Erasmo come Ercole nell'adagio Herculei labores

The work is the Italian translation of Erasmus' Adagium 2001, Herculei labores, with comment of lines 1-116, which include the story of the labor of Hercules against the Hydra of Lerna and interpretations that Erasmus provides in order to introduce philology as a Herculean task in autobiographical perspective. The introduction aims to present the most relevant elements of the comment and some observations about the humanist's self representation. Erasmus makes his identification with Hercules a topos in his ironical self description, but at the same time he describes himself as a new Jerome, whose letters he is editing. Eventually it also considers the portrait of Erasmus painted by Holbein the Younger and kept at Longford Castle in the light of the text of the adagium, which is referred to with the word in the foreground, ????????? ?????.