Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad is a saying that has appeared in English literature in varying forms since the 17th century. In some variations, "gods" is replaced with "God" or "Jupiter," and the saying is sometimes rendered in Latin: Quos Deus / Quem Iuppiter vult perdere, prius dementat. Although sometimes falsely attributed to Euripides, the phrase does have classical Greek antecedents.
The saying first appears in English in exactly the above form in the Reverend William Anderson Scott's book Daniel, a Model for Young Men and is attributed to a "heathen proverb." It later appears in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "The Masque of Pandora" and other places.
Classical origins
An early precedent appears in verses 620–623 of Sophocles' play Antigone: τὸ κακὸν δοκεῖν ποτ᾽ ἐσθλὸν τῷδ᾽ ἔμμεν' ὅτῳ φρένας θεὸς ἄγει πρὸς ἄταν; translated "Evil appears as good in the minds of those whom god leads to destruction."Plato's Republic quotes a fragment attributed to Aeschylus : θεὸς μὲν αἰτίαν φύει βροτοῖς, / ὅταν κακῶσαι δῶμα παμπήδην θέλῃ; translated "A god implants the guilty cause in men / When he would utterly destroy a house."
17th- and 18th-century use
In the 17th century the phrase was used in the neo-Latin form Quem Iuppiter vult perdere, dementat prius ; in a Christianized Greek version, iuppiter was replaced by "lord" as in . Benjamin Franklin quotes this phrase in his essay "On Civil War", delivered to the printer of the London Public Advertiser, August 25, 1768.A prior Latin version is Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat but this involves God, not "the gods".
Jean-Jacques Rousseau quotes this phrase in The Confessions in the form of Quos vult perdere Jupiter dementet, authored in 1769 but published in 1782.