Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica: Text, Translation, and Commentary

In ancient Greece and Rome, dreams were believed by many to offer insight into future events. Artemidorus' Oneirocritica, a treatise on dream-divination and compendium of dream-interpretations written in Ancient Greek in the mid-second to early-third centuries AD, is the only surviving text from antiquity that instructs its readers in the art of using dreams to predict the future. In it, Artemidorus discusses the nature of dreams and how to interpret them, and provides an encyclopaedic catalogue of interpretations of dreams relating to the natural, human, and divine worlds.

In this volume, Harris-McCoy offers a revised Greek text of the Oneirocritica with facing English translation, a detailed introduction, and scholarly commentary. Seeking to demonstrate the richness and intelligence of this understudied text, he gives particular emphasis to the Oneirocritica's composition and construction, and its aesthetic, intellectual, and political foundations and context.