocritica, , by Artemidorus (from the late second century),1 and the Hieroi Logoi , or Sacred Tales, by Aelius Aristides (writtenca. 117-1 18).2 Both suppose a broad, three-foldclassificationof dreams common in antiquity:the or non-predictive dream, the oneirosor predictive dream, enhypnion and the chrematismos or oracular dream.3 Artemidorus was a professional dream specialist concerned with taxonomic distinctions between "ordinary" dreaming as either predictive, (oneira), or nonAristides, on the other hand, was a rhetoripredictive, (enhypnia).4 cian and sophist who recorded his chrematismoi, or oracular dreams, a of which to the specialized practices of the type dreaming belonged incubation cults. Artemidorus' systematicdiscussion of dreams established him as an authority for subsequent popular dream practices, while Aristides' personal testimonieswere generally neglected. Luther H. Martin is associate and chair at TheUniversity professor ofreligion ofVermont hespecializes He is the where in the and the study ofHellenistic religions theory ofreligion. An Introduction author Press, (Oxford 1987)and University of Hellenistic Religions: numerous articles onHellenistic He hasco-edited onJung andtheStudy of religions. Essays Press of theSelf:A Seminar , 1985)and Technologies Religion (University ofAmerica Michel with Foucault Massachusetts Press , 1987). (The University of 1. RogerA. Pack,ed., Artemidori Onirocriticon LibriV (Leipzig: B.G. Daldiani, Dreams: Oneirocritica Teubner,1963); RobertJ. White,The Interpretation of by Studies Artemidorus, (ParkRidge, 1975).White's N.J.:NoyesPress, NoyesClassical translation is baseduponthePackedition. A. Behr, P. Aelii Aristides 2. Charles Omnia (Leiden: QuaeExtant E.J.Brill, Opera A. Behr,trans., P. Aelius TheComplete vol. 2, Aristides. Works, 1976-);and Charles Orations XVII-LIII(Leiden: Brill, 1981). E.J. 3. C.A. Behr, Aelius Aristides andThe Tales Adolf M. Hakkert, Sacred (Amsterdam: in antiquity, and A.H.M. see pp. 173-180; 1968),p. 174; on dreamclassification of Dream-Classification" 4th ser., 22 Kessels, "AncientSystems Mnemosyne, (1969):389-424. 4. Luther H. Martin, in LateAntiquity," The "Artemidorus: Dream Second Theory Century, forthcoming. Vol.14, No.1,1987 HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS/REFLEXIONS HISTORIQUES,

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HistoricalReflections /Reflexions Historiques

The recent concern with social historyhas resulted in a revival of interest in Artemidorus' dream book.5 From this perspective, Artemidorus' catalogue of dreams is understood as expressions by the self of its participation in an external order of things. The workers and priests,invalids and athletes, huntersand soldiers, politicians and artists,slaves and masters, brides and prostitutes,sophists and students, money-lenders and merchants who populate Artemidorus' dream book represent typical figures in situations typical to the social world of late antiquity.They embody an objective systemof relationshipshaving to do with the self,others, society, and the cosmos itself.6 Aristides, on the other hand, records a subjective systemof relationshipshaving to do with self, its constitution in terms of illness and salvation, and a systemof deities focused on the healing god, Asklepius.7 The publication of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, which opens with reference to Artemidorus,8 first recalled the modern world to a scientific consideration of dreams. From a psychological perspective, Aristides' oneiric relationship to gods and illness proved more attractive to the universal claims of psychoanalytic theory than did Artemidorus' antiquated science. In Peter Brown's well-foundedjudgement, Aristides "has had to bear far too from modern scholars."9 heavy a weight of odium psychologicum Rather than confirminga universallyhuman structureand dynamic of the psyche, Aristides may better be understood as an exemplum of his religious world.10 Aristides' Sacred Tales recount the treatmentsprescribed to him in dreams by the god, Asklepius. He had decided "to submit truly to the God as to a doctor and to do in silence whatever he wished" of thesecond foran understanding Oneirocritica in Artemidorus' 5. The interest and "Artemidorus wasanticipated socialworld Greco-Roman Pack, byRoger century 86 Association the American Transactions His Waking (1955):283; World," Philological of bookis in Artemidorus' reflected "thesociety that observation S. Osley's and Arthur in "Notes and second first of the civilization the Greco-Roman centuries," manifestly 89 (1963):66. Classical Oneirocritica on Artemidorus' Journal Dream "Artemidorus: 6. Martin, Theory. on thegod torAristides, ot relationships 7. A second, focused, objective, system World Christian in the Clark See Howard Kee,Miracle (NewHavenand Early Serapls. Yale University London: Press, 1983), pp.90,94. Works Edition 8. Vols. 4-5, TheStandard oj bigmuna Psychological oj theComplete and AlanTyson(London: AlixStruchey, AnnaFreud, ed. James Freud, Strachey, 4:98andn. 1. for Press andInstitute 1958), Psychoanalysis, Hogarth Harvard Late The Press, 9. Peter Brown, University (Cambridge: Antiquity Making of 1978), p. 41. 10. Ibid., pp.41-45.

