Dreaming in Greek

My friends will forgive me if they've already heard this, but I have to repeat it because, well, it's been a long time since I've felt really impressed with myself.

A few nights ago, I had one of my favorite kind of dreams. I was the captain of a Royal Navy frigate, circa 1812, and I was giving my crew a pep talk before boarding an enemy ship. At the climax of my speech, I heard a sentence come out of my mouth that had such a terrific ring that I woke myself up, on purpose to memorize it before going back to sleep. The line was:

"Let your hearts, like your swords, be inscribed with the words ESOMAI ALĒTHINOS!"

As I woke from the dream, I visualized the capitalized words spelled differently. I regarded them as really cool-sounding made-up words, like the elvish lyrics that I've been singing in preparation for a St. Louis Symphony performance of Howard Shore's Fellowship of the Ring film score. Likewise, I didn't think the setting at all unusual, given the number of naval novels I have read lately.

It wasn't until the following morning, when I thought back over the dream I had memorized, that I realized the words in my dream were actually Greek for "I WILL BE TRUE."