Page:Lucian, Vol 3.djvu/243

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THE DREAM, OR LUCIAN’S CAREER

guise in which I had returned, and even reminded him gently of the plans that they had narrowly escaped making for me.

That is the dream which I remember having had when I was a slip of a lad; it was due, I suppose, to my agitation on account of the fear inspired by the thrashing.

Even as I was speaking, “Heracles!” someone said, “what a long and tiresome dream!” Then someone else broke in: “A winter dream, when the nights are longest; or perhaps it is itself a product of three nights, like Heracles!^[1] What got into him to tell us this idle tale and to speak of a night of his childhood and dreams that are ancient and super-annuated? It is flat to spin pointless yarns. Surely he doesn’t take us for interpreters of dreams?” No, my friend; and Xenophon, too, when he told one time how he dreamed that a bolt of lightning, striking his father’s house, set it afire, and all the rest of it — you know it — did not do so because he wanted the dream interpreted, nor yet because he had made up his mind to talk nonsense, particularly in time of war and in a desperate state of affairs, with the enemy on every side; no, the story had a certain usefulness.^[2]

So it was with me, and I told you this dream in order that those who are young may take the better direction and cleave to education, above all if poverty

↑ The Alexandrians called Heracles “him of the three nights,” because Zeus tripled the length of the night which he spent with Alcmene. See Dial. of the Gods 14 (vulg. 10).
↑ Anabasis 3, 1, 11. Lucian, perhaps confusing this with a later dream (4, 3, 7), evidently thinks that it was told to the soldiers to hearten them, but this is not the case. Xenophon was unable to interpret it until after the event, and did not tell it to anyone until he put it into his book.

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[1] The Alexandrians called Heracles “him of the three nights,” because Zeus tripled the length of the night which he spent with Alcmene. See Dial. of the Gods 14 (vulg. 10).

[2] Anabasis 3, 1, 11. Lucian, perhaps confusing this with a later dream (4, 3, 7), evidently thinks that it was told to the soldiers to hearten them, but this is not the case. Xenophon was unable to interpret it until after the event, and did not tell it to anyone until he put it into his book.

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