but Electra told him thus raving in his mad fit, he saw no such sights at all, it was but his crazed imagination.

[2701] “Quiesce, quiesce miser in linteis tuis,
        Non cernis etenim quae videre te putas.”

So Pentheus (in Bacchis Euripidis) saw two suns, two Thebes, his brain alone was troubled.  Sickness is an ordinary cause of such sights.  Cardan, subtil. 8. Mens aegra laboribus et jejuniis fracta, facit eos videre, audire, &c.  And, Osiander beheld strange visions, and Alexander ab Alexandro both, in their sickness, which he relates de rerum varietat. lib. 8. cap. 44. Albategnius that noble Arabian, on his death-bed, saw a ship ascending and descending, which Fracastorius records of his friend Baptista Tirrianus.  Weak sight and a vain persuasion withal, may effect as much, and second causes concurring, as an oar in water makes a refraction, and seems bigger, bended double, &c.  The thickness of the air may cause such effects, or any object not well-discerned in the dark, fear and phantasy will suspect to be a ghost, a devil, &c. [2702]_Quod nimis miseri timent, hoc facile credunt_, we are apt to believe, and mistake in such cases.  Marcellus Donatus, lib. 2. cap. 1. brings in a story out of Aristotle, of one Antepharon which likely saw, wheresoever he was, his own image in the air, as in a glass.  Vitellio, lib. 10. perspect. hath such another instance of a familiar acquaintance of his, that after the want of three or four nights sleep, as he was riding by a river side, saw another riding with him, and using all such gestures as he did, but when more light appeared, it vanished.  Eremites and anchorites have frequently such absurd visions, revelations by reason of much fasting, and bad diet, many are deceived by legerdemain, as Scot hath well showed in his book of the discovery of witchcraft, and Cardan, subtil. 18. suffites, perfumes, suffumigations, mixed candles, perspective glasses, and such natural causes, make men look as if they were dead, or with horse-heads, bull’s-horns, and such like brutish shapes, the room full of snakes, adders, dark, light, green, red, of all colours, as you may perceive in Baptista Porta, Alexis, Albertus, and others, glow-worms, fire-drakes, meteors, Ignis fatuus, which Plinius, lib. 2. cap. 37. calls Castor and Pollux, with many such that appear in moorish grounds, about churchyards, moist valleys, or where battles have been fought, the causes of which read in Goclenius, Velouris, Fickius, &c. such fears are often done, to frighten children with squibs, rotten wood, &c. to make folks look as if they were dead, [2703]_solito majores_, bigger, lesser, fairer, fouler, ut astantes sine capitibus videantur; aut toti igniti, aut forma daemonum, accipe pilos canis nigri, &c. saith Albertus; and so ’tis ordinary to see strange uncouth sights by catoptrics:  who knows not that if in a dark room, the light be admitted at one only little hole, and a paper or glass