Adages IV iii 1 to V ii 51

This sixth of seven volumes devoted to the Adages in the Collected Works of Erasmus completes the translation and annotation of the more than 4000 proverbs gathered and commented on by Erasmus in his Adagiorum Chiliades (Thousands of Adages, usually known more simply as the Adagia). This volume’s aim, like that of the others, is to provide a fully annotated, accurate, and readable English version of Erasmus’ commentaries on these Greek and Latin proverbs, and to show how Erasmus continued to expand this work, originally published in 1508, until his death in 1536. An indication of Erasmus’ unflagging interest in classical proverbs is that almost 500 of the 951 adages translated in this volume did not make their first appearance until the edition of 1533.

Following in the tradition of meticulous scholarship for which the Collected Works of Erasmus is widely known, the notes to this volume identify the classical sources and illustrate how the content of his commentaries on the adages often reflects Erasmus’ scholarly and editing interests in the classical authors at a particular time. The work was highly acclaimed and circulated widely in Erasmus’ time, serving as a conduit for transmitting classical proverbs into the vernacular languages, in which many of the proverbs still survive to this day.