Until recently, Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica has received relatively little concentrated attention from classicists, who have tended to use the text in the service of some other object of inquiry, usually social history. What has been missing is a robust and well-rounded treatment of Artemidorus; a body of scholarship that investigates a comprehensive set of issues relating to the Oneirocritica – philological, literary, intellectual, social-historical, reception-related, etc. – holistically and for the text's own sake. I am happy to report that, with the publication of this edited volume of conference proceedings, important progress has been made in this direction.
The volume, amounting to over 400 pages and written entirely in French, consists of fourteen papers on a wide range of topics as well as an introduction by C. that is illuminating in its own right. The papers are grouped into four interrelated sections: the first looks at the context – loosely defined – of the Oneirocritica, considering the sources and working habits of Artemidorus as a collector of dream-interpretations (Vinagre) and the impact of Artemidorus' Ephesian and ‘Roman’ backgrounds upon the text (Kirbihler). The second section examines Artemidorus' divinatory methods (Flamand on the stoicheia); the intellectual parallels between these methods and other fields, i.e. medicine and astrology (Petit); his handling of various social demographics (Malosse); and possible sources for several food-related dream-interpretations (Dalby).
A third section addresses the text's representation of its ‘world’: the imperial administration (Hamdoune); artisans and small-scale businessmen (Tran); sophists, philosophers and philologoi (Kasprzyk); and space in both the concrete and abstract senses (Weber). The fourth and final section presents some divinatory comparanda – Egyptian (Szpakowska) and Near Eastern (Mouton) – and considers Artemidorus' reception in Medieval England (Berthoin-Mathieu). The volume concludes with an ethnographically-based conceptual and comparative discussion of dreams and how we study them (Perrin).
These papers are the by-product of a larger effort being made by the Groupe Artémidore, whose members are primarily affiliated with the Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier III, to create a new Budé edition of Artemidorus' Oneirocritica consisting of a critical Greek text, French translation and commentary. Five conferences – at which members of the Groupe along with other specialists in ancient dreaming have presented their work – have been held annually either in Montpellier (2009–12) or the University of Augsburg (2013). The proceedings that have emerged as a result contain the work of many of the most important scholars in this field and represent the most concentrated and productive treatment of Artemidorus to date.
Although subservient in a certain sense to the critical edition, these conference proceedings are valuable in their own right, cumulatively acting as a kind of super-commentary and extended set of prolegomena to the new edition. This particular volume – the second of three that have been published or are forthcoming – is especially full, probably because it represents the fruits of three separate conferences. It is a rich feast indeed, with some papers making important contributions and all treating their subjects with an admirable fullness. Most articles contain copious citations of secondary scholarship and, in particular, the Oneirocritica itself. Up-to-date bibliographies appear at the end of each paper.
Among the several noteworthy contributions, I particularly enjoyed the paper by P.-L. Malosse – who, sadly, passed away during its production – which conducts a sociological analysis of Artemidorus' oneiropolis; that is, the imagined populace of the Oneirocritica. After a useful methodological introduction, Malosse proceeds, character-by-character, to outline the common types of people who appear in the Oneirocritica, their interrelations, ambitions and concerns. In certain respects, Malosse's paper resembles Pomeroy's study of the social world of the Oneirocritica (‘Status and Status-Concern in the Greco-Roman Dream-Books’, AncSoc 22 [1991], 51–74). What Malosse offers is, however, more rounded and elemental, focusing on a broader set of aspects of the human condition as interpreted, so to speak, by Artemidorus. I also enjoyed C. Petit's treatment of the intersection between Artemidorus' divinatory use of dreams and Galen's medical use of dreams. Intellectual parallels between divination and ostensibly unrelated fields (e.g. ancient literary theory; philosophy; medicine) are well known. Oberhelman's recent edited volume has likewise improved our knowledge of the role of dreams in ancient medicine (Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece [2013]). Petit's careful work outlining the parallels between Artemidorus and Galen – and her occasional and merited scepticism about aspects of these connections – is a welcome contribution to this larger conversation.
My main criticism is that some of the articles treat their topics very completely but apparently simply for the sake of completeness; observations and citations pile up but a cohering and forward-moving argument is at times absent, making the reading experience a bit sluggish. I am aware that these are foundation-building studies, seeking to collect material and thereby establish a basis for future work, but a more thesis-driven treatment of this data would at times have been welcome in order to lend greater shape to the material gathered therein.
Since additional volumes will no doubt appear, I want to close with some requests for future essays on topics that are currently missing or underexplored in the scholarship on Artemidorus. First, while good work has been done in these volumes and elsewhere on the historical context of the Oneirocritica and its engagement with politics and social life, I would like to see a more aggressive and opinionated discussion of Artemidorus' socio-political world view. Such a study could draw upon the strong papers in this volume on Ephesus and Asia Minor, the imperial administration and the social composition of Artemidorus' oneiropolis. It could also contribute and respond to similar studies on Greek authors writing under the Roman Empire, thereby solidifying Artemidorus' place within the academic conversation on the Second Sophistic.
Second, I would like to see an updated treatment of the famous chapters on the sex-dreams (1.78–80). The field of ancient sexuality has advanced considerably since the studies of Artemidorus by Foucault (Histoire de la sexualité, III: le souci de soi [1986]) and Winkler (The Constraints of Desire [1989]) first appeared, as has our understanding of divination and ancient technical writing. These advances should be taken into account in a fresh analysis. Third, more work on Artemidorus' status as a seemingly well-to-do and highly literate diviner and his professional context would be welcome. And, finally, I would like to see more on Artemidorus' identity and methods as an author and, in particular, as an author of compilatory literature whose text resembles but also deviates, possibly in telling ways, from other texts within the genre. The Oneirocritica is an unusual document for several reasons – its serial composition; the extreme self-consciousness of its author; its radically shifting system of organisation – and its composition accordingly merits further study.
