The Anatomy of Melancholy

For, as the speaker in Lucian said after such conversation, “I seem to dream of Hecates”: I can think of nothing but hobgoblins. And, as Cicero observes, our daytime conversations generally cause our imagination to work on similar things in sleep; so Ennius writes of Homer.

And in its dreams a dog barks at a hare’s tracks.

As a dog dreams of a hare, so do men dream of the subjects they last thought about.

Dreams that mock our minds with flitting shadows Are sent neither by the gods’ shrines nor by powers from heaven; Each person makes them for himself, and so forth.

For this reason, when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had questioned the seventy translators in order, and asked the nineteenth what would make a man sleep quietly at night, he answered that the best way was to contemplate divine and heavenly things and perform upright actions during the day.

Luis Vives wonders how the scholastics could sleep quietly, without being terrified at night, or walk in the dark, since they entertained such monstrous questions and thought about such dreadful matters all day. Among other precautions, they needed to sacrifice to the god Morpheus, whom Philostratus depicts in a black-and-white coat, with a box of horn and ivory full of dreams of the same colours, signifying good and bad.

If you want to know how to interpret them, read Artemidorus, Sambucus, and Cardano. But for their relief, I must refer you to a more suitable place.