Searching for a Semantic Parallel to the Concept of Depression

What is it about?

Did the metaphor of depression exist in ancient Greek? This paper studies diachronically the process that led the Greek verb θλίβω 'to press' and the compound καταθλίβω to the emotional meaning 'to afflict'._x000D_ An analysis of literary and non-literary texts shows that the image of the pressure of the heart existed in Greek as early as the Classical period, albeit in a single attestation. However, the metaphor spread in the sense of external and internal pressure, even without reference to a specific organ, only in Hellenistic and imperial Greek. Oppressions and tribulations (θλίψεις) are frequent in the Septuagint and the New Testament, but traces of metaphorical use also surface in Epictetus and Artemidorus of Daldi. Medicine (Galen), on the other hand, and high literature disdained the translational use of the verb and derivatives._x000D_ In the epigraphic sphere, there is only one evidence of the use of θλίψις in a funerary text, while the papyrus documentation restores the acquired metaphorical meaning, coexisting with the concrete one. From such polysemy a slow process led to the sentimental meaning of the modern terms θλίψη 'sadness' and θλιμμένος 'sad'. On the other hand, depression in the singular, understood as an overall and pathological condition of inner distress, is not documented in ancient Greek: the use of κατάθλιψη in modern Greek is due to a calque of the French dépression.

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