"Whose mind the God leads to destruction; _but that he_ (_the God_)
practises this a short time without destroying such an one."
But for the Italics it might have been an oversight: they would seem to
imply he has some authority for his translation. I have no edition of
Sophocles by me to discover, but surely no critical scholar can acquiesce
in it. The only _active_ sense of [Greek: prassein] I remember at the
moment is _to exact_. It surely should be translated, "_And he, whom the
God so leads to_ [Greek: ate], _fares_ a _very_ short time without it." The
best translation of [Greek: ate] is, perhaps, _infatuation_. Moreover, how
is the above translation reconciled with the very superlative [Greek:
oligoston]?