Dreams of Infanticide II: Flayed for a Wineskin

The Oneirocritica of Artemidorus contains hundreds of dreams and their interpretations, as well as discussions of the various dream symbols and their meanings in different contexts. Though prediction is the ultimate goal of the ancient dream interpreter, Artemidorus at times seems aware of the dreamer’s unconscious fantasies, though he will rarely, if ever, explicitly mention them, because they were considered unimportant. One infanticidal dream in which he seems to grasp the dreamer’s unconscious wishes is the following:

A man dreamt he flayed his own child and made him into a bag made out of skin. On the next day his child fell into the river and drowned. For out of dead bodies is the bag made out of skin fashioned and it is capable of receiving liquids (5.22; my translation).

As with most dreams reported by Artemidorus, we only know what little he chooses to tell us. The dream appears to be contemporary with Artemidorus since he tells us in the Introduction to Book Five that he collected these dreams at festivals in Greece, Italy, and Asia. His aim was to give only a brief narrative of each dream and an indication how it came true. Hence, Artemidorus begins with the dream and, in the second sentence, shows how its prediction was fulfilled. The third sentence explains the symbolism by which the dream predicted the child’s drowning.

The act of flaying his child would involve cutting the skin of the youth with a flaying knife. Flaying alive had many associations for an ancient Greek. It was known as a Persian punishment, by which the Great King would punish corrupt judges, stretching their skin across the seats upon which their successors would sit (Herodotus 5.25.1; Diodorus Siculus 15.10.1).

The expression “to flay into a bag made out of skin,” usually translated “to flay into a wineskin,” is frequently used to describe a terrible punishment to which a Greek man will conditionally resign himself. The punishment was proverbial, and goes back to a poem of Solon in which he describes his critics as ridiculing him for refusing to become tyrant of Athens. The hypothetical critic goes on to say that, in return for the power and wealth as tyrant of Athens for one day, he would be gladly flayed into an askos (wineskin) and have his lineage utterly destroyed (Plutarch, Solon 14.6).

The common denominator among these examples is that the person flayed, or threatened with this punishment, is in a position subordinate to a father figure. The Greeks likened the relationship of man to the gods to that between a child and his parents (Plutarch F 46 and 86; Sandbach, Loeb Classical Library). A teacher was often a father-substitute. Nor should we forget that one of the prominent accusations against Socrates was that he turned young men against their natural fathers. Though the executioner of the tyrant in Solon’s poem is unstated, it would presumably be the leader of the demos he had recently ruled. Solon related being flayed into an askos with the extirpation of his line, suggesting that the cutting of his skin into strips by the flaying knife would also include his emasculation.

Animals, not humans, were the targets of most of the flayings in Greece. A large animal would be dispatched by a pelekus, after which its throat would be cut by a sharp knife. (Pelekus refers to a double-edged axe used to cut trees and for sacrifices and executions.) The animal would be cut up and its skin flayed. The meat was divided up: some set aside for the gods as a burnt offering, the rest eaten by the celebrants (among many descriptions, see Homer, Odyssey 3. pp. 430-474 and 12. pp. 352-370, and Euripides, Electra pp. 774-843). Concerning the skin, not essential for the sacrifice, nothing else is said. However, in a culture in which consumption of meat was a luxury, it must be assumed that the skin flayed during the sacrifice was used to make askoi, among other things.

The father’s dream seems to reflect part of an animal sacrifice, the flaying of the victim’s skin and its subsequent manufacture into an askos. Here his child plays the role of the sacrificial animal. As malevolent as this part of the dream is, it censored an even more savage fantasy, the cutting up, roasting, and eating of his own child. Only the

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secondary part of the sacrifice, the relatively unimportant use made of the skin, could escape past the “dream-censor,” while the primary part, the cannibalistic fantasy, could not.

The dream expresses the father’s desire to murder and eat his child in terms of the sacrificial ritual of his day, replacing the animal victim with his child. It need not conform to the manner in which the child died, which may have occurred when the opportunity arrived, either by the intent or negligence of the father, or may have been accidental with the father far away. Nor does Artemidorus implicate the father in his child’s death, but seems to imply that the child accidentally fell into the river and drowned. The nuances of the Greek, however, suggest otherwise.

Just as I have previously examined the words askos, and pelekus, I will now probe pipto and pnigo to illustrate this point. Though pipto means fall or fall down, and is used by Artemidorus to describe the child’s fall into the river, in other contexts it often has a violent connotation. These include to cast down, to fall upon something violently, as if in attack; to fall in a fight; to fall short, or to fail; to be overthrown or overcome by another. More graphic is Artemidorus’ use of pnigo, translated in this context as drown. The variety of meanings of pnigo suggest the true horror of drowning, since its primary meanings are to choke, strangle, throttle, and seize by the throat. It evokes the sensation of what drowning must feel like to the victim. One must wonder whether Artemidorus intuitively grasped, by his use of this word, the cannibalistic fantasy of the father’s dream, since pnigo could also be used in the context of baking or cooking in a closed vessel.

Though Artemidorus cites this dream as an example for his son of a dream of prediction, a modern psychoanalytical interpretation illustrates the dreamer’s unconscious infanticidal and cannibalistic fantasies. Though Greek culture and religious rituals, and even the forms of their dreams, are very different than those of the 21st century, the dream processes have changed little over the millennia since Artemidorus recorded this dream, making its analysis possible.

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