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Erasmus: Adagia
Adagia is the title of an annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs, compiled during the Renaissance by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Erasmus’ collection of proverbs is believed to be one of the most monumental ever assembled.
The first edition was published in Paris in 1500, in a slim quarto of around eight hundred entries. By 1508, after his stay in Italy, Erasmus had expanded the collection to over 3,000 items, many accompanied by richly annotated commentaries, some of which were brief essays on political and moral topics. The work continued to expand right up to the author’s death in 1536 (to a final total of 4,151 entries), confirming Erasmus’ vast reading in ancient literature.
Erasmus’ annotated collection reflects the Renaissance attitude toward classical texts as expressions of timeless wisdom. However, the adages have become victims of their own popularity, having been repeated so often that they have become part of folk wisdom. Modern authors, who have an obsession with originality and individuality unheard of in previous ages, think of the adages as cliches and usually avoid using them in their written work.
The adages have become commonplace in many European languages. Equivalents in English include:
The blind leading the blind A rolling stone gathers no moss Necessity is the mother of invention One step at a time To be in the same boat A rare bird Even a child can see it To walk on tiptoe One to one I gave as good as I got To call a spade a spade Up to his eyeballs Think before you start Many hands make light work Cut to the quick Time reveals all things To lift a finger To walk the tightrope Kill two birds with one stone To swallow the hook The bowels of the earth Happy in one's own skin Hanging by a thread To grind one's teeth Nowhere near the mark To throw cold water on Complete the circle In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king No sooner said than done Can't teach an old dog new tricks A necessary evil God helps those who help themselves The grass is greener over the fence The cart before the horse Dog in the manger One swallow doesn't make a summer To break the ice To have an iron in the fire To look a gift horse in the mouth A snail's pace
Source: Phillips, Margaret Mann. Erasmus on His Times: A Shortened Version of the Adages of Erasmus. (Cambridge, 2009).
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466–1536) was one of Europe’s most famous and influential scholars. A man of great intellect who rose from meager beginnings to become one of Europe’s greatest thinkers, he defined the humanist movement in Northern Europe.
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