{"id":15238,"date":"2015-10-31T20:35:34","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T20:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/?p=15238"},"modified":"2015-10-31T20:35:34","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T20:35:34","slug":"is-those-whom-the-gods-wish-to-destroy-they-first-make-mad-a-classical-quotation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/2015\/10\/31\/is-those-whom-the-gods-wish-to-destroy-they-first-make-mad-a-classical-quotation\/","title":{"rendered":"Is “those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad” a classical quotation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night I was reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson<\/em>, and came across the familiar quotation in\u00a0a Latin form, Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat<\/em> – “those whom God wishes to destroy he first drives mad”.\u00a0 Therein it was stated that the Latin quotation was on everyone’s lips, but its source was known to nobody.<\/p>\n

A Google Books search on the English version gives no hits before the mid-19th century.\u00a0 Before then, the tag was circulated in Latin, it seems, with various word-orders and slight variants.<\/p>\n

I think we can suppose that the English “gods” replacing “Deus”, “God”, is just a feature of quotation.\u00a0 These tags are not transmitted as gospel, and a speaker or writer will modify them as he thinks gives the best effect.<\/p>\n

But where does\u00a0the Latin text\u00a0come from?\u00a0 Is it ancient?\u00a0 In fact it is not.\u00a0 It originates, as best I can tell, in the 17th century.<\/p>\n

A Google Books search<\/a> found me an article in the Monthly Magazine or British Register<\/em>, vol. 51 (1821), p.520<\/a>, in which a correspondent writes as follows:<\/p>\n

\n

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

SIR,<\/p>\n

IN the following extract from Mr Boswell’s Life of Dr Johnson vol iv pp 196 and 7 your correspondent Poplicola in your Magazine for May will find his enquiry answered respecting the Latin line he quotes — “Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat.”<\/p>\n

With the following elucidation of the other saying:– “Quos Deus (it should rather be Quem Jupiter) vult perdere prius dementat,” Mr Boswell was furnished by Mr Richard Howe of Aspley in Bedfordshire, as communicated to that gentleman by his friend Mr John Pitts, late rector of Great Brickhill in Buckinghamshire.<\/p>\n

Perhaps no scrap of Latin whatever has been more quoted than this. It occasionally falls even from those who are scrupulous even to pedantry in their latinity and will not admit a word into their compositions which has not\u00a0the sanction of the first age. The word demento<\/em> is of no authority either as a verb active or neuter. After a long search for the purpose of deciding a bet, some gentlemen of Cambridge found it amongst the fragments of Euripides, in what edition\u00a0I do not recollect, where it is given as a translation of a Greek Iambick.<\/p>\n

\u039f\u03bd \u0398\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 ?\u0323\u03b5\u03bb\u03b5\u03b9 \u03b1\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03b5\u03c3\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u0315 \u03b1\u03c0\u03bf\u03c6\u03c1\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03c2 [I can barely read this]<\/span><\/p>\n

The above scrap was found in the hand writing of a suicide of fashion. \u00a0Sir D.O. some years ago lying on the table of the room where he had destroyed himself. \u00a0The suicide was man of classical acquirements: he left no other paper behind him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0ALLSHARPS
\nMay 19th, 1821<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is interesting for several reasons.\u00a0 Firstly, it gives a variant form, “Quem Jupiter”.\u00a0 Secondly it refers to an early unspecified edition of Euripedes.<\/p>\n

Which edition this is is revealed by\u00a0another hit in the search, P. R. Reynolds, The Writing and Selling of Fiction<\/em>, 139<\/a>-140:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joshua Barnes (or Barnesius, according to the custom of the time)\u00a0edited the works of Euripides in 1694, Euripides quae extant omnia<\/em>.\u00a0 This including a collection of fragments of various tragedies, which appears in the work under the title Incertae Tragoediae<\/em>.\u00a0 The volume also includes three indexes, on unnumbered pages.\u00a0 The first\u00a0index is important to this story.<\/p>\n

