Adagia is an annotated collection of
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and
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proverbA proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
s, compiled during the
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by
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humanistHumanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Erasmus' collection of proverbs is "one of the most monumental ... ever assembled" (Speroni, 1964, p. 1).
The first edition, titled
Collectanea Adagiorum, was published in
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1500, in a slim
quartoQuarto could refer to:* Quarto, a size or format of a book in which four leaves of a book are created from a standard size sheet of paper* For specific information about quarto texts of William Shakespeare's works, see:...
of around eight hundred proverbs. By 1508, after his stay in
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, Erasmus had expanded the collection (now called
Adagiorum chiliades or "Thousands of proverbs") to over three thousand items, many accompanied by richly annotated commentaries, some of which were brief essays on political and moral topics. The work, which continue to be expanded right up to his death in 1536 (to a final total of 4,251 essays), is the fruit of Erasmus' vast reading in ancient literature.
Commonplace examples from Adagia
Many of the adages have become commonplace in many European languages, and we owe our use of them to Erasmus. Among these in English are:
- Make haste slowly
- One step at a time
- To be in the same boat
- To lead one by the nose
- A rare bird
- Even a child can see it
- To have one foot in Charon's boat (To have one foot in the grave)
- To walk on tiptoe
- One to one
- Out of tune
- A point in time
- I gave as bad as I got (I gave as good as I got)
- To call a spade a spade
- Hatched from the same egg
- Up to both ears (Up to his eyeballs)
- As though in a mirror
- Think before you start
- What's done cannot be undone
- Many parasangs
The parasang is a historical Iranian unit of itinerant distance comparable to the European league.In antiquity, the term was used throughout much of the Middle East, and the Old Iranian language from which it derives can no longer be determined...
ahead (Miles ahead)
- We cannot all do everything
- Many hands make light work
- A living corpse
- Where there's life, there's hope
- To cut to the quick
- Time reveals all things
- Golden handcuffs
- Crocodile tears
- To show the middle finger
- You have touched the issue with a needle-point (To have nailed it)
- To walk the tightrope
- Time tempers grief (Time heals all wounds)
- With a fair wind
- To dangle the bait
- To swallow the hook
- The bowels of the earth
|
From heaven to earth
The dog is worthy of his dinner
To weigh anchor
To grind one's teeth
Nowhere near the mark
Complete the circle
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
A cough for a fart
No sooner said than done
Neither with bad things nor without them (Women: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em)
Between a stone and a shrine (Between a rock and a hard place)
Like teaching an old man a new language (Can't teach an old dog new tricks)
A necessary evil
There's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip
To squeeze water out of a stone
To leave no stone unturned
Let the cobbler stick to his last (Stick to your knitting)
God helps those who help themselves The phrase "God helps those who help themselves" is a popular motto that emphasizes the importance of self-initiative.The phrase originated in ancient Greece, occurring in approximately equivalent form as the moral to one of Aesop's Fables, Hercules and the Waggoner, and later in the great tragedy...
The grass is greener over the fence
The cart before the horse
Dog in the mangerThe story and metaphor of The Dog in the Manger derives from an old Greek fable which has been transmitted in several different versions. Interpreted variously over the centuries, it is used now of those who spitefully prevent others from having something that they themselves have no use for...
One swallow doesn't make a summer
His heart was in his boots
To sleep on it
To break the ice
Ship-shape
To die of laughing
To have an iron in the fire
To look a gift horse in the mouth
Neither fish nor flesh
Like father, like son
Not worth a snap of the fingers
He blows his own trumpet
To show one's heels |
Context
The work reflects a typical Renaissance attitude toward classical texts: to wit, that they were fit for appropriation and amplification, as expressions of a timeless wisdom first uncovered by the classical authors. It is, as well, an expression of the new
HumanismHumanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
. The
Adagia could only have been possible in the new world of European education, in which careful attention to a broader range of classical texts produced a much fuller picture of the literature of antiquity than had been possible, or desired, in the medieval period. In a period in which
sententiæSententiae are brief moral sayings, such as proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, or apophthegms taken from ancient or popular or other sources, often quoted without context. A sententia , also called a "sentence," is a kind of rhetorical proof...
were often marked by special fonts and footnotes in printed texts, and in which the ability to use classical wisdom to bolster modern arguments was a critical part of scholarly and even political discourse, it is not surprising that Erasmus'
Adagia was among the most popular volumes of the century.
Source: Erasmus, Desiderius.
Adages in
Collected Works of Erasmus. Trans. R.A.B Mynors et al. Volumes 31-36. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982-2006. (A complete annotated translation into English. There is a one-volume selection: Erasmus, Desiderius.
Adages. Ed. William Barker. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.)
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