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The Technology ofOracular Dreams

67

(Sacred Tales 1.4, 57), even when Asklepius gave advice contrary to Aristides' attending physicians (Sacred Tales 1.62-63), or contrary to common sense (Sacred Tales II. 7). Although he never recovered from his maladies, he continued to confess "the healing god, Asklepius* as his saviour (Sacred Tales 1.2; IV. 4). Aristides states his theory of oracular dreams at the beginning of his Sacred Tales: each of our days, as well as our nights, has a story if someone, who was present at them, wished either to record the events or to narrate the providence of the god [pronoia tou theou' , where he revealed [enedeiknunto ] some thingsopenly in his own presence and others by the sending of dreams [enhypnion'.u {Sacred Tales 1.3) As did the Greeks generally, Aristides distinguished two different kinds of seeing: hypar , or actual seeing while awake, and onar , or seeing in sleep, dreaming.12E.R. Dodds has emphasized that each of these modes of vision "has its own logic and its own limitations;and [there is] no obvious reason for thinkingone of them more significant than the other."13 It is his oneira,in which Asklepius appears or which are inspired by the god, that Aristides records.14Dreams, for Aristides,are the media of divine providence.15 Artemidorus, too, refers to predictive dreams as "god-sent" (theobut "in pempta),not, however, with the significanceof divine activity, the same way that we customarilycall all unforeseen thingsgod-sent* 1.6 [P 16, 7-9]; IV. 3 [P 247, 10-12]).16 Artemidorus (Oneirocritica followed the Platonic-Stoic understanding of dreams as generally reflecting a bestial element in human nature which could be overcome by moderate living and justness of the mind so that the soul might grasp truth while asleep.17 In this tradition,Artemidorus likewise understood the predictive activityof dreaming to be predicated 11. Trans, Works cited, Behr, Aristides, (1981). Complete Tales 11.18whereAristides 12. See Sacred refers also to a third of category vision." "waking 13. E.R. Dodds,TheGreeks and theIrrational Los ed., Berkeley, (1951; reprint London: ofCalifornia Press, 1971), Angeles, University p. 102. 14. Unlike whois concerned in histaxonomy of dreams to distinArtemidorus, between ofdreams Aristides doesnotdistinguish (oneirokrind), guish types terminologibetween andenhypnia. chrematismoi, oneira, cally 15. Behr, Aristides andThe Sacred Tales p. 191. 16. As chapters oftheOneirocritica areoften several reference will also pages long, be madeto pageandlineoftheedition byPack[P]. 17. Plato, Cicero's in hisDe Divinatio IX, 57If.,and Quintus, Republic antagonist 1.2,115;23, 82; 53, 121;and57, 129.

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HistoricalReflections /Reflexions Historiques

upon moral purity."You must bear in mind," he advised his son, that men who live an upright, moral life do not have meaningless dreams....For their souls are not muddled by fears or by expectations but, indeed, they control the desires of their bodies. IV, pro. [P 239, 14-19]) (Oneirocritica For Artemidorus, moral rather than ritual purification was the formal condition for significant dreaming. The formal practices associated with Asklepian incubation ritual are familiar. First, there are preliminaryrites of purification,sacrifice to the gods, and a determinationby divination of the god's presence. Second, the suppliant spends the night in the sleeping chamber of the temple where the god appears to him in dream to prescribe a cure which temple officials record and, if necessary, interpret.18 While the psychological interpretationsof incubation practices have been explored,19 Aristides' description of the technology of incubation dreams, their mechanism of operation and their intended strategy,has been neglected. The sacred technology of oracular dreams turned, for Aristides, upon the recognition of a dreamt statue as the image of deity. Aristides recounts his recognition of Asklepius in the firstdream he recorded: I dreamed that I was at the prophylea of the Temple of Asklepius, and a certain one of my friendsmet me....And we went in while we were still speaking....And at this time the Temple happened to have been closed. Still in such a way, so that although closed, a kind of entrance remained and the interiorwas visible. I went up to the doors and saw, instead of the old statue [i agalma], another with downcast eyes. As I marveled and inquired where the old statue was, someone brought it to me, and I seemed not wholly to recognize [gnorizai] it, but still I worshipped it eagerly. {Sacred Tales 1.10-13) Although Aristides "seemed not wholly to recognize" the dream to worship it "eagerly." Agalma , statue, he recognized it sufficiently the word Aristides uses in this passage for statue, specifically Harvard trans. Greek 18. WalterBurkert, (Cambridge: JohnRaffan Religion, Press, 1985), pp.267-268. University 19. See e.g., the suggestive interpretation by C.A. Meier,Ancient Jungian Northwestern MonicaCurtis trans. and Modern Incubation (Evanston: Psychotherapy, Press, 1967). University

