Gates of horn and ivory

The gates of horn and ivory are a literary image used to distinguish true dreams (corresponding to factual occurrences) from false. The phrase originated in the Greek language, in which the word for "horn" is similar to that for "fulfil" and the word for "ivory" is similar to that for "deceive". On the basis of that play on words, true dreams are spoken of as coming through the gates of horn, false dreams as coming through those of ivory.

The Odyssey

The earliest appearance of the image is in the Odyssey, book 19, lines 560-569. There Penelope, who has had a dream that seems to signify that her husband Odysseus is about to return, expresses by a play on words her conviction that the dream is false. She says:

Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, and in no wise do they find fulfilment in all things for men. For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfilment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them. But in my case it was not from thence, methinks, that my strange dream came.[1]

Arthur T. Murray,[2] translator of the original Loeb Classical Library edition of the Odyssey, commented:

The play upon the words κέρας, "horn", and κραίνω, "fulfil", and upon ἐλέφας, "ivory", and ἐλεφαίρομαι, "deceive", cannot be preserved in English.[3]

Echoes in later Greek literature

Homer greatly influenced Greek literature as a whole.[4] Plato refers to the two gates in his dialogue Charmides:

Socrates: "Listen then," I said, "to my dream, to see whether it comes through horn or through ivory."[5]

A reference to the Odyssean image also appears in the late (c. AD 400) epic poet Nonnus:

As Morrheus slept, the vision of a dream cajoled him,
beguiling his mind after flitting through the gates of ivory.[6]

The Aeneid

Virgil borrowed the image of the two gates in lines 893-898 of Book 6 of his Aeneid, describing that of horn as the passageway for true shadows[7] and that of ivory as that through which the Manes in the underworld send false dreams up to the living.[8] Through the latter gate Virgil makes his hero Aeneas, accompanied by the Cumaean Sibyl, return from his visit to the underworld, where he has met, among others, his dead father Anchises:

Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;
Of polish'd ivory this, that of transparent horn:
True visions thro' transparent horn arise;
Thro' polish'd ivory pass deluding lies.
Of various things discoursing as he pass'd,
Anchises hither bends his steps at last.
Then, thro' the gate of iv'ry, he dismiss'd


His valiant offspring and divining guest.[9]

Why Virgil has Aeneas return through the ivory gate (whence pass deluding lies)[10] and not through that of horn is uncertain. One theory is that it refers to the time of night at which he returned.[11] Jorge Luis Borges accepted the view that, for Virgil, what we call reality is not in fact such; that Virgil may have considered the Platonic world of the archetypes to be the real world.[12]

Another explanation is that Virgil is thus indicating that what he has recounted is not to be taken as literal fact. In John Wesley's last sermon, preached on 17 January 1791, he spoke of how uncertain even the best conjectures about the invisible world were without revelation: "The most finished of all these accounts, is that of the great Roman poet. Where observe how warily he begins, with that apologetic preface, – Sit mihi fas audita loqui – 'May I be allowed to tell what I have heard'. And, in the conclusion, lest anyone should imagine he believed any of these accounts, he sends the relater of them out of hades by the ivory gate, through which, he had just informed us, that only dreams and shadows pass, – a very plain intimation, that all which has gone before, is to be looked upon as a dream!"[13]

Other Latin writing

In his Silvae V iii 285-290, a lament for his dead father, the poet Publius Papinius Statius, expresses the wish that his father may come to him from the abode of the dead in the form of a true dream, passing therefore through the gate of horn:

Thence mayst thou pass to where the better gate of horn o'ercomes the envious ivory, and in the semblance of a dream teach me what thou wert wont to teach.[14]

The 15th century Latin poet Basinio of Parma, employed at the court of Sigismondo Malatesta in Rimini, wrote a panegyric epic poem for his prince (Hesperis) modelled largely on the Aeneid and the Homeric epics, in which Sigismondo, as epic hero, undertakes a journey to the underworld in order to meet his deceased father Pandolfo Malatesta. Before that he passes the temple of Fama which has a bipartite gate, one half made of horn, one of ivory. On the ivory half not only Sigismondo's descent but also the ones by Hercules, Theseus, Ulysses and Aeneas are depicted.

"Having seen that, they turn towards the astounding temple of Fame, a temple enormous and imposing in size and shape, whose door on its left side is white from ivory steps with shining horn on the other half. Disturbing nightmares are conveyed by false rumour on the vain gates of ivory, while true dreams of horn are sent by trustworthy rumours. The gate of horn shows the Spaniards defeated on the Tyrrhenian shore [i.e. Sigismondo's victory over Alfonso's V. troops at Piombino in 1448]. On the ivory steps Sigismondo turns toward the sea, and is swimming after his ship is destroyed [on his way to the island where he is to undertake his trip to the underworld]. There Theseus and also Hercules made their way: there brave and victorious Ulysses went to the gloomy homes of the Cimmerians; there faithful Aeneas took to the Stygian lake Avernus."
Basinio's Latin text is as follows:

Haec ubi visa, petunt famae mirabile templum,
templum augustum immane horrens, cui limen eburnis
canebat gradibus laeva de parte ; nitebant
parte alia cornu solido loca. Falsa elephanti
fama refert vanis insomnia turbida portis,
somnia vera ferunt non vanae cornua famae.
Cornea dejectos Tyrrheno in litore Iberos
porta docet templi. Gradibus Sismundus eburnis
tendit ad Oceanum, et fracta natat alta carina.
Hac iter Aegides, nec non Tyrinthius heros
Taenarias legere vias : hac durus Ulysses
Cimmerium obscuras victor concessit ad Arces ;
hac pius Aeneas Stygio se immisit Averno. (Hesperis XIII 205-217)

English writing

The gates of horn and ivory appear in the following notable English written works:

Music

References

  1. ↑ Translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition. The original text is:
    Ξεῖν’, ἦ τοι μὲν ὄνειροι ἀμήχανοι ἀκριτόμυθοι
    γίγνοντ’, οὐδέ τι πάντα τελείεται ἀνθρώποισι.
    δοιαὶ γάρ τε πύλαι ἀμενηνῶν εἰσὶν ὀνείρων·
    αἱ μὲν γὰρ κεράεσσι τετεύχαται, αἱ δ' ἐλέφαντι,
    τῶν οἳ μέν κ’ ἔλθωσι διὰ πριστοῦ ἐλέφαντος,
    οἵ ῥ’ ἐλεφαίρονται, ἔπε’ ἀκράαντα φέροντες·
    οἱ δὲ διὰ ξεστῶν κεράων ἔλθωσι θύραζε,
    οἵ ῥ’ ἔτυμα κραίνουσι, βροτῶν ὅτε κέν τις ἴδηται.
    ἀλλ’ ἐμοὶ οὐκ ἐντεῦθεν ὀΐομαι αἰνὸν ὄνειρον
    ἐλθέμεν·
  2. ↑ Text (without footnotes) of the 1919 Loeb translation
  3. ↑ Homer: The Odyssey, II (The Loeb Classical Library. First printed 1919; Reprinted 1925, 1928, 1931, 1940, 1942, 1946, 1953, 1960, 1966, 1975, 1980; American ISBN 0-674-99117-6; British ISBN 0-434-99105-8), p. 269
  4. ↑ Sir Richard C. Jebb and A.T. Sinclair in Whibley (1905),A Companion to Greek Studies, p. 120:
    Homeric influence is not only all-pervading in Greek literature, but enters also into every part of Greek life.
  5. ↑ Charmides 173a:
    ἄκουε δή, ἔφην, τὸ ἐμὸν ὄναρ, εἴτε διὰ κεράτων εἴτε δι᾽ ἐλέφαντος ἐλήλυθεν.
  6. ↑ Dionysiaca, 34:89-90
    Μοῤῥέα δ' ὑπνώοντα παρήφανεν ὄψις ὀνείρου,
    κλεψινόων ἐλέφαντος ἀναΐξασα πυλάων.
  7. ↑ In the original, "veris umbris", but translated by Dryden as "true visions"
  8. ↑ altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto,
    sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes.
  9. ↑ The translation given here is by John Dryden (cf. Wikisource). The original text is:
    Sunt geminae Somni portae, quarum altera fertur
    cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris;
    altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto,
    sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes.
    his ubi tum natum Anchises unaque Sibyllam
    prosequitur dictis portaque emittit eburna ...
  10. ↑ "falsa insomnia" (literally, false dreams)
  11. ↑ Nicholas Reed, The Gates of Sleep in Aeneid 6, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Nov., 1973), pp. 311-315
  12. ↑ Borges made this remark in a lecture that he gave in Buenos Aires in the mid-1970s on the subject of nightmares. The transcription of the lecture is included in English translation in Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights (see pp. 30-31) and in Jorge Luis Borges, Everything and Nothing (see p. 83).
  13. ↑ John Wesley, Sermon 122, On Faith
  14. ↑ English translation by J. H. Mozley - Loeb Classic Library (Harvard University Press). Statius's words are:
    inde tamen venias, melior qua porta malignum
    cornea vincit ebur, somnique in imagine monstra,
    quae solitus.
  15. ↑ http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/two/two08.htm
  16. ↑ Dan Norton and Peters Rushton, Classical Myths in English Literature 183-84 (1952).
  17. ↑ Mahon, Derek. The Snow Party. London: Oxford University Press, 1975. "Homage to Malcolm Lowry" is the 3rd poem in this anthology.
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