The Anatomy of Melancholy

It is a common disease, almost natural to us, as Tacitus maintains, to envy another person’s prosperity. And in most people it is incurable. “I have read Greek, Hebrew and Chaldean authors,” says Marcus Aurelius, “and consulted many wise men for a remedy for envy. I could find none except to renounce all happiness and remain wretched and miserable for ever.” It is the beginning of hell in this life, and a passion without excuse. Every other sin has some pleasure attached to it, or admits of an excuse; envy alone lacks both. Other sins last only a while: the belly can be satisfied, anger subsides, hatred comes to an end; envy never ceases. Cardan, On Wisdom, book 2.

Examples from sacred and secular history are familiar enough to read at a glance: Saul and David, Cain and Abel. “It was not his own sin that distressed him, but his brother’s prosperity,” says Theodoret; his brother’s good fortune was what galled him. Rachel, being barren, envied her sister, Genesis 30; Joseph’s brothers envied him, Genesis 37. David had a touch of this vice, as he confesses in Psalm 37. Jeremiah and Habakkuk resented the prosperity of others, but eventually corrected themselves. Psalm 75: “Do not fret,” and so on. Domitian resented Agricola’s merit—that a private man should receive such glory. Caecina was envied by his fellow citizens because he was more richly dressed.

But women, above all others, are weakest: “Women are envious over beauty”—Musaeus; “She either loves or hates; there is no third possibility”—Granatensis. They love or hate, with no middle ground. “Women, when injured, are generally implacable,” like Agrippina. If a woman sees her neighbour neater or more elegant, with finer headdresses, jewels or clothes, she becomes enraged and attacks her husband like a lioness; she abuses and mocks the other woman and cannot bear her. So the Roman ladies in Tacitus reacted to Salonina, Caecina’s wife: because she had a better horse and finer trappings, they were deeply offended, as if she had injured them by possessing them. Our gentlewomen behave in the same way at their usual gatherings: one resents or mocks another’s finery and good fortune.

Myrsine, a girl of Attica, was murdered by her companions because she surpassed all the others in beauty: Constantine, Agriculture, book 11, chapter 7. Every village will supply such examples.