Envy: The biochemical substrates

The concept of ‘envy’ (in Latin, invidia) is old. Envy or coveting the possessions of others is prohibited in the Ten Commandments and became a central tenant of the Catholic Church. Prudentius, a Roman Catholic scholar, writing in AD 410, considered envy to be the antonym of ‘kindness’. Envy was added to the list of seven ‘deadly sins’, by the Catholic Pope Gregory I in the late 6th Century and was later described in Dante's The Divine Comedy.