There is no place like home. The apple does not fall far from the tree. All that glitters is not gold.
These are some examples of proverbs that most Norwegians know and understand. According to the dictionary NAOB, a proverb is "a fixed linguistic expression which sums up a general experience or rule for living, often in figurative form".
"Proverbs are a kind of cognitive shortcut. They make things simpler than they really are. We know that life is somewhat more complicated, but proverbs transmit condensed experience in a very efficient way," says Han Lamers.
He is Professor of Classics and Director of the Norwegian Institute in Rome (University of Oslo).
"Everyone remembers them easily because they are so short, and because they have a certain rhythm. It's not so easy to find out where they come from, but they have been passed down from generation to generation," says Lamers.
The simplicity and uncertain origins of proverbs are part of their strength. They help bind us together as a community, expressing ideas that are easy to understand and easy to agree on.
Handwritten secrets
There is, in fact, an entire field of research devoted to proverbs. It is called paremiology, and it brings together linguists, historians, cultural historians, and scholars from other disciplines. Lamers and his UiO colleague Toon Van Hal have now caused a bit of a stir within the research community that studies proverbs.
The two were at the library in Orléans in France to look at old handwritten manuscripts. Proverbs were not the main purpose of their visit, but as researchers they kept their eyes open.
"When you leaf through manuscripts on topics you are interested in, there is always a chance you may stumble upon something nobody knew existed," says Van Hal, who is also a professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium.
What suddenly lay before them was a collection of Greek proverbs. At first, they assumed these were already known. Even so, it is exciting to find them in an unknown manuscript.
But it turned out that the manuscript contained a surprisingly large number of previously unknown proverbs.
Island hopping in Greece
The proverbs had been collected by the Greek priest Hermodorus Rhegius in the 17th century. He was already known as a collector of proverbs but had no more than 30 to his name when Van Hal and Lamers came across the manuscript in Orléans.
"We actually don't know very much about Hermodorus. We know that he left Greece to study in Rome, and that he returned to the Aegean islands on a mission for the Catholic Church."
There he conducted a kind of missionary island hopping in the Aegean Sea, seeking souls he could convert from the Greek Orthodox to the Catholic faith. Along the way, he wrote down the proverbs he encountered.
"It is hard to say why he was so interested in these proverbs. It may be that they served as a tool in his work as a priest - that he used them in sermons or in his writings to communicate simple truths to the local population," says Lamers.
From 30 to 120
The manuscripts in which Hermodorus originally wrote down the proverbs have been lost, but the sayings still found their way westwards to France. The route is winding and not fully mapped, but they eventually turned up in the manuscript of the physician Louis Gaudefroy, which Lamers and Van Hal found in the library in Orléans.
"What fascinates me most is precisely this long journey. It shows that several learned people through the ages have considered it worthwhile to collect these proverbs, to write them down and to preserve them," says Van Hal.
Thirty of Hermodorus' proverbs were already known from other sources, but in Gaudefroy's manuscript, which was donated to the library after his death in 1725, they are joined by 90 new and previously unknown sayings.
Here are some further examples of the proverbs they discovered:
- The tongue has no bones, but it can break bones.
- The fool makes himself rich in his thoughts, and the lazy man in his words.
- You do not know the swimmer when he goes into the water, but only when he comes up again.
- The one who stands outside the choir knows many songs.
- Whoever spits towards the sky, spits himself in the face.
- Vinegar that you get for free tastes like honey.
- If the monastery has bread, it will never lack monks.
On losing rings and spilling oil
The themes of the newly discovered proverbs are remarkably diverse.
"They can be very specific to the area they come from, while others have a more universal character," says Lamers.
When asked to choose a favourite, he replies: "You can lose the ring, but you still keep the finger."
"For example, it can mean that you may lose wealth or property, but you keep your body, or your life. I like the fact that it uses such a concrete image to express a more general idea. That happens frequently in the proverbs Hermodorus collected," he says.
Van Hal is fond of the proverb: "We spilt the oil, but it fell into the pot."
"I think it is a delightful image to express that a mishap has occurred, but that no real harm was done," he says.
Wants to learn more
Among the old proverbs, there are also examples that the researchers believe are relevant today. One of them is: "Do as the priest says, but do not do as he does."
"As a Jesuit, Hermodorus very eagerly includes proverbs in which the Greeks mock their Orthodox priests. In Belgium, where I work most of the time, the Church has hardly any power left. Yet other institutions have taken its place - institutions that loudly preach morality without always living up to it themselves or putting it into practice. I believe this proverb holds up an excellent mirror to them."
So far, the researchers have focused on cataloguing the proverbs and reconstructing the journey they took from the Greek islands to the Middle East and from there to France.
At the same time, endless possibilities are opening up for further, more in-depth studies.
"We would very much like to find out more about Hermodorus and his proverbs. Where they come from, and which ones are still in use," says Lamers.
Reference
Toon Van Hal and Han Lamers: Ninety new Greek proverbs of Hermodorus Rhegius: edition and textual history. Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, March 2026.
