ABSTRACT
To dream of having a beard that is long and thick is auspicious for an orator, a philosopher, and people who are about to undertake a business transaction. It makes the former dignified and the latter formidable. If a woman dreams that she has a beard, she will marry again if she is a widow, but if she has a husband she will be separated from him ... if a very young child dreams that he has a beard, it signifies death for him, because the beard has come before the proper time. But for someone who is an adolescent and who will soon grow a beard of his own, whether he is now a slave or a free man, it signifies that he will be his own master, since the beard shows that he is full-grown and responsible for himself. If a man dreams that his beard has fallen off, or that it has been forcibly shaved off or ripped off by anyone, it signifies harm together with shame. (Artemidorus of Daldis, Ways of Interpreting Dreams 1.30)
The dream interpreter Artemidorus, originally from the town of Daldis in what is now Turkey, lived and worked around the middle of the second century AD. His book Ways of Interpreting Dreams (much quoted by Freud) is the most complete example to have survived of what was clearly an influential and important genre of works that once circulated and were consulted by Romans. The satirist Juvenal, for instance, pours scorn on women who are too credulous of dream interpreters and their dubious advice about how to conduct daily life (Satires 6.582).
