Dreams were a very important mode of healing in the cult of the Greek god Asclepius. However, the dreams in this cult seem to function very differently from dreams elsewhere in the ancient Greek world. In other contexts, literary, philosophical and practical, dreams can be oracular, but they do not usually allow for interaction with a deity as they do within this specific cult context. The god Asclepius is a liminal figure, both human and divine, worshipped as both hero and god. This liminality is what most characterizes the dreams in his cult, because sleep and dreaming are liminal states, and so they allow supplicants to interact with a liminal god.

Before examining dreams in a particular situation, it is important to consider how they are represented in the broader contexts of literature and philosophy. Dreams are portrayed one way by Homer, and another way entirely by Aristotle. Artemidorus, however, because of the pragmatic nature of his writing, seems to have found a balance between the two approaches to dreams offered by literature and philosophy. On the one hand, dreams are said to be significant, and on the other, they are said to be no more than reflections of the day's activities. Artemidorus falls just in the middle, saying that some dreams are significant while others are not.

One of the most interesting dreams in Homer's Iliad is that seen by Agamemnon. It is sent to him by Zeus to deceive him:

And this seemed to his [Zeus'] mind to be the best plan, to send a baneful dream to Agamemnon, son of Atreus. He called to it and spoke to it in winged words: "Go forth, baneful dream, to the swift ships of the Achaians. Go to the tent of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, and declare everything exactly as I charge you. Bid him arm the flowing-haired Achaians with all speed, for now he may take the wide-streeted city of the Trojans; the Olympos-dwelling immortals are no longer taking different sides, for Hera has bent them all with her entreaties and sorrows await the Trojans." Thus he spoke, and the dream went after hearing this command. Speedily it came to the swift ships of the Achaians and went to Agamemnon, son of Atreus, whom it found in his tent, sleeping, engulfed in ambrosial slumber. It stood over his head in the likeness of Nestor, Neleus' son, whom Agamemnon esteemed most highly of the elders. In that likeness the divine dream spoke to him. "Are you sleeping, son of wise Atreus tamer of horses? A man who is a counselor, to whom the people turn, who has so many cares, ought not sleep the whole night through. But now quickly attend to me. I am a messenger to you from Zeus, who, though far away, shows great care and pity for you. He bids you arm the flowing-haired Achaians with all speed, for now you may take the wide-streeted city of the Trojans; the Olympos-dwelling immortals are no longer taking different sides, for Hera has bent them all with her entreaties and sorrows await the Trojans by the order of Zeus. Now keep all that in mind, and do not let forgetfulness possess you when honey-sweet sleep leaves you." Thus it spoke and departed, leaving him there imagining events destined not to take place… ¹

Several characteristics of the dream in this passage may seem obvious but are essential in understanding the Homeric depiction of dreams, and in contrasting it with later Greek ideas about them. Firstly, it is significant that Zeus sends the dream to Agamemnon. It is oracular in nature because it comes from the gods, and tells Agamemnon something he would have no other way of knowing. It is unclear whether the dream itself is capable of deception, or is by nature deceptive.

Secondly, the dream is entirely external. It stands by Agamemnon's head and speaks to him. This dream, then, is not a dream in the modern sense at all, in that it is related in no way to Agamemnon's mind except in that he sees it. The dream's external nature gives its oracular message an authority that a dream coming from the mind of the sleeper would not necessarily have.

Thirdly, it is unclear whether or not the dream is a person. It seems to be its own entity; Zeus calls to it, and it goes to Agamemnon's tent and speaks to him, so it appears to be an entity independent of the god and capable of motion. However, in this passage it only repeats what Zeus tells it; whether or not it is able to do so, it does not think or speak for itself.

