Circe Invidiosa ("Circe, abounding in envy") by John William Waterhouse

In Latin, invidia is the sense of envy or jealousy, a "looking upon" associated with the evil eye, from invidere, "to look against, to look at in a hostile manner."^[1] Invidia ("Envy") is one of the Seven Deadly Sins in Christian belief.

[edit] Invidia and magic

See also: Fascinus and the envious reproductive demons Abyzou and Gello.

This section requires expansion.

The material culture and literature of ancient Rome offer numerous examples of rituals and magic spells intended to avert invidia and the evil eye. When a Roman general celebrated a triumph, the Vestal Virgins suspended a fascinus, or phallic effigy, under the chariot to ward off invidia.

[edit] Invidia as emotion

The experience of invidia, as Robert A. Kaster notes,^[2] is invariably an unpleasant one, whether feeling invidia or finding oneself its object. Invidia at the thought of another's good may be merely begrudging, Kaster observes, or begrudging and covetous at the same time: "I can feel dolor ["pain, sorrow, heartache"] at seeing your good, just because it is your good, period, or I can feel that way because the good is yours and not mine."^[3] Such invidia is morally indefensible: compare the Aesop fable "The Dog in the Manger". But by far the most common usage in Latin of invidia occurs in contexts where the sense of justice has been offended, and pain is experienced at the sight of undeserved wealth, prestige or authority, exercised without shame (pudor); this is the close parallel with Greek nemesis (νέμεσις)^[4]

Latin literature [link]

Invidia is the uneasy emotion denied by the shepherd Melipoeus in Virgil's Eclogue 1.^[5]

In Latin, invidia might be the equivalent of two Greek personifications, Nemesis and Phthonus. Invidia might be personified, for strictly literary purposes, as a goddess, a Roman equivalent to Nemesis in Greek mythology, though Nemesis did receive cultus, notably at her sanctuary at Rhamnous, north of Marathon, Greece.

Ovid describes the personification of Invidia at length in the Metamorphoses (2.760-832):

Her face was sickly pale, her whole body lean and wasted, and she squinted horribly; her teeth were discoloured and decayed, her poisonous breast of a greenish hue, and her tongue dripped venom. … Gnawing at other, and being gnawed, she was herself her own torment.^[6]

[edit] Allegorical invidia

Invidia by Jacques Callot (1620) draws on a long iconic tradition

Among Christians, Invidia is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

In the allegorical mythography of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the three heads of Cerberus sometimes represent three kinds of invidia.^[7]

In Late Gothic and Renaissance iconography, Invidia is personified invariably as a woman. Cesare Ripa's influential Iconologia (Rome, 1603) represented Invidia with a serpent coiled round her breast and biting her heart, "to signify her self-devouring bitterness; she also raises one hand to her mouth to show she cares only for herself". The representational tradition drew on Latin authors such as Ovid, Horace, and Pliny, as well as Andrea Alciato's emblem book and Jacopo Sannazaro. Alciato portrayed her devouring her own heart in her anguish.^[8]

Invidia is the fatal flaw of Iago in Shakespeare's Othello': "O you are well tuned now; but I'll set down the pegs that make this music." (Othello II.i).^[9]

Notes [link]

References [link]

• Peter Aronoff, 2003. (Bryn Mawr Classical Review 20): Review of David Konstan and Keith Rutter, eds. Envy, Spite and Jealousy: The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2003; ISBN 0-7486-1603-9).