Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, Vol. 3: Being a Collection of Documents, for the Most Part Never Before Printed, Illustrating the History of Science in This Country Before the

Excerpt from Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, Vol. 3: Being a Collection of Documents, for the Most Part Never Before Printed, Illustrating the History of Science in This Country Before the Norman Conquest

There was, alongside of the sceptic and materialist philosopher, an early doctrine about dreams, and a copious literature. Artemon, Antiphon, Straton, Philo choros, Epicharmus, Serapion, Kratippos, Dionysios Rhodios, Hermippos, are named as authors on this sub ject, and patrons of the common superstition. There were established and frequented dreaming places, as the fanes of Asklepios at Epidauros, of Amphiaraos at Oropos, Of Amphilochos at Mallos, of Sarpedon in the Tread, of Trophonios at Lebadea, of Mopses in Kilikia, of Hermonia in Makedonia, of Pasiphae in Lakonia.1 The writings of Hermippos of Berytos filled five volumes. Nowhere was dreaming more rife, nowhere more greedily listened to, than in Iudaea, about the Christian era, yet there many of the provocatives to folly had been banished by a pure worship of God. We may still look through a professed systematic treatise of Judging Dreams in the Oneirokritica of Artemidoros the Ephesian, whose work has been four times printed in the original, and translated into Latin, French, and Italian. The method of composition followed in these Saxon p1eces is more like that of Achmet or Apomasar, who pretends to embody the experience of India, Persia, and Arabia. Thus, spite of freethinkers, spite of Moses and the prophets, spite of Gospel and Epistle, couched in the breasts of the people there still lies a strong awe and hope from the fantasms Of sleep. Here too the Saxon is a fair parallel to the living Englishman. While his bookish men study their Greek and their Latin, their astronomy, cosmogony, and computus, he contents himself with an enclpzedic dream literature, and feeds his fancy instead Of leading his head. It is the way Of the world.

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