When the bile turns black: on the origins of melancholy (Versión Aceptada)

Abstract

The paper delves into the origins of the ancient Greek concept of melancholy. The purpose of the first part is to trace a precursor of melancholy back to Homer’s description of certain emotions which are congenial with rage (cholos or cholē) ,and which are associated with the colour black (melainos. Based on a systematic interpretation of these traces of melancholy in the earliest premedical history, the second part of the paper will shed new light on the broader and more dynamic way in which part of the Hippocratic tradition conceptualized melancholy as being, not a fixed state bound to an already existing substance in the human body, but as originating from a series of transformations associated with constitutional and climatological factors.