In this “index prior”, under the letter “D”, (Google books link<\/a>), we find the following:<\/p>\n

\"barnes_euripedes_index\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I.e. Deus quos vult perdere, dementat prius<\/em>, as found in the “Incerta”, on\u00a0verse or line\u00a0436.\u00a0 For of course this is drama, and each line is numbered.<\/p>\n

Now this is certainly our quotation from Johnson.\u00a0 But what precisely is the entry in the body of the text?\u00a0 Again, we are fortunate that the volume is online,\u00a0for we can locate v.436 here, and it is thus:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Greek of the fragments appears in the left column, and is more or less as follows:<\/p>\n

\n

\u1ff9<\/span>\u03c4\u03b1\u03bd<\/span> \u1f41<\/span> \u03b4\u03b1<\/span>\u1f77<\/span>\u03bc\u03c9\u03bd<\/span> \u1f00<\/span>\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1<\/span>\u1f76<\/span> \u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03c3<\/span>\u1f7b<\/span>\u03bd<\/span>\u1fc3<\/span> \u03ba\u03b1\u03ba<\/span>\u1f71<\/span>,
\n<\/span>\u03c4<\/span>\u1f78<\/span>\u03bd<\/span> \u03bd\u03bf<\/span>\u1fe6<\/span>\u03bd<\/span> \u1f14<\/span>\u03b2\u03bb\u03b1\u03c8\u03b5<\/span> \u03c0\u03c1<\/span>\u1ff6<\/span>\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Which has been rendered like this:<\/p>\n

\n

But when the daimon<\/em> plots against a man,
\nHe first inflicts some hurt upon his mind.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The word\u00a0daimon<\/em> does not here mean “demon”, but rather\u00a0has the twin meanings of “divinity” and “fortune”.\u00a0 In his translation, Barnes uses “Numen”, rather than “Deus”, with this in mind.\u00a0 In fact our saying is not Barnes’ translation, but instead a summary of the content!<\/p>\n

So the Latin is in fact a coinage by Dr Joshua Barnes, in 1694, summarising a saying\u00a0that he believed was a fragment of\u00a0Euripides.<\/p>\n

The fragment\u00a0is found in\u00a0the\u00a0second century AD\u00a0Christian writer Athenagoras of Athens, in his Supplicatio pro Christianis<\/em> (Plea for the Christians<\/em>), chapter 26<\/a>, as Barnes himself indicates in his marginal notes on the passage above.<\/p>\n

But I learn from this site<\/a> that in fact it is a note on Sophocles Antigone<\/em>, l.620, by a scholiast.\u00a0 The idea itself is present in Homer, Odyssey<\/em>, IX, 492-3.<\/p>\n

In the tragedy Antigone<\/em>, of Sophocles<\/em>, in verses 620-623<\/em>,\u00a0 it said something similar:<\/p>\n

For cunningly of old was the celebrated saying revealed: evil sometimes seems good
\nto a man whose mind a god leads to destruction.<\/em><\/p>\n

The\u00a0ancient scholiast on these verses says:<\/p>\n

When a god plans harm against a man, he first damages the mind of the man he is plotting against.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u03cc\u03c4\u03b1\u03bd\u00a0 \u03cc \u03b4\u03b1\u03af\u03bc\u03c9\u03bd \u03ac\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u0390 \u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03c3\u1f7b\u03bd\u1fc3 \u03ba\u03b1\u03ba\u03ac,
\n\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03bd\u03bf\u03c5\u03bd \u03b5\u03b2\u03bb\u03b1\u03c6\u03b5 \u03c0\u03c1\u03ce\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03ce \u03b2\u03bf\u03c5\u03bb\u03b5\u03cd\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9.<\/p>\n