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and he is designates "the image of a god as an object of worship,"20 clear that such a cult statue "contained the presence of the God* (Sacred Tales 11.31). For Artemidorus, too, "statues [agalmata] of the gods have the same meaning as the gods themselves" (Oneirocritica 11.39 [P 176, In the section of his Oneirocritica devoted to the 11-12]). significance of dreams in which deities appear (11.35-39), he generalizes from the case of Artemis that: it makes no differencewhether we see the goddess herself as we have imagined her to be or a statue [agalma] of her. For whether gods appear in the flesh or as statues [agalmata] fashioned out of some material, they have the same meaning, (i Oneirocritica 11.35 [P 159, 24 - 160, 3]) Aristides reports that he was able to recognize deities in his dreams because of the way they are "represented in statues" at the cult sites (Sacred Tales IV. 50), for example, "in the long portico of the Gymnasium" (Sacred Tales 1.17). The recognition of the dream statue as that of the deity was based upon a prior waking knowledge of the cult statue of the deity. This is the importance of being present at the cult site for oracular dreams and of the anthropomorphic, and therefore recognizable, cult images for incubation practice. Oneiric revelation, in other words, required the correlation of an oneiric recognition of the iconic presence of deity in dream vision, the onar , with a previous waking confession of the iconic presence of deity in his cult dwelling, the hypar .21 Contrary to the external social relationships which are characteristic of Greek religious practice generally,22 an internal relationship of self to mind characterizes Aristides' oneiric revelation:

ofGreek 20. Fora discussion forimages, see S.R.F.Price, and Rituals terminology Power: The Roman inAsiaMinor Cult Press, Imperial (Cambridge: Cambridge University does not maintain Aristides 1984), pp. 176-180.As withdreamterminology, butusesagalma and edos distinctions, , andrias, customary terminological interchangeSee e.g.,Sacred Tales V.62-63. ably. 21. A.-J. concluded ofAristides that "itis byno means thedreams that Festugire led to hisfaith in thegod,butrather hisfaith in thegodwhich determined hisinterof the dreams. The faith comesfirst." Personal theGreeks pretation Religion among andLos Angeles: ofCalifornia ed.,Berkeley Press, (1954;reprint 1960), University p. 98. Greek seee.g.,pp.255,276. 22. Burkert, , passim, Religion

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HistoricalReflections /Reflexions Historiques He [Asklepius] said it was fittingthat my mind [nous] be changed from its present condition, and having been changed, [kinethenai] associate with god, and by its association be superior to man's estate, and that neither was remarkable, either by associating with god, to be superior, or being superior, to associate with god. (Sacred Tales IV. 52)

Such oracular recognitions belonged to an inner and personal structure of religious experience characteristicof late antiquity.23 The religious experience associated with the recognition of the statue or image of the deity in dream involved furtheran identification of the dreamer with the image of the deity. Aristides recounts that: I dreamed that...I went at evening to the Temple of Asklepius....I was thinkingabout this temple as if it were a vestibule.... I examined, as it were, in this vestibule, a statue of me. At one time I saw it as if it were of me, and again it seemed to be a great and fair statue of Asklepius. (Sacred Tales 1.17) Again, Aristides was invited by Asklepius in a dream to remain with him after others had departed. I was delighted by the honor and the extent to which I was preferred to the other, and I shouted out, "The One," meaning the god. But he said, "It is you." (Sacred Tales IV. 50) This recognition by the dreamer of the dream statue as the image of deity,and of his identificationwith it, comprises the salvificteleology of oracular dream technology. The strategy which belongs to oracular dream technology has been termed by Walter Burkert "crisis management,"24and illness was the most oppressive of individual crises.25 Such crises were viewed by the Greeks as the effectsof misfortune (tyche / fortuna)?6 In the firstdream he recorded, Aristides notes the juxtaposition of the statues of "Good Fortune [Agathe Tyche ] and the Good God in Tales 1.11), an the at (Sacred [Asklepius]" Asklepieum Pergamum see Festugiere, Personal 23. On Aristides' Religion, experience, pp. religious and Kee,Miracle in the World view ofself as Christian 97-104, pp. 93-97.Foranother Hermeticum between mind andgod,seetheCorpus 1.1-6. theinternal relation (nous) Greek 24. Burkert, , pp.264-268. Religion 25. Ibid., p. 267. 26. Ibid., p. 264.

