After all this had been shown to me and I to the
men who applauded, she brought me back again, no
longer dressed in the same clothing that I wore when
I began the flight ; I dreamed that I came back in
princely purple. Finding my father standing and
waiting, she pointed him out my clothing and the

 

guise in which I had returned, and even reminded
him gently of the plans that they had narrowly
escaped making for me. 
That is the dream which I remember having had
when I wasa slip of a lad; it was due, I suppose, to
my agitation on account of the fear inspired by the
thrashing.

 
Even as I speaking, “Heracles!!” someone
said, “what a long and tiresome dream!” Then
someone else broke in: “A winter dream, when the
nights are longest ; or perhaps it is itself a product
of three nights, like Heracles! The Alexandrians called Heracles “him of the three nights,” because Zeus tripled the length of the night which he spent with Alcmene. See Dual. of the Gods 14 (vulg. 10). What got into him
to tell us this idle tale and to speak of a night of his
childhood and dreams that are ancient and superannuated ?_ It is flat to spin pointless yarns. Surely
he doesn't take us for interpreters of dreams?” No,
my friend; and Xenophon, too, when he told one
time. how he dreamed that a bolt of lightning,
striking his father’s house, set it afire, and all the
rest of it—you know it—did not do so because he
wanted the dream interpreted, nor yet because he
had made up his mind to talk nonsense, particularly
in time of war and in a desperate state of affairs,
with the enemy on every side; no, the story had a
certain usefulness. Anabasis 3, 1,11. Lucian, perhaps confusing this with a later dream (4, 3, 7), evidently thinks that it was told to the soldiers to hearten them, but this is not the case. Xenophon was unable to interpret it until after the event, and did not tell it to anyone until he put it into his book. 
 

So it was with me, and I told you this dream in
order that those who are young may take the better
direction and cleave to education, above all if poverty



 

is making any one of them faint-hearted and inclining him toward the worse, to the detriment of a
noble nature. He will be strengthened, I am very
sure, by hearing the tale, if he takes me as an
adequate example, reflecting what I was when
aspired to all that is finest and set my heart on
education, showing no weakness in the face of my
poverty at that time, and what I am now, on my
return to you—if nothing more, at least quite as
highly thought of as any sculptor.