The Interpretations of Dreams

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No general of antiquity would have dared to engage in battle without first consulting the omens. And like him, all other members of society, from the noblest and most powerful to the most miserable and desperate old woman, turned to divination. The prediction of the future, in its countless forms, is a prominent feature of the ancient world. Yet, almost no texts have survived on the subject. The treatise on the interpretation of dreams by Artemidorus of Daldis, a seer born in Ephesus in the 2nd century AD, is one of the very few surviving examples of the genre and thus holds particular significance for us, not only for the centrality attributed to dreams by the modern world since the birth of psychoanalysis but also because it offers us the opportunity to closely observe the everyday life of a world we know everything about, except for the true life.