The Plinies were undoubtedly two of the ablest and most enlightened men
of their time; and the belief in the value of dreams is certainly not
extinct among us yet. If we possess Artemidorus's book on the subject
for the ancient world, we have also the "Smorfia" of to-day, so dear to
the heart of the lotto-playing Neapolitan, which assigns a special
number to every conceivable subject that can possibly occur in a
dream--not excluding "u murtu che parl'" (the dead man that speaks)--for
the guidance of the believing gambler in selecting the numbers he is to
play for the week.

Plutarch placed great faith in ghosts and visions. In his Life of
Dion[28] he notes the singular fact that both Dion and Brutus were
warned of their approaching deaths by a frightful spectre. "It has been
maintained," he adds, "that no man in his senses ever saw a ghost: that
these are the delusive visions of women and children, or of men whose
intellects are impaired by some physical infirmity, and who believe that
their diseased imaginations are of divine origin. But if Dion and
Brutus, men of strong and philosophic minds, whose understandings were
not affected by any constitutional infirmity--if such men could place so
much faith in the appearance of spectres as to give an account of them
to their friends, I see no reason why we should depart from the opinion
of the ancients that men had their evil genii, who disturbed them with
fears and distressed their virtues ..."

In the opening of the _Philopseudus_, Lucian asks what it is that makes
men so fond of a lie, and comments on their delight in romancing
themselves, which is only equalled by the earnest attention with which
they receive other people's efforts in the same direction. Tychiades
goes on to describe his visit to Eucrates, a distinguished philosopher,