Bathing also, and lustrations were practised as auspicious; and Æschylus, in Aristophanes, directs the attendants to prepare a lamp and warm water taken from the river, which were to be employed in some ceremonies designed to avert the influence of divine dreams. In a fragment of Euripides we see Priam, on occasion of the dream of Hecuba, in which she brought forth a flaming torch:

"Smitten with dread, and anxious care to heaven Present the bleating victims, sue for peace, And ask if any prophet having prayed To PhaebuS, could inform him what events Such a portentous vision could produce."

* Archaeolog. Atticae, a Francis Rous, p. 352, L-vii. C. 4.

And the royal father is represented to have obtained an answer from Apollo forewarning him of the destruction which Paris should bring on his country *.

In the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, we find Palaestrio directing Philocomasium to supplicate the gods, in order to avert the effects of a dream †. No less respect was paid to dreams among the Romans than among the Greeks ‡. Sylla, in his Commentaries, inscribed to Lucullus, endeavoured to excite his reverence for them; and Propertius, and other poets, strengthened the general credulity concerning them §.

At length, however, it became a principle adopted among the Romans upon the multiplication of dreams, that none which related to the public weal should be regarded, unless they were seen by magistrates, or at least by more than one individual. The principle was sometimes deserted, as it is not easy to limit the credulity of superstition. Cicero informs us, that within the memory of his contemporaries, Lucius Julius, who was consul with Publius Pompilius, repaired the temple of Juno Sos-pita, in obedience to a decree of the senate enacted from respect to a dream of Caecilia, the daughter of Balearicus *.

* Fragment of Euripid. Wodhul's Translat. † Act ii. Sc. 4. See also Act i. Sc. 1. ‡ Plutarch's Life of Sylla. § Life of Pompey.

Notwithstanding the general respect paid to dreams among the ancients, it appears that some of the more philosophical minds considered them as futile and vain; and conceived that divine inspirations were more likely to be conveyed to the waking, than to the sleeping thoughts, and that if the gods had sent dreams they would have enforced more respect to them, and have furnished some unequivocal rules of interpretation.

* De Divinat. L. i.

Theophrastus represents it to be a part of the character of a superstitious man to enquire, on receiving a dream, to what God he should perform his vows *; and Cicero, after eloquently stating each side of the question, rejects the idea of their being subservient to divination.

If the general futility of dreams were not sufficiently manifest from their own nature, it would be fully exposed by the fanciful and precarious principles upon which they were interpreted. Every casual correspondence between dreams and events was noted, and construed into a precedent for future explication'; sometimes they -were explained by contraries, and sometimes they were literally expounded. It appears from a passage in Plutarch's Life of Aristides, that certain tables were used for the interpretation of dreams; as he speaks of one Lyshnachus, a grandson of Arbtides, who sitting near the temple of Bacchus gained his livelihood by it: we may form some idea of the egregious trifling which was shewn in the art, from the rules of interpretation attributed to Artemidorus, if genuine, who lived in the reign of Antoninus Pius, and which are transmitted to us as the result of deep observation and experience *. The whole mystery of his art, if we may judge from those, consists in the conclusion drawn from some ordinary recurrences of events, and from the application of things reputed significant, by which circumstances were represented as auspicious, or ill-omened, respectively as the dreams were composed of things superstitiously so regarded - thus for instance in this childish theory, to dream of a fair and great nose intimates subtlety - of rosemary and sage, trouble and weakness of a midwife, disclosure of secrets - of a leopard, an artful man. It may be easily conceived, that an art so vague was often accommodated to the inclination and feelings of those whom it was the interest of interpreters to gratify.

* Nat. Hist. L. vii.

* Polydere Virgil, de Invent. Rerum. L. i. C. 24. Cum Somnium quod ominosum viderctur, vel ipsi vel alii habuissent, scribe bant, et obaervantes quomodo eveniret, et si quando postmoduiu hujus simile obtigisset, cxemplo prioris putabant eventurum. See also Fabricii Biblioth. Grace. L. iv. C. 13.

The mother of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, dreamed that she brought forth a satyr; and the Sicilian interpreters, called Galeotse *, explained the dream to import, that her son should be the most illustrious and prosperous among the Greeks †.

Hippias, the leader of the barbarians to the plains of Marathou, fancied in a vision that he slept with his mother and the popular construction led him to expect a return to prosperity, and a peaceful death at Athens ‡. A. similar dream is attributed to the emperor Claudius.

* It is remarkable that the word Galeotte, or Galei, is derived from the Hebrew root, which signifies to reveal, † Herdfield in Sphin. C. 37. P. 893. ‡ Herod. L. v. C. 55.

Philip of Macedon dreamed that he placed a seal upon his wife; he expounded his dream to signify, that his wife should be barren, but Aristonides, a soothsayer, interpreted it that it imported the pregnancy of his wife, inasmuch as empty vessels are not sealed.

Domitian dreamed a few days before his death that a golden head rose upon the nape of his neck, which was applied to prefigure the golden age which followed in the reigns of his five successors *.

As to Cesar's dream (says Bacon, the profound writer from whom I have borrowed the two preceding articles,) I think it was a jest, it was that he was devoured of a long dragon, and it was expounded of a maker of sausages that troubled him exceedingly †. We shall conclude with the just remark of this great man, that the more it appears that divination has been polluted by vanity and superstition, the more we should receive and preserve its pure part *•

* Bacon's Works, vol. iv. p. 5. † Bacon, vol. iii. p. 354.

* Bacon, vol. ii.p.57.