Phantasos

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Revision as of 16:24, 25 January 2026 by imported>Michael Aurel (Undid revision 1334700394 by Doktor"74 (talk) Rv good-faith addition of infobox. I don't think the infobox works very well here. The article doesn't call him the "Personification of inanimate objects in dreams", and it doesn't specify that he lived in the underworld. He also had further siblings. I think the first sentence of the lead conveys the important imformation.)
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File:Kunstakademie09.jpg
Phantasos on the western corner of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts by Robert Henze

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Phantasos (Script error: The function "langx" does not exist., 'apparition' 'fantasy' from Script error: The function "langx" does not exist., phantasíā, 'appearance' 'imagination')[1] is one of the thousand sons of Somnus (Sleep, the Roman counterpart of Hypnos). He appeared in dreams in the form of inanimate objects, putting on "deceptive shapes of earth, rocks, water, trees, all lifeless things".[2]

Ovid

According to Ovid, two of his brothers were Morpheus, who appeared in dreams in human form, and one called Icelos ('Like'), by the gods, but Phobetor ('Frightener') by men, who appeared in dreams in the form of beasts.[3] The three brothers' names are found nowhere earlier than Ovid, and are perhaps Ovidian inventions.[4] Tripp calls these three figures "literary, not mythical concepts".[5] However, Griffin suggests that this division of dream forms between Phantasos and his brothers, possibly including their names, may have been of Hellenistic origin.[6]

Notes

  1. Template:LSJ.
  2. Griffin, p. 249; Tripp, s.v. Somnus, p. 534; Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.641–643.
  3. Griffin, p. 249; Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.638–641.
  4. Griffin, p. 249.
  5. Tripp, s.v. Somnus, p. 534.
  6. Griffin, pp. 179, 249.

References

  • Griffin, A. H. F. (1997), A Commentary on Ovid, Metamorphoses XI, Hermathena, 162/163, Dublin, JSTOR 23041237.
  • Ovid. Metamorphoses, Volume II: Books 9-15. Translated by Frank Justus Miller. Revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library No. 43. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1916. Online version at Harvard University Press.
  • Tripp, Edward, Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology, Thomas Y. Crowell Co; First edition (June 1970). ISBN 069022608X.