May 6, 2026

J. Balvin

Ella, daughter of Night and Darkness, was the personification of pain, anguish, and sadness for the Greeks. An inevitable companion to the human condition since sooner or later Oizis (Misery) would appear in everyone's life, making Joy (Euphrosyne) vanish as if by magic. When mental illness had not yet been invented, melancholy (which strictly meant black bile in Greek) was understood as an excess of this bile that turned anyone from happy and cheerful into someone taciturn, sad, and somber. The Greeks thought a small touch of black bile was vital because, without it, artists, philosophers, or statesmen lost the genius and introspection needed to create. Aristotle said deep sadness was the price exceptional men had to pay for genius. But they had remedies. The Stoics promoted sensory stimulation: illuminated rooms would avoid depressing darkness; exercise, reading, theater, and music were other proposed concoctions. And when none of this worked, the radical treatment was a change of scenery with long journeys. Much earlier, in the Odyssey, Helen of Troy poured Nepenthe into wine to "dispel pain and anger and forget all evils," thus unknowingly inaugurating the first antidepressants.