"Adagia".
Adagia is an annotated collection of Greek and Latin adages, compiled during the Renaissance by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. According to Speroni (1964, p. 1), Adagia is one of "the most monumental collections of * adagias ever assembled".
The collection is the fruit of Erasmus' vast reading in Classical literature; he expanded it occasionally throughout his career, and the book did not attain its final form until close to his death.
The first edition, titled Collecteana Adagiorum was published in Paris in 1500, in a slim quarto of around eight hundred proverbs. By the end of his time in Italy, Erasmus had expanded the collection to over three thousand items, many accompanied by explanatory notes that are often, in fact, brief essays on political and moral topics. He had also changed the title to Adagiorum Chiliades (the thousand proverbs). This was the title it retained in all subsequent editions.
By his death, Erasmus had compiled 4,658 adages in his collection. Many have become commonplace in our everyday language, and we owe our use of them to Erasmus. Among these are:
Make haste slowly.
One step at a time
You're 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 (we now say "...in the grave")
To walk on tiptoe
One to one
Out of tune
A point in time
I gave as bad as I got (we reversed it to "good", even though we mean "bad")
To call a spade a spade
Hatched from the same egg
Up to both ears (we use "up to his eyeballs")
As though in a mirror
Think before you start
What's done cannot be undone
Many parasangs ahead (we say, "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 (yes, it meant the same thing back then)
You have touched the issue with a needle-point (we say, you have nailed it)
To walk the tightrope
Time tempers grief (we say, 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, one eyed man is king
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 humanist emphasis in education. 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 sententiæ 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' collection was among the most popular volumes of the century.
Source: Collected Works of Erasmus, Volume 33, University of Toronto Press, 1991
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the "Adagia".
Home Page • arts • business • computers • games • health • hospitals • home • kids & teens • news • physicians • recreation• reference • regional • science • shopping • society • sports • world