The gates of horn and ivory are a literary image used to distinguish true dreams (corresponding to factual occurrences) from false. The phrase originated in the Greek language, in which the word for "horn" is similar to that for "fulfill" and the word for "ivory" is similar to that for "deceive". On the basis of that play on words, true dreams are spoken of as coming through the gates of horn, false dreams as coming through those of ivory. The Odyssey The earliest appearance of the image is in the Odyssey, book 19, lines 560–569. There Penelope, who has had a dream that seems to signify that her husband Odysseus is about to return, expresses by a play on words her conviction that the dream is false. She says: Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, and in no wise do they find fulfillment in all things for men. For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfillment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them. But in my case it was not from thence, methinks, that my strange dream came. Arthur T. Murray, translator of the original Loeb Classical Library edition of the Odyssey, commented: The play upon the words κέρας, "horn", and κραίνω, "fulfill", and upon ἐλέφας, "ivory", and ἐλεφαίρομαι, "deceive", cannot be preserved in English. Echoes in later Greek literature Homer greatly influenced Greek literature as a whole. Plato refers to the two gates in his dialogue Charmides: Socrates: "Listen then," I said, "to my dream, to see whether it comes through horn or through ivory." A reference to the Odyssean image also appears in the late (c. AD 400) epic poet Nonnus: As Morrheus slept, the vision of a dream cajoled him, beguiling his mind after flitting through the gates of ivory. The Aeneid Virgil borrowed the image of the two gates in lines 893–898 of Book 6 of his Aeneid, describing that of horn as the passageway for true shadows and that of ivory as that through which the Manes in the underworld send false dreams up to the living. Through the latter gate Virgil makes his hero Aeneas, accompanied by the Cumaean