Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

Online version at Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1916.

Spawforth (eds.), Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd rev. ed.), Oxford, ISBN 9780198661726.

Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, ISBN 9780631201021.

(1997), A Commentary on Ovid, Metamorphoses XI, Hermathena, vol. 162/163, Dublin: Trinity College Dublin, pp. 1–290, JSTOR 23041237. However, Griffin suggests that this division of dream forms between Morpheus and his brothers, possibly including their names, may have been of Hellenistic origin. Tripp calls these three figures 'literary, not mythical concepts'. The three brothers' names are found nowhere earlier than Ovid, and are perhaps Ovidian inventions. One called Icelos ('Like'), by the gods, but Phobetor ('Frightener') by men, 'takes the form of beast or bird or the long serpent', and Phantasos ('Fantasy'), who 'puts on deceptive shapes of earth, rocks, water, trees, all lifeless things'. Ovid gives names to two more of these sons of Sleep.

Ovid called Morpheus and his brothers, the other sons of Somnus, the Somnia ('dream shapes'), saying that they appear in dreams 'mimicking many forms'. According to Ovid 'no other is more skilled than he in representing the gait, the features, and the speech of men the clothing also and the accustomed words of each he represents.' Like other gods associated with sleep, Ovid presents Morpheus as winged. His name derives from the Greek word for form (μορφή), and his function was apparently to appear in dreams in human guise. Ovid makes Morpheus one of the thousand sons of Somnus (Sleep). In Ovid's account Juno (via the messenger goddess Iris) send Morpheus to appear to Alcyone in a dream, as her husband Ceyx, to tell her of his death. The only mention of Morpheus occurs in Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Ovid tells of the story of Ceyx and his wife Alcyone who were transformed into birds.

From the Middle Ages, the name began to stand more generally for the god of dreams, or of sleep.

In Ovid's Metamorphoses he is the son of Somnus and appears in dreams in human form. Morpheus ('Fashioner', derived from the Ancient Greek: μορφή meaning 'form, shape') is a god associated with sleep and dreams. Morpheus, painted by Jean-Bernard Restout

Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor