Melancholia emerges as a Western concern for the first time, in the voice of the Greek philosopher Hippocrates (460 BC-370 BC) as a mood disorder associated with a physical disorder caused by black bile. As medicine separates from philosophy, the term is revised with other meanings, not rarely related to the existential condition of man. It is that time when the researcher Luiz Costa Lima mapped the phenomenon of melancholy. Divided into three chapters, the text reaches a collection of authors in an attempt to address the line chosen by the author, since the subject considers "a thousand faces". More than just mapping the theoretical concept of melancholy seen from a human perspective over the centuries, the author reveals to the reader how the melancholic experience in Western culture, in specific ways, the diverse expressions of thought.