ABSTRACT

A proverb represents, in its essential form, some homely truth expressed in a concise and terse manner so as to recommend itself to a more or less extended circle. The two essential features of the proverb are therefore its didacticism for the contents, and its conciseness for the form. A proverb can no more than a tale is considered a mass product. On the contrary, each proverb was coined just once, in a given locality, at a given time, by one mind with some gnomic talent. How many of the new Latin proverbs were coined by clerics and how many are merely translations from the barbaric languages. What is again certain is that this Latin proverb literature exercised the most powerful influence upon the various vernacular tongues, and a vast majority of all French, German, English, and Scandinavian proverbs are visibly translations from the Latin.