IV-4 Ordinis quarti tomus quartus

Erasmus' Apophthegmata present a great number of famous, pithy, remarkable sayings by famous people from Classical Antiquity. Erasmus based his Latin version of the anecdotes on famous words in Plutarch. He follows the collection of Greek sayings in Plutarch loosely, often more or less in paraphrase, but parts are almost literal translations. In the introduction (and in the notes to the Latin text) the editor makes the case that Erasmus' handling of Plutarch's texts was very much influenced by works of his fellow humanists Traversari and Filelfo.