The collecting of proverbs appears at almost all periods to have exercised a great fascination, and even in classic times we find writers either amassing stores of them or introducing them freely into their writings. Many of these sayings arose, there is no doubt, in the leisurely and sententious East, and from thence found their way to the widely-spreading colonies of Greece and Phœnicia, and in due course to Rome, where a still greater area of diffusion was thrown open for their dispersal. The Jewish proverbs used by our Saviour, or by St Paul and the other apostles, can be traced back to India, where they were in use centuries before they found their way through Babylonia and Persia to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, Æsop, Solon, Aristotle, Phædrus, and many other ancient writers introduced them. Menander made a fine collection of them under the title of _Sententiæ Monostichæ_. Pythagoras drew up a collection of adages for his disciples, and Plato, Theophrastus, and Chrysippus accumulated stores of them. During the Roman Empire collectors of antiquarian tastes carried on the work, Zenobius and Diogenianus, during the reign of Hadrian, being perhaps the most notable and enthusiastic in this pursuit, and to these, though of much later date, we may add the names of Gregorius, Cyprius, and Macarius. Zenobius made an epitome of the proverbs collected by two older writers, Tarraeus and Didymus, in number five hundred and fifty-two, and Diogenianus, living about the same time, the beginning of the second century, accumulated seven hundred and seventy-five. Andrew Schott edited these two lists, plus fourteen hundred from Suidas and some few others from various sources at Antwerp in the year 1612.