ABSTRACT
An impressive array can be cited from the sages and intellectuals of Greece and Rome who took dreams seriously, especially in their symbolism. One ancient and widespread superstition about dreams is that "they go by contraries". Whatever one dreams must be the opposite of what really will happen. The irony about Cicero is that, having written his contempt for dreams—even a striking one of his own which came true—and their interpretation, in this lengthy dissertation On Divination, he himself is said to have had another dream which impressed him so deeply that he took it seriously. Apparently nothing about a dream is to be interpreted ever by anything but sex. If someone dreams of the death of parents or brothers and sisters, that means, says Dr. Sigmund Freud in his work on Interpretation of Dreams, that the dreamer has a suppressed wish to kill them, perhaps going back to childhood.
