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Aesop's Fables, translated by Laura Gibbs (2002)

529. TRUE DREAMS AND FALSE DREAMS
Perry 385 (Life of Aesop 33)

Apollo, who is the leader of the Muses, once asked Zeus to give him the power of foresight, so that he could be the best oracle. Zeus agreed, but when Apollo was then able to provoke the wonder of all mankind, he began to think that he was better than all the other gods and he treated them with even greater arrogance than before. This angered Zeus (and he was Apollo's superior, after all). Since Zeus didn't want Apollo to have so much power over people, he devised a true kind of dream that would reveal to people in their sleep what was going to happen. When Apollo realized that no one would need him for his prophecies any more, he asked Zeus to be reconciled to him, imploring Zeus not to subvert his own prophetic power. Zeus forgave Apollo and proceeded to devise yet more dreams for mankind, so that there were now false dreams that came to them in their sleep, in addition to the true dreams. Once the people realized that their dreams were unreliable, they had to turn once again to Apollo, the original source of prophetic divination.


Source: Aesop's Fables. A new translation by Laura Gibbs. Oxford University Press (World's Classics): Oxford, 2002.
NOTE: New cover, with new ISBN, published in 2008; contents of book unchanged.