Gates of horn and ivory

The ''Odyssey''

Echoes in later Greek literature

The ''Aeneid''

Why Virgil has Aeneas return through the ivory gate and not through that of horn is uncertain. One theory is that it refers to the time of night at which he returned. Jorge Luis Borges accepted the view that, for Virgil, what we call reality is not in fact such; that Virgil may have considered the Platonic world of the archetypes to be the real world.
Another explanation is that Virgil is thus indicating that what he has recounted is not to be taken as literal fact. In John Wesley's last sermon, preached on 17 January 1791, he spoke of how uncertain even the best conjectures about the invisible world were without revelation: "The most finished of all these accounts, is that of the great Roman poet. Where observe how warily he begins, with that apologetic preface, – Sit mihi fas audita loqui – 'May I be allowed to tell what I have heard'. And, in the conclusion, lest anyone should imagine he believed any of these accounts, he sends the relater of them out of hades by the ivory gate, through which, he had just informed us, that only dreams and shadows pass, – a very plain intimation, that all which has gone before, is to be looked upon as a dream!"

Other Latin writing

In his Silvae V iii 285–290, a lament for his dead father, the poet Publius Papinius Statius, expresses the wish that his father may come to him from the abode of the dead in the form of a true dream, passing therefore through the gate of horn:

Thence mayst thou pass to where the better gate of horn o'ercomes the envious ivory, and in the semblance of a dream teach me what thou wert wont to teach.

The 15th-century Latin poet Basinio of Parma, employed at the court of Sigismondo Malatesta in Rimini, wrote a panegyric epic poem for his prince, titled Hesperis, modelled largely on the Aeneid and the Homeric epics, in which Sigismondo, as epic hero, undertakes a journey to the underworld in order to meet his deceased father Pandolfo Malatesta. Before that he passes the temple of Fama which has a bipartite gate — one half made of horn, one half of ivory. On the ivory half are depicted not only Sigismondo's descent but also those of Hercules, Theseus, Ulysses, and Aeneas.

"Having seen that, they turn towards the astounding temple of Fame, a temple enormous and imposing in size and shape, whose door on its left side is white from ivory steps with shining horn on the other half. Disturbing nightmares are conveyed by false rumour on the vain gates of ivory, while true dreams of horn are sent by trustworthy rumours. The gate of horn shows the Spaniards defeated on the Tyrrhenian shore . On the ivory steps Sigismondo turns toward the sea, and is swimming after his ship is destroyed . There Theseus and also Hercules made their way: there brave and victorious Ulysses went to the gloomy homes of the Cimmerians; there faithful Aeneas took to the Stygian lake Avernus."

English writing

The gates of horn and ivory appear in the following notable English written works:

• David Gemmell's epic novel "", chapter sixteen. This is referenced when Odysseus talks to Xander about his vision of the future, and what his wife Penelope had taught him about dreams and their gates in the past on page 268.
• Edmund Spenser's epic poem "The Faery Queene" in book 1, stanzas XL and XLIV, in reference to a false dream being brought to the hero.
• Alexander Pope's mock-epic The Dunciad, in Book III: "And thro' the Iv'ry Gate the Vision flies."
• E. R. Eddison's romance The Worm Ouroboros, in Chapter 2: "...belike the dream was a true dream, sent thee through the gate of horn".
• E. M. Forster's short story The Other Side of the Hedge. The reference from Forster comes when the main character of the story observes the two gates; The Other Side of the Hedge is usually read as a metaphor of death and Heaven.
• A. A. Milne's three-act play "The Ivory Door" is a condemnation of religious dogma and false belief.
• T.S. Eliot's poem "Sweeney Among the Nightingales". The line "And Sweeney guards the horned gate" is likewise a reference to this image.
• Eliot's poem Ash-Wednesday. The lines "And the blind eye creates / The empty forms between the ivory gates" similarly refer to this concept.
• William Empson's poem 'Letter III': '...offspring of Heaven first born, | Earth's terra firma, the Hell-Gate of Horn'
• H. P. Lovecraft's story, "Celephaïs", it is mentioned as the portal through which children see the world of wonder which their adult minds, made wise and unhappy by knowledge of real world, will reject as fanciful.
• Ursula K. Le Guin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea
• Neil Gaiman's graphic novel series The Sandman. The gates themselves were crafted from the horns and bones of gods that attempted to take over the Dreaming, the domain of Dream of the Endless. With the help of a woman made of light named Alianora, Dream defeated the gods and used their remains to create the gates and his battle-helm.
• Robert Holdstock's novel Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn. In the Holdstock novel, the main character grapples with a traumatic event that has two very different manifestations, one true and one false.
• Derek Mahon's poem "Homage to Malcolm Lowry". "Lighting-blind, you, tempest-torn / At the poles of our condition, did not confuse / The Gates of Ivory with the Gates of Horn."
• Margaret Drabble's novel The Gates of Ivory
• W.H. Auden's poem "Horae Canonicae"
• Seamus Heaney's poem "To a Dutch Potter in Ireland" in The Spirit Level : "Then I entered a strongroom of vocabulary / Where words like urns that had come through the fire / Stood in their bone-dry alcoves next a kiln // And came away changed, like the guard who'd seen / The stone move in a diamond-blaze of air / Or the gates of horn behind the gates of clay."
• Lord Dunsany's poem "The Gate of Horn" appears in his 1940 book "War Poems". It is about his leaving his native Ireland and its false dream of neutrality in WW2 to volunteer in Kent to fight the Germans if they invade, and the hope of a true dream of victory.
• The Ivory Gate, a novel by Walter Besant, describing a solicitor with a split personality. The utopian thoughts of his alter ego are said to occur "before the Ivory Gate".
• Margaret Atwood's novel The Penelopiad
• Frank Bidart's long poem, "The First Hour of the Night" makes use of both the gates of ivory and horn to question certainty in fact and memory.

  Music

• American progressive metal band Fates Warning's The Ivory Gate of Dreams, a 22-minute-long song on their album No Exit.
• In 2015, Canadian melodic death metal/metalcore band The Agonist released the video for the song called "Gates of Horn and Ivory", as the first single from their upcoming record Eye of Providence.

  Games

• A Finnish indie PC game called Gates of Horn and Ivory released on Steam Store by Please Be Patient Ltd.

  Software

• The neural-net library Keras, developed as part of project ONEIROS, is named in reference to the gate of horn.