Homer’s poems portray dreams as difficult to understand and potentially deceptive.

Dreams are also shown as bringing reassurance and guidance in times of uncertainty.

The Odyssean fallacy is the tendency to read one’s own desires into someone else’s dream.

Among the many gifts of Homer’s two epic poems are vital insights into the nature and meaning of dreams, insights that are still relevant today. The story of The Odyssey was preceded by The Iliad, whose dream references provide a helpful context for the later tale.

In just the second book of The Iliad, a god-sent dream plays a pivotal role. However, in this case, the dream is a cruel deception sent by Zeus to the Greek leader Agamemnon, encouraging him to launch an attack he is destined to lose. This incident in The Iliad, one of the most influential works of all antiquity, shows that people of this time were aware of the danger of believing too easily in the pleasing fantasies of dreams.

The dreams reported in The Odyssey all come from women, and they all have multiple dimensions of meaning. The first comes to Queen Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, who falls into despair when she realizes her son Telemachus has secretly left home to seek his long-lost father. That night the goddess Athena sends Penelope a dream in the trustworthy form of her sister to deliver a message of comfort and reassurance. When Penelope awakens, she feels remarkably better, “her spirit warmed now that a dream so clear had come to her in darkest........

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