Another telling passage is Penelope's dream in the Odyssey, sent to her by
Athena:

She (Athena) made a phantom, and likened it in form to a woman, Iphthime, daughter of great-hearted Icarius, whom Eumelus wedded, whose home was in Pherae. And she sent it to the house of divine Odysseus, to Penelope in the midst of her wailing and lamenting, to bid her cease from weeping and tearful lamentation. So into the chamber it passed by the throng of the bolt, and stood above her head, and spoke to her, and said: "Do you sleep, Penelope, troubled at heart? The gods that live at ease are unwilling that you should weep or be distressed, seeing that your son is yet to return; for in no way is he a sinner in the eyes of the gods." Then wise Penelope answered her, as she slumbered very sweetly at the gates of dreams: "…For him (Telemachus) I sorrow even more than for that other (Odysseus), and tremble for him and fear lest anything befall him, whether it be in the land of the men to whom he is gone, or on the sea…." Then the dim phantom answered her and said: "Take heart and be not in your mind too greatly afraid; since such a guide goes with him as other men too have prayed to stand by their side, for she has power- Pallas Athene herself and she pities you in your sorrow, for she it is who has sent me forth the tell you this." Then again wise Penelope answered her: "If you are indeed a god, and have listened to the voice of a god, come, tell me, I pray you, also of that man of sorrows, whether he still lives and beholds the light of the sun, or whether he is already dead and in the house of Hades." And the dim phantom answered her and said: "No, of him I shall not speak explicitly, whether he be alive or dead; it is an ill thing to speak words vain as wind." ²

Like Agamemnon's dream, Penelope's dream is external, oracular and sent by a god. Also similar to Agamemnon's dream is Penelope's dream's limited capacity for communication with the sleeper. However, this dream is not sent with a message to repeat verbatim. However, when questioned by Penelope, the dream refuses to answer her, whether or not it is able to do so. This appears to indicate both that dreams are limited in their capacity to communicate with sleepers or at least do not wish to do so. Whether or not they have this ability, however, is unimportant to the narrative. What is significant is that they do not give oracles independently, whether or not they are able.

Also significant is that in both passages above, dreams do not appear to have bodies. Miller says of this that, "the Homeric people of dreams lack bodies; but they give a sense of body and a substance to experience. As images, they give emotion a tangible clarity."³ If they do have bodies, they so not show them to the sleeper, but choose instead to appear as someone known to the sleeper, Nestor in Agamemnon's case, Iphthime in Penelope's.

It is important to ask, however, to what extent this personification of dreams is simply a literary device and to what extent it reflects the Greek conception of dreams. Kessels states:

I prefer not to credit Homer with personification as a stylistic device. When objects inanimate to our way of thinking are represented as more or less animated, we should take this literally. Nilsson takes personifications... as literary fictions. He seems to assume that these figures ...did not have a religious meaning. This is true in so far as they did not have a special cult. But the absence of a cult does not imply that they were literary fictions...so it is preferable to take personification as a mode of Greek thought.⁴

It is dangerously ethnocentric to assume that what a modern reader would consider literary in a modern epic an ancient listener would also consider literary in an ancient epic. However, it is equally dangerous to assume that everything in an ancient literary work is entirely representative of the beliefs of the culture that produced it.

It is difficult to discern to what extent dreams in the Iliad and the Odyssey are merely literary, but a third passage is extremely helpful. This passage does not depict a dream, but rather reveals what humans in the narrative thought of the nature of their dreams:

Truly dreams are by nature perplexing and full of messages which are hard to interpret; nor by any means will everything (in them) come true for mortals. For there are two gates of insubstantial dreams; one (pair) is wrought of horn and one of ivory. Of these (the dreams) which come through (the gate of) ivory are dangerous to believe, for they bring messages which will not issue in deeds; but (the dreams) which come forth through (the gate of) polished horn, these have power in reality, whenever any mortal sees them.⁵

This passage demonstrates that mortals are aware of the deceptive nature of some dreams. In addition, it also reflects dreams' external nature, and even indicates some sort of spatial placement of dreams with gates through which they come to humans. This reinforces the argument that the personification of dreams in Homer is not simply a literary device. On personification, Kessels writes, "a clear distinction should be made, however, between the point of view of the epic poet and that of modern readers.... What we may feel as a personification, that is an artificial personification, may seem quite normal to Homeric man, indeed be an integral part of his world."⁶ If personification was merely literary, which to some extent it may be, it would seem that Penelope would be less likely to discuss the nature of dreams, rather than simply their content.

