Dealing with the Adages, this volume includes the translation and annotation of the proverbs gathered and commented on by Erasmus in his "Adagiorum Chiliades". It aims to provide a fully annotated, accurate, and readable English version of Erasmus' commentaries on these Greek and Latin proverbs, and to show how Erasmus to expanded this work.

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.