Kitap 1
5
Then straight to speak uprose The Atreidan chief, who `neath his sway a wide-spread empire held: Sore vexed was he; his mighty heart in his dark bosom swelled With rage, and from his eyes the fire like lightning-flashes broke. —Τοῖσι δ᾿ ἀνέστη Ἥρως Ἀτρείδης εὐρυκρείων Ἀγαμέμνων Ἀχνύμενος· μένεος δὲ μέγα φρένες ἀμφιμελαιναι Πίμπλαντ᾿, ὄσσε δέ οἱ πυρὶ λαμπετόωντι ἐΐκτην. Iliad, i. 101, etc.
5
The melancholics become such when they are overpowered by this evil.
5
It is a lowness of spirits from a single phantasy, without fever; and it appears to me that melancholy is the commencement and a part of mania. For in those who are mad, the understanding is turned sometimes to anger and sometimes to joy, but in the melancholics to sorrow and despondency only. But they who are mad are so for the greater part of life, becoming silly, and doing dreadful and disgraceful things; but those affected with melancholy are not every one of them affected according to one particular form; but they are either suspicious of poisoning, or flee to the desert from misanthropy, or turn superstitious, or contract a hatred of life. Or if at any time a relaxation takes place, in most cases hilarity supervenes, but these persons go mad.
5
But how, and from what parts of the body, the most of these complaints originate, I will now explain. If the cause remain in the hypochondriac regions, it collects about the diaphragm, and the bile passes upwards, or downwards in cases of melancholy. But if it also affects the head from sympathy, and the abnormal irritability of temper change to laughter and joy for the greater part of their life, these become mad rather from the increase of the disease than from change of the affection.