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association documented also at the central Asklepius sanctuary at Epidaurus.27 This association of "Good Fortune" with the god of medicine suggests a view of healing as the overcoming of misfortune As tyche / fortunawas (tyche / fortuna)by Good Fortune (AgatheTyche).2S of her rule can be a personification of cosmic disorder, the effects as malaise of the general seen as more than physical malady, but existence.29 In contrast to the scientific medicine of Hippocrates, the divine medicine of Asklepius sought to remedy this human malaise and, consequently, was not limited simply to physical or psychosomatic illness. Not only were Aristides' professional skillsas a rhetorician notably enhanced as a result of Asklepius' command not to abandon oratory, (Sacred Tales IV. 14),30 but Asklepius' "remark was greater than life itself,and every disease was less [of identity]... than this, every grace was less than this. This made me able and willing to live." {Sacred Tales IV. 50) As Mary Hamilton has shown, the healing and salvificstrategyof incubation continued in Christian practice, only substitutinga local saint or the Virgin for the healing deity, until the modern day.31 Emerging from popular Greek practice rather than from theological ideals, the technology of oracular dreams provided Greek Christianitywith a technology of iconography. As with incubation dreams, a divine personage is understood to reside, i.e. is recognized as present, in his icon. As such, "he could speak through it and work miracles by its agency."32 The ecclesiastical history of Christian iconography is based upon the Pauline view that the "god of this world has blinded" the minds (noemata)of unbelievers

A Collection andInterpretation 27. Emma Edelstein, ofthe J. and Ludwig Asklepius: Testimonies 423, ed., NewYork:ArnoPress, , 2 vols.(1945;reprint 1975), Testimony 229. 1:221, Tales of fate[moironomos refers as the"arbiter to Asklepius 28. Aristides ],"Sacred 11.31. see Iiro of tyche in Greco-Roman 29. On the pervasiveness / fortuna thought, der romischen Welt bd. teil bd. 1 und t. 2, 17, "Fortuna," Kajanto, Aufstieg Niedergang whoalso distinguishes between de Gruyter, (Berlin: 1981),pp. 502-558, "capricious" fortune and"good" fortune, ibid., pp.525-532. (tyche / fortuna) World inthe Christian 30. Kee,Miracle , pp.98,99-102. andChristian inPaganTemples Incubation orthe Cure 31. Mary Hamilton, ofDisease W.C.Henderson, Churches 1906). (St.Andrews: The New Rome Charles Scribner's 32. Cyril (NewYork: Empire of Mango, Byzantium: Sons,1980), p. 98.

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HistoricalReflections /Reflexions Historiques to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image [eikon]of God. (2 Cor. 4:4)

The faithful, on the other hand, with unveiled faces, beholding [katoptrizomenoi] the glory of the Lord, are being changed [metamorphoumetha ] into his image [eikon'. (2 Cor. 3: 18)33 The technology expressed by this canonical authority is strikingly similar to that of Aristides' oracular dream technology. For both, the for Paul metamorphoussubject is changed (for Aristides kinethenai, thai); for both, the locus of this change is the mind (for Aristides nous , for Paul noeta);and for both, the change is into an image (eikon) of deity which must be recognized (for Aristides gnorizo,for Paul katoptrizo). Paul proposes, of course, a restoration of the image of God bestowed upon man at creation but impaired now by sin (Genesis l:26f.).54 This view of image, as did the notion of sin, took on a specificallyethical content in Christian thought.35The body was the focus for Christian ethical practice, the strategy of which was to initiate or to maintain the Platonic-Stoic ideal of separation between a bestial body and the divine mind, the locus for recognition of deity and therefore of transformation.This idea of the reformation of man "to the image and likeness of God became," according to the convincing thesis of Gerhard Ladner, "the inspiration of all reform movements in early and mediaeval Christianity."36

is to be contrasted withthe "eschatological 33. This passagein 2 Corinthians 13:12. ina similar reservation" metaphor byPaulin 1 Corinthians expressed on theFirst A Commentary "Excursis: 34. See Hans Conzelmann, eikon, 'image'," Fortress W. Leitch tothe Corinthians Press, , trans. 1975), James (Philadelphia: Epistle pp. 187-188. and ed. NewTestament, trans, 35. Gerhard Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary ofthe B. Wm.B. Eerdmans, W. Bromiley 1964),2:397;Gerhard (Grand Rapids: Geoffrey in the andAction ItsImpact onChristian TheIdea ofReform: Ladner, Thought Age ofthe Harvard Fathers Press, 1959), p. 51. University (Cambridge: Ideaof 36. Ladner, p. 62. Reform,

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