Because this passage discusses the nature of dreams rather than depicting them, what is included and what is left out may indicate to what extent personification is literary. Penelope does not mention dreams speaking or standing next to a sleeper, but does seem aware of them as entities existing independently of the sleeper's mind, which may indicate that dreams were generally accepted as external but not as people, per se.

It would be ludicrous to attempt to gain a sense of the ancient Greek idea of dreams and dreaming from Homer alone. A more complete picture can be attained when looking at several genres of writing than when looking only at epic literature. In contrast to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, with their animated phantoms of dreams, are Aristotle's treatises On Sleep and On Dreams. Both are short, but present drastically different ideas on the nature and function of dreams than do the epics.

In On Sleep, Aristotle asserts that, "...sleep is...a seizure of the primary sense-organ...."⁷ and in On Dreams, that, "the dream proper is an image based on the movement of sense impressions, when it occurs during sleep, insofar as it is asleep...[E]ven when the external object of perception has departed, the impressions it has made persist, and are themselves objects of perception..."⁸ This view is strikingly similar to modern ideas about the nature of dreams. Aristotle, in strong contrast to Homer, considers dreams to be internal reflections of the sensory impressions of the waking day rather than external entities that stand by a sleeper's bed. In this view, dreams cannot be deceitful, because they are not meaningful. Being nothing more than the senses repeating themselves, dreams have no oracular significance because they have no connection to the divine.

These two views of dreams, Homer and Aristotle's, stand in stark contrast to one another, and it is difficult to think that a single culture produced both. It is even more difficult to speculate what the average Greek, neither epic hero nor philosopher, may have thought of his dreams. If there were a spectrum of theories on the nature of dreams, from external to internal, significant to insignificant, those of divine origin to those of banal origin, Homer's epics would stand on one end, Aristotle's treatises on the other. In the middle would be what is perhaps the most revealing ancient work on dreams, the Oneirocritica of Artemidorus.

Artemidorus begins by making a distinction between two types of dreams, those that are significant and oracular, oneiros, and those that are insignificant, enhypnion:

Oneiros differs greatly from enhypnion in that the first indicates a future state of affairs, while the other indicates a present state of affairs. To put it more plainly, it is the nature of certain experiences to run their course in proximity to the mind and to subordinate themselves to its dictates, and so to cause manifestations that occur in sleep, i.e. enhypnion. For example, it is natural for a lover to seem to be with his beloved in a dream and for a frightened man to see what he fears, or for a hungry man to eat and a thirsty man to drink. ...It is possible, therefore, to view these cases as containing not a prediction of a future state but rather a reminder of a present state. ...Oneiros is a movement or condition of the mind that takes many shapes and signifies good or bad things that will occur in the future...[T]o the oneiros category correspond the visions and the oracular response.⁹

Artemidorus does not go on at length about the nature of dreams, however. The majority of his work is taken up with the interpretation of specific objects and occurrences in dreams to divine the future. Although Artemidorus does not personify them, he does assign dreams some significance and is certainly concerned with their oracular content. This lack of personification may be because he is not concerned with their nature; his approach to dreams is entirely pragmatic. He does not seem to know or particularly care why and from where dreams come, but is far more concerned with what they mean when they come.

Literary and philosophical discussions of dreams provide a context within which to examine dreams in the cult of Asclepius. Healing dreams usually happened in the sanctuary, if not always in the temple of the god. These dreams involved seeing someone or something perform an act of healing on the sleeper.¹⁰ The dreams were neither insignificant nor oracular, so they usually fall into neither the oneiros nor the enhypnion categories; they did not tell the sleeper anything about the future, but they did have definite and tangible results. When Asclepius himself appears in dreams, the god is imbued with personality, very unlike the phantoms of the Homeric epics. In contrast to the Homeric dreams in which the dream persona seemed to follow a script rather than to speak for itself, Asclepius has distinct interactions with humans that involve laughter, sex, and bargaining.

