Adagia

Desiderius Erasmus gathered 4,151 proverbs from antiquity, and for each one he wrote a commentary tracing its origins and the ways it could be applied. Most commentaries are brief scholarly notes of a few lines, while a handful grow into extended essays on social and political matters, the best known being a sharp attack on war.

Many of these sayings are still part of everyday speech, including "Know thyself" and "Well begun is half done," and some remain in their original Latin, such as the phrase for a contrived last-minute solution. Erasmus also coined a few expressions himself, by reading ancient sources in ways they did not intend, as with "Pandora's box" and "to call a spade a spade." Witty, polished and serious by turns, with flashes of satire, the work was among the most learned and widely read Latin books of the early modern era.

This edition presents an annotated selection of 116 of the proverbs, including all of the longer essays. The text is taken from the translation in the Collected Works of Erasmus.