The Anatomy of Melancholy

Paul was jealous over the church at Corinth, as he acknowledges in 2 Corinthians 11:12, “with a godly jealousy, to present them as a pure virgin to Christ”; and he remained afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve through his cunning, their minds might be corrupted away from simplicity in Christ.

God himself is said to be jealous in a certain sense: “I am a jealous God, and will visit”; likewise Psalm 79:5, “Shall your jealousy burn like fire for ever?” But these are called jealousies only figuratively, by a metaphor expressing care and concern for those in question.

Yet some jealousies display all the symptoms of the kind we are discussing—fear, sorrow, anguish, anxiety, suspicion, hatred and so forth—with only the object changed. That of some fathers towards their sons and heirs is especially marked. Although they love them dearly as children, they can scarcely tolerate them as they approach adulthood. The son and heir is commonly tired of his father, and the father in turn can scarcely endure his eldest son: “hence grudges, and very often quarrels and enmities.”

But the jealousy of rulers is most notorious, as when they fear rivals, if I may call them so: successors, competitors, subjects, or people they have offended. “All power will be intolerant of a partner.” “They are always suspicious, lest their authority be diminished,” as one observer remarks.

And as Commynes puts it, “It cannot be expressed how slight are the causes of their distress and suspicion: a secret disease that commonly lurks and breeds in rulers’ households.”

Sometimes it concerns their honour alone, as with the emperor Hadrian, “who killed all his rivals.” Saul envied David; Domitian envied Agricola because he surpassed him, overshadowing his honour, as he thought, and eclipsing his fame.

Juno turned Proetus’s daughters into cows because they competed with her in beauty. The Cyparissae, King Eteocles’s children, were envied by the goddesses for their excellent accomplishments, including dancing, says Constantine, “and for that reason were thrown headlong from heaven and buried in a pit; but the earth took pity on them and brought forth cypress trees to preserve their memory.” Niobe, Arachne and Marsyas can testify to as much.

But jealousy is most grievous when it concerns a kingdom itself or material interests. It produces lamentable effects, especially among tyrants, “under despotic rule,” and those whom their subjects fear more than love, who gain and retain sovereignty through force and fear: “which you know you hold against your citizens’ will,” and so forth, as Phalaris, Dionysius and Periander held theirs.

For although fear, cowardice and jealousy are, in Plutarch’s opinion, the common causes of tyranny, as in Nero, Caligula and Tiberius, most people take them to be symptoms.