An inscription from the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidauros provides a good example of the procedure of a suppliant to the god:

Ambrosia, of Athens, blind of one eye. She came as a suppliant to the god. As she walked about in the temple she laughed at some of the cures as incredible and impossible, that the lame and the blind should be healed by merely seeing a dream. In her sleep she had a vision. It seemed to her that the god stood by her and said that he would cure her, but that in payment he would ask her to dedicate to the temple a silver pig as a memorial of her ignorance. After saying this, he cut the diseased eyeball and poured in some drug. When day came she walked out sound.¹¹

A suppliant would come to the sanctuary, visit the temple and perhaps make offerings; then he or she¹² would sleep, and dream. Usually some form of healing would occur during the suppliant's dream.¹³ In most cases, the god administered this healing.

The bargaining shown here happened in several other cases as well, and many of those suppliants, like Ambrosia, had expressed incredulity at the cures posted with dedications. Also interesting in this case is the god's unusual request of a pig as an offering. A more standard animal votive offering would have been a rooster or a snake. Both of these animals, as well as the dog, were associated with Asclepius¹⁴, and in several instances, usually those involving miraculous cures that happened while the suppliant was either awake or outside, some form of healing was administered by snakes or dogs. One such example is that of a dog curing a boy: "A dog cured a boy from Aegina. He had a growth on the neck. When he had come to the god, one of the sacred dogs healed him- while he was awake- with its tongue and made him well."¹⁵ An interesting point in this case is that the god himself does not appear at all.

Another example of Asclepius bargaining with his suppliants is that of a boy, Euphanes: "Euphanes, a boy of Epidauros. Suffering from stone he slept in the temple. It seemed to him that the god stood by him and asked: 'what will you give me if I cure you?' 'Ten dice,' he answered. The god laughed and said to him that he would cure him. When day came he walked out sound."¹⁶ This is one of several instances of the god being amused by the people he healed. Asclepius, despite that he appears while his suppliants are sleeping, is nothing like the dreams of Homer. He has his own personality and certainly interacts with sleepers more than the literary dreams, which neither laugh nor bargain.

From the above example, it is evident that Asclepius is amused by his followers, and in the following description of his healing of Hagestratus, the god seems to genuinely enjoy the interaction:

Hagestratus with headaches. He suffered from insomnia on account of headaches. When he came to the abaton he fell asleep and saw a dream. It seemed to him that the god cured him of his headaches and, making him stand up naked, taught him the lunge used in the pancratium. When day came he departed well, and not long afterwards he won in the pancratium at the Nemean games.¹⁷

This passage displays a high level of independence on the part of the god. His interactions with humans are clearly not limited only to healing.

Just as the above example demonstrates that Asclepius is capable of vivid, non-healing interactions with his suppliants, the following, recounted by Artemidorus, shows that his healing interactions with them are not limited to those with positive results:

A boy wrestler, anxious about admission to the contest, dreamed that Asclepius was the judge and, when marching together with the other boys in the parade before the contest, he was rejected by the god. And he died even before the contest, for the god disqualified him- not from the contest but from life, of which he is thought to be the judge.¹⁸

This dream, unlike most healing dreams, appears to fall into the oneiros category, as it predicts the future. In another dream described by Artemidorus, Asclepius again causes death: "A certain man dreamed that someone said to him, 'sacrifice to Asclepius.' On the next day he experienced a great misfortune: he fell from a carriage that overturned, and his right hand was crushed. And this it was, therefore, that the dream signified to him- that he must be on his guard and perform averting sacrifices to the god."¹⁹ Asclepius appears, then, to be a god of the sick or of sickness, rather than simply a god of healing, as he is capable of both causing sickness and of killing humans.²⁰

As is evident from the above passages, dreams in the cult of Asclepius function somewhat differently than dreams outside of it. For the most part, they effect a present state, rather than indicating a future one. Although these healing dreams are closer to the dreams in the Homeric epics than Aristotle's purely internal dreams and Artemidorus' oracular dreams, the vision in a healing dream acts very differently than the personified Homeric dreams. In most dreams, it is Asclepius himself who appears, but regardless of whether it is the god or someone else who performs the healing in a dream, whoever appears does so as himself, seeming to have no need to take on the appearance of someone known to the sleeper. Although they can be harmful to the sleeper, healing dreams are not deceptive because they are not usually oracular.

