![]() Calchas died of grief, or, according to another story, took away his own life. After the Trojan war he came to the island of Claros, where, in the sacred precincts of Apollo, he fell in with the soothsayer Mopsus, who beat him in a match of guessing riddles. His own death (so ran the prophecy) was to occur whenever he met a wiser seer than himself. Before the fleet started from Aulis, Calchas predicted that the Trojan war would last ten years. Homer calls him the best of soothsayers, who knew the past, the present, and the future. Calchas was the celebrated seer who accompanied the Greeks on their expedition against Troy. ( See ARTEMIDORUS, 2 INCURATIO and MANTIC ART.) He was honoured especially at the seats of dream-oracles and the health-resorts of Asclepius. A god of dreams was subsequently worshipped, and represented in works of art, sometimes with Sleep, sometimes alone. Ikelos, called also Phobetor, or Terrifyer, assumes the shapes of all kinds of animals as well as that of man: Phantasos only those of inanimate objects. Morpheus, for instance, only appears in various human forms. Later poets call dreams the sons of Sleep, and give them separate names. These, the ideas of the Homeric age, survived in the later popular belief. The spirits of the departed, too, so long as they are not in the kingdom of Hades, have the power of appearing to the sleeper in dreams. On some occasions they create dream-figures themselves, or appear in person under different shapes, in the chamber of the sleeper. The gods above, especially Hermes, have authority over these dream-gods, and send sometimes one, sometimes another, to mankind. Deceptive dreams issue from a gate of ivory, true dreams through a gate of horn. Like these they are represented in the Odyssey as dwelling in the far West, near Oceanus, in the neighbourhood of the sunset and the kingdom of the dead. These incubations, which were in vogue among the Greeks from the earliest times, but were not extensively practised among the Romans until under the Empire, generally took place in the temple of Aesculapius, the god of healing.Īccording to Hesiod, Dreams are the children of Night, and brothers and sisters of Death and Sleep. Certain preliminaries had generally to be performed, in particular the sacrifice of some animal, on whose skin it was often customary to sleep. ![]() ( See ORACLES.) It was with a view to obtaining in a dream a revelation either from the god of the sanctuary, or by conjuring up the spirit of some dead person. Specially used of sleeping in a sanctuary where oracular responses were sought through dreams or necromancy. ![]() He is usually in slumber, and holds a torch, either lowered, or reversed and extinguished. In works of art he appears as a beautiful boy or youth, sometimes with, sometimes without, wings, and often with his brother Sleep. ![]() He has a black garment and black wings, and a knife to cut off a lock of hair as an offering to the gods below. Euripides introduces Death on the stage in his Alcestis. On the chest of Cypselus at Olympia is a representation of Night, holding in each hand a sleeping boy the one in the right hand being white, and symbolizing Sleep the other in the left hand, black, and symbolizing Death. Hesiod represents Death, the hard-hearted one, hated by the immortal gods, as dwelling with his brother Sleep in the darkness of the West, whither the sun never penetrates either at his rising or his setting. In Hesiod he is barn of Night without a father, with Ker (the goddess of mortal destiny), Moros (the fatal stroke of death), Hypnos, (sleep) and the Dreams. In the Homeric poems Death is called the twin brother of Sleep. Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64
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