Book 8
Question X. WHY WE GIVE LEAST CREDIT TO DREAMS IN AUTUMN. FLORUS, PLUTARCH, PLUTARCH’S SONS, FAVORINUS.
10.1
FLORUS reading Aristotle’s physical problems, which were brought to him to Thermopylae, was himself (as philosophical wits used to be) filled with a great many doubts, and communicated them to others; thereby confirming Aristotle’s saying, that much learning raises many doubts. Other topics made our walks every day very pleasant, but the common saying concerning dreams,— that those in autumn are the vainest,—I know not how, whilst Favorinus was engaged in other matters, was started after supper. Your friends and my sons thought Aristotle had given sufficient satisfaction in this point, and that no other cause was to be sought after or allowed but that which he mentions, the fruit. For the fruit, being new and flatulent, raises many disturbing vapors in the body; for it is not likely that only wine ferments, or new oil only makes a noise in the lamp, the heat agitating its vapor; but new corn and all sorts of fruit are plump and distended, till the unconcocted flatulent vapor is broke away. And that some sorts of food disturb dreams, they said, was evident from beans and the polypus’s head, from which those who would divine by their dreams are commanded to abstain.