Before approaching the question of why healing dreams in the cult of Asclepius differ from dreams in other ancient Greek contexts, it is important to look first at Asclepius himself to in order to understand why sleep was so essential a part of his cult function.

Asclepius was not part of the earliest Greek pantheon; rather he was a human who became a god. Although there are many versions of his life as a human, the one offered by Apollodorus is one of the most complete:

With her (Arsinoe) Apollo had intercourse, and she bore him Asclepius. But some affirm that Asclepius was not a son of Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus, but that he was a son of Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas in Thessaly. And they say that Apollo loved her and at once consorted with her, but that she, in accordance with her father's judgement, chose Ischys and married him, who was a brother of Caenus. Apollo cursed the raven that brought the tidings and made him black instead of white as he had been before; but Coronis he killed. As she was burning, he snatched the babe from the pyre and brought it to Chiron, the centaur, by whom he was brought up and taught the arts of healing and hunting. And having become a surgeon, and carried the art to a great pitch, he not only prevented some from dying, but even raised up the dead; for he received from Athena the blood that flowed from the veins of the Gorgon, and while he used the blood that flowed from her left side for the bane of mankind, he used the blood that flowed from her right side for salvation, and by that means he raised the dead. ...But Zeus, fearing that men might acquire the healing art from him and so come to the rescue of each other, smote him with a thunderbolt. Angry on that account, Apollo slew the Cyclops who had fashioned the thunderbolt for Zeus. But Zeus intended to hurl him to Tartarus; however, at the intercession of Leto he ordered him to serve as a slave to a man for a year.²¹

Asclepius was the son of a god and a mortal, and would have been killed had Apollo not rescued him from his mother's funeral pyre. Even as a baby, he seems to be hovering between life and death, mortal and immortal. It is also significant that Asclepius' father, Apollo, had to cross the boundary between mortality and immortality for a brief period in order for his son to avoid crossing the boundary between life and death.

Another way Asclepius challenges the line between mortal and immortal is that he appears to have been worshipped as a hero before he was worshipped as a god. In hero cults, often worshippers would sleep on a hero's grave for a dream, and offerings were poured or burnt on the ground or into the grave, instead of onto an altar, and there was an emphasis on blood sacrifice. Cicero mentions Asclepius in a list with other heroes: "Human ways, moreover, and general custom have made it a practice to raise into heaven through renown and gratitude men, who are distinguished by their benefits. This is the origin of Heracles, of Castor and Pollux, of Asclepius and also of Liber."²² Also, Origen mentions Asclepius among mortals worshipped as heroes:

For they themselves agree about some that they formerly were mortals and were deified. They make obeisance to Heracles not as one who was born a god, but as to one who changed from a mortal to a god. To Asclepius they make obeisance as to one who changed from mortal to god through his virtue.²³

Because he is worshipped as a hero, a figure simultaneously human and divine, and is the son of a mortal and a god, Asclepius is a strikingly liminal figure.

As Asclepius became more prominent than other heroes, his worship naturally took on more Olympian characteristics. However, even after these characteristics (i.e. worship in a temple at an altar) had been incorporated into the practice of his cult, Asclepius' sanctuaries display evidence that the cult retained the original, chthonic sacrifices alongside the new ones. A bothros, or substitute grave for hero-worship, is a part of the earliest temenos of many sanctuaries of Asclepius. With regard to the Asclepieion in Athens, Riethmuller states, "the bothros is in close proximity to the abaton, and was most probably used for chthonic sacrifice immediately preceding incubation."²⁴ Riethmuller interprets this, along with similar evidence of two cult buildings, a temple and a bothros-tetrastyle, from other sanctuaries of Asclepius, as evidence for dual worship of Asclepius, as both god and hero:

As the place for a heroic blood sacrifice to Asclepius... this hero-shrine is not closely related to the incubation hall by chance but for cult reasons. As in many other cases, this heroon, or rather fictive grave, is certainly the main focus of the mantic and especially the healing power of the hero. Thus, the incubation in the stoa was in fact an institutionalized form of the sleep on the hero's grave, the most ancient and original cult practice in the healing cult.²⁵

This evidence further emphasizes Asclepius' liminal status, and the prominence of sleep as a part of the heroic as well as Olympian worship sheds light on the strange emphasis on sleep and dreaming in the healing of the cult.

It appears that the more liminal the state the suppliant is in, the more vivid the person's interaction with the god. Aelius Aristides, a devotee of Asclepius, had his most profound encounter with the god while caught between sleep and waking:

For I seemed almost to touch him and to perceive that he himself was coming, and to be halfway between sleep and waking and to want to get the power of vision and to be anxious lest he depart beforehand, and to have turned my ears to listen, sometimes as in a dream, sometimes as in a waking vision, and my hair was standing on end and tears of joy (came forth)....²⁶

This passage presents the need for a suppliant to be in a liminal state to encounter Asclepius, a liminal deity, by relating an encounter that was more intense than usual while the suppliant was in a state more liminal than usual.

Just as Asclepius is a liminal figure, so sleep appears to be a liminal state. According to Hesiod, sleep and dreams are the siblings of death: "And night bore frightful doom and the black ker/ and death and sleep and the whole tribe of dreams."²⁷ Sleep, then, is a state between life and death. Asclepius exists in a similar state, both mortal and immortal, dead hero and god.

This view of sleep as being between life and death can be seen again in the Odyssey. Homer places dreams physically between the underworld and the world of the living: "Hermes led them down dank ways, over grey ocean tides, the snowy rock, past shores of dream and narrows of the sunset, in swift flight to where the dead inhabit wastes of asphodel at the world's end."²⁸ Hesiod depicts sleep and dreaming as liminal states, while Homer depicts the dream as a liminal place, giving the state spatial definition.

Sleep and dreams are also states in which ghosts can contact the living. In the Iliad, Patroclus' ghost appears to Achilles in a dream:

No sooner had sleep caught him (Achilles), dissolving all his grief as mists of refreshing slumber poured around him there…than the ghost of stricken Patroclus drifted up…He was like the man to the life, every feature, the same tall build and the fine eyes and voice and the very robes that used to clothe his body. Hovering at his head the phantom rose and spoke: "Sleeping, Achilles? You've forgotten me, my friend. You never neglected me in life, only now in death. Bury me, quickly- let me pass the gates of Hades. They hold me off at a distance, all the souls, the shades of the burnt-out, breathless dead, never to let me cross the river, mingle with them…they leave me to wander up and down, abandoned, lost at the house of death with the all-embracing gates. Give me your hand- I beg you with my tears. Never again shall I return from Hades once you have given me the soothing rites of fire. Never again will you and I, alive and breathing, huddle side by side, apart from loyal comrades, making plans together-never… the death assigned from the day I was born has spread its hateful jaws to take me down. And you, too, your fate awaits you too, godlike Achilles- to die in battle beneath the proud Trojans' walls. But one thing more. A last request- grant it please. Never bury my bones apart from yours, Achilles, let them lie together" …in the same breath he (Achilles) stretched his loving arms but could not seize him, the ghost slipped underground like a wisp of smoke…with a thin high cry.²⁹

This passage is rife with liminality; a ghost, a person not quite in the underworld and not quite living, in a dream, a liminal state, is saying that he is in between life and death, caught in the gates (themselves liminal spaces) of the underworld. Patroclus' ghost functions much like a literary dream, standing at the head of the sleeping Achilles, just as the other Homeric dreams stood at the heads of the dreamers. However, not unlike Asclepius, he seems to have more independence and personality than the dreams sent by gods. Asclepius, then, at least in a literary sense, functions more like a ghost than a dream.

Because of Asclepius' liminal nature, exhibited in his double worship, the liminal states of sleep and dreaming take on significance and characteristics unseen elsewhere in the Greek world. The peculiar nature of dreams in the cult of Asclepius can begin to be understood when considered as a necessary state for interaction with the god. Sleep and dreaming, themselves liminal states, are essential in order for humans who are ill to interact with Asclepius, himself a liminal figure. It is important to keep in mind that it is not arbitrary that this very liminal god was a god of healing, or rather, a god of the sick, as sickness itself is a state between life and death. One of the primary reasons for Asclepius' deification was his raising of the dead. Because this deity had himself already crossed the boundary between life and death twice, going first from mortal life to death, then from death to immortal life as a god, he is particularly suited to tend those hovering on that threshold. It is necessary, then, that a god of healing be familiar with both life and death, and necessary that dreams, existing between these states, be the means of interaction between the god and his followers.

End Notes
¹ Homer, The Iliad. Tr. R. Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1990. XXIV II 6-42.

² Homer. The Odyssey. Tr. R. Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1996. XXIV IV, 796-837.

³ Miller, Patricia Cox. Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, 19.

⁴ Kessels, A. H. M. Studies on the Dream in Greek Literature. The Netherlands: HES Publishers, 1978, 8.

⁵ Homer, The Odyssey. Tr. R. Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1996, xix; 560-569.

⁶ Kessels, A. H. M. Studies on the Dream in Greek Literature. The Netherlands: HES Publishers, 1978, 7.

⁷ Aristotle. "On Sleep," Complete Works of Aristotle. J. Barnes, ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

⁸ Aristotle. "On Dreams," Complete Works of Aristotle. J. Barnes, ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

⁹ Artemidorus. Oneirocritica. Tr. R.J. White. Park Ridge, New Jersey: Noyes Press, 1975.

¹⁰ In a few cases, the suppliant had a dream for another person (intentionally), which resulted in that person being healed (inscriptions from Epidauros, stele 2 XXI, XXIV [Edelstein, Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of theTestimonies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945, 1998.]

¹¹ Inscription from Epidauros stele 1 IV (Edelstein, Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of theTestimonies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945, 1998.)

¹² Although both men and women visited the healing sanctuaries of Asclepius, and the god often treated women for fertility problems, the god eschewed all things directly pertaining to childbirth. In addition, women were not allowed to give birth inside the temple, and a special building was erected for this purpose, and for dying, which was also not allowed inside the temple (Pausanias Descriptiones Graecae II 27, 6).

¹³ Although Asclepius performed most of his healing through dreams, there are several instances of miraculous cures occurring while the suppliant was awake. Most of these involve animals, but one involves the god himself.

¹⁴ The snake and the dog were both associated with Asclepius and with other gods, the dog with Hekate, goddess of crossroads and ghosts, among other things, and the snake with Apollo, who was the father of Asclepius.

¹⁵ Inscription from Epidauros stele 2 XXVI (Edelstein, Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of theTestimonies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945, 1998).

¹⁶ Inscription from Epidauros stele 1 VIII (Edelstein, Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of theTestimonies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945, 1998.)

¹⁷ Inscription from Epidauros stele 2 XXIX (Edelstein, Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of theTestimonies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945, 1998.)

¹⁸ Artemidorus. Oneirocritica. Tr. R.J. White. Park Ridge, New Jersey: Noyes Press, 1975, v. 13.

¹⁹ Ibid., 66.

²⁰ This sacrificing to Asclepius to avert illness is reminiscent of the restless or untimely dead (Johnston, 159).

²¹ Apollodorus, Bibliotecha, III 10, 3, 5-4, 1 (Edelstein, Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of theTestimonies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945, 1998.)

²² 10. Cicero, De Natura Deorum II 24, 62. (Edelstein, Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of theTestimonies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945, 1998.)

²³ Origen, In Jeremiam Homilia V 3. (Edelstein, Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of theTestimonies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945, 1998.)

²⁴ Riethmuller, Jurgen W. "Bothros and tetrastyle; the heroon of Asclepius in Athens." Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen, 1999, 140.

²⁵ Riethmuller, Jurgen W. "Bothros and tetrastyle; the heroon of Asclepius in Athens." Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen, 1999, 143.

²⁶ Aristides, Oratio XLVIII (Edelstein, Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstein. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of theTestimonies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945, 1998.)

²⁷ Hesiod. Theogony. Tr. Tandy and Neal. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, 212-213.

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²⁹ Homer, The Iliad. Tr. R. Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1990, xix.

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