Erasmus said that every serious student must read the entire corpus of
the classics and make his own notes on them. But he also composed a
magnificent reference work, the "Adages," in which he laid out and
explicated thousands of pithy ancient sayings--and provided subject
indexes to help readers find what they needed. For centuries, schoolboys
first encountered the wisdom of the ancients in this predigested form.
When Erasmus told the story of Pandora, he said that she opened not a
jar, as in the original version of the story, by the Greek poet Hesiod,
but a box. In every European language except Italian, Pandora's box
became proverbial--a canard made ubiquitous by the power of a new
information technology. Even the best search procedures depend on the
databases they explore.
-- Anthony
Grafton.
Future
Reading.
New Yorker (November 5, 2007) p52.