August Nauck collected this couplet as one of the fragments of his Fragmenta Tragicorum Graecorum<\/em> (Leipzig.Teubner 1889), namely exactly the number 455 of Adespota<\/em> or anonymous <\/em>and therefore without author:<\/p>\n

The couplet is in the scholia to Sophocles, Antigone<\/em>, l.\u00a0620 …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The scholion is then quoted by Athenagoras.\u00a0 Why the early editors attributed the saying to Euripedes I do not know.<\/p>\n

Barnes also mentions the sayings of Publilius Syrus, in the 1st century BC, and the same site tells us that the Sententiae<\/em> 612 reads:<\/p>\n

\n

Stultum facit Fortuna quem vult perdere<\/p>\n

Fortune makes stupid him who she wishes to destroy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But there is more.\u00a0 For what about this variant “Quos Jupiter”?\u00a0 It turns out that Barnes himself was working from an older writer, James Duport.<\/p>\n

In 1660 Duport published his collection of\u00a0sayings from Homer,\u00a0Homeri poetarum omnium seculorum facile principis gnomologia<\/em>, better known as the Gnomologia Homerica<\/em>.\u00a0 On p.262 (Google Books<\/a>) we find the following comment, note a,\u00a0on the section of the Odyssey<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"barnes_euripedes_text\"<\/a> \"duport_homer\"<\/a>After reviewing a couple of instances of the thought,\u00a0Duport quotes a portion of Euripedes, and then, expressing the opposite thought (Contra<\/em>) he quotes the same line and translates Quem Jupiter vult perdere, dementat prius<\/em>.\u00a0 This gives us our variant.<\/p>\n

It would be interesting to see what might be found in earlier editions of Euripedes, or any Latin translations of that era.\u00a0 Most Greek works appeared first in a Latin translation, after all.\u00a0 Unfortunately at this time I do not have much knowledge of the transmission history of Euripedes, so that must wait for another time.<\/p>\n

To summarise, the saying as we have it is a 19th century translation of an index entry, written by Joshua Barnes in 1694 in his edition of Euripedes.\u00a0 The entry summarised rather than translated the content of\u00a0a couple of lines of Greek.\u00a0 The lines were\u00a0originally by a scholiast on Sophocles, quoted in the 2nd century AD by Athenagoras, and supposed to be by Euripedes by early editors of that author.\u00a0\u00a0 Barnes in turn was almost quoting James Duport in his 1660 work on the ideas to be found in Homer.<\/p>\n

We may suppose that\u00a0“Deus” and “Jupiter” were altered by some unknown speaker into “gods” in 19th century English, from an entirely correct\u00a0feeling that the saying was not consistent with the character of God, but rather more with the outlook of the pagan gods of ancient Greece who, to quote a more modern source, “were petty and cruel, and plagued mankind with suffering.”<\/p>\n

UPDATE.\u00a0 I had meant to mention also the French editor Boissonade, who later gave\u00a0a commentary on Euripedes in his Poetarum graecorum sylloge<\/em> tom. XIX.\u00a0 Euripides tom. 4.\u00a0 In the 1826 reprint, again in the index, on p.322<\/a>, we find:<\/p>\n

\n

Jupiter quos vult perdere dementat … 300<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And on p.300<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0which is\u00a0scholia on the Bacchae<\/em>, line 840, we get\u00a0the Greek and then “sic quos vult perdere Jupiter dementat.”<\/p>\n

UPDATE: An email from Andrew Eastbourne draws my attention to an article, F.W.Householder, “Quem deus vult perdere dementat prius”, The Classical Weekly<\/em> 29 (1936), 165-7 (JSTOR<\/a>).\u00a0 This suggests that the Latin tag does not originate with Duport, but that he was referencing some existing form of the saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I was reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and came across the familiar quotation in\u00a0a Latin form, Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat – “those whom <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_awef_post_faq_schema":[],"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[660],"class_list":["post-15238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-my-diary-announcements","tag-euripedes"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}