Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

author, a pupil of the scholar

Alexander Polyhistor Lucius Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Πολυΐστωρ; flourished in the first half of the 1st century BC; also called Alexander of Miletus) was a Greek scholar who was enslaved by the Romans during the Mithri ...

, and a freedman of

Caesar Augustus Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...

. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Grammaticis'', 20. It is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the

Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, def ...

or of

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...

. Suetonius remarks that Hyginus fell into great poverty in his old age and was supported by the historian Clodius Licinus. Hyginus was a voluminous author: his works included topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries on

Helvius Cinna Gaius Helvius Cinna (died 20 March 44 BC) was an influential neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic, a little older than the generation of Catullus and Calvus. He was lynched at the funeral of Julius Caesar after being mistaken for an unrelated ...

and the poems of

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

, and disquisitions on agriculture and bee-keeping. All these are lost. Under the name of Hyginus there are extant what are probably two sets of school notes abbreviating his treatises on

mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narra ...

; one is a collection of ''Fabulae'' ("stories"), the other a "Poetical Astronomy".

''Fabulae''

The ''Fabulae'' consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely, told myths (such as Agnodice) and celestial genealogies, made by an author who was characterized by his modern editor,

H. J. Rose Herbert Jennings Rose Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (5 May 1883, in Orillia – 31 July 1961, in St Andrews) was a Canadian-born British classical scholar, best remembered as the author of ''A Handbook of Greek Mythology'', originally publi ...

, as ''adulescentem imperitum, semidoctum, stultum''—"an ignorant youth, semi-learned, stupid"—but valuable for the use made of works of Greek writers of tragedy that are now lost. Arthur L. Keith, reviewing H. J. Rose's edition (1934) of ''Hygini Fabulae'', wondered "at the caprices of Fortune who has allowed many of the plays of an

Aeschylus Aeschylus (, ; grc-gre, Αἰσχύλος ; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Gree ...

, the larger portion of

Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in ...

's histories, and other priceless treasures to perish, while this school-boy's exercise has survived to become the ''pabulum'' of scholarly effort." Hyginus' compilation represents in primitive form what every educated Roman in the age of the Antonines was expected to know of Greek myth, at the simplest level. The ''Fabulae'' are a mine of information today, when so many more nuanced versions of the myths have been lost. In fact the text of the ''Fabulae'' was all but lost: a single surviving manuscript from the abbey of

Freising Freