Polidoro Virgilio, a humanist born in Urbino, published in Venice in 1498 a little book entitled Proverbiorum libellus, which collected three hundred Latin proverbs with brief comments. There were still two years to go before Erasmus of Rotterdam's Adagiorum collectanea was born, the embryo of what would become, three decades later, the most complete and erudite collection of annotated Greek and Latin adages. Like Erasmus, whose book reached more than 4,000 entries, Polidoro also understood that it should be an open work, subject to revision and continuous expansion. The most important came in 1521: the meager collection of three hundred proverbs of profane origin was augmented by the addition of seven hundred from the Holy Scriptures. It was the author's response to the convulsive years that Catholic Europe was experiencing, already lit by the flame of Lutheranism. If in the glosses of the first part the reader will find anecdotes, stories and curiosities that have their roots in classical culture, in the second part, the so-called sacred Adagios, they will find, along with the explanation of their origin, meaning and use, numerous evidence of the reformist spirit of Polidoro, similar in many aspects to the thought of Erasmus.