To the ancient mind, death was eternal sleep – and the realm of the dead, the underworld, was therefore linked with the realm of the dream. We see this link clearly in Cicero’s "Scipio’s Dream," in which Scipio Africanus, while asleep, meets his dead ancestor and gains special knowledge about the cosmos and the meaning of one’s duty to the Roman state. Virgil does not present Aeneas’ journey to the underworld as a dream and yet in many key respects the journey parallels the ancient conception of a dream world. Aeneas’ descent, like Scipio's dream, allows him to make contact with the dead. It gives him an opportunity to glimpse a world beyond the mortal realm. It imbues him with special knowledge, which assists him when he returns to the land of the living. The journey allows him a view into the future. It foretells individual glory and the future glory of Rome. All of these themes – blurring of material and spiritual realms, special/divine knowledge, foretelling of the future events – are common to both ancient dream literature and Virgil’s story of Aeneas’ journey to the underworld. Beyond that, the link between the journey to the underworld and sleep is made at several points in the epic, as we will see. The logic of the journey’s sequence also follows common dream patterns – with an entry, or shifting of realms, a period of acclimation and anxiety, and then an emotional climax followed by exit. I would contend, then, that Virgil, like other ancient writers of the underworld (like Homer) viewed the realm of sleep (the dream world) and that of eternal sleep (the realm of the dead) as closely connected. We, as students of dreams, now turn our gaze to the world of ever-lasting sleep, of unending dreams or nightmares: the underworld.

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Wendell Clausen: Virgil’s Aeneid: Decorum, Allusion, and Ideology