The [verb that means] to be vexed in distraction. It sometimes also means to rejoice, from warmth [alea] and frenzy. Homer [writes]: "are you beside yourself because you have beaten that vagabond Irus?"[1] Hence it also is aspirated. Sophocles [writes]: "let me be beside myself this way."[2] But in reference to being troubled it is also unaspirated.
Agathias says: "but being overwhelmed and assessing everything separately, he decided that it was necessary to put the garrison to the test somehow or other."[3]
But Didymus [says that] both [are] unaspirated.[4] For the one, he says, [comes] from the [verb] a)leiai/nesqai, but the other from the [noun] a)/lh. But [it is] more Attic for both to be aspirated. For the Attic [writers] also aspirate the [verb] a(leai/nesqai and all those sorts of things.