The Paris edition of the _Adagia_ is not the work in the form in which it is now known. When Erasmus, in 1507, took up his abode for a time with Aldus in Venice, he re-wrote and greatly enlarged the book to such an extent as almost entirely to change its character. He tells us that for a large proportion of the new material he was indebted to the suggestions and to the magnificent library of Aldus.[99] He had, he goes on to say, brought with him to Venice little more than a confused mass of materials derived from authors already in print. Aldus and his associates, Laskaris, Marcus Musurus, Aleander, and some even whose names were not known to Erasmus, placed at his disposal many valuable manuscripts which had not before come into print. The number of proverbs collected now amounted to thirty-five hundred, and a vast mass of learning, drawn from the most varied sources, was thus given to the world. Erasmus writes with candid appreciation of the generous encouragement given to a foreigner, in this and his other literary undertakings, by the Italian publisher and his associates. The motto used by Aldus under his famous emblem of the dolphin and the anchor, _festina lente_, was borrowed from a coin by the Emperor Vespasian, with whom as well as with Augustus, this saying was a great favourite. Erasmus writes in 1508: “If some deity friendly to literature will but favour the truly royal vows of Aldus, I can promise that within a few years the studious will possess, by his work alone, all the good authors there are in the four languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee, in a complete and accurate form, and no one need have any lack of literary material. And then we shall see how many excellent manuscripts there are still hidden, which are either kept back through ignorance, or which are suppressed, owing to the ambition of certain persons who care for nothing except that they may be thought the only wise men. Then, too, we shall know with what prodigious errors existing texts abound which are now considered tolerably correct.... The library of Ptolemy,” he adds, “was contained within the walls of a house, but Aldus is constructing a library which shall have no limits but those of the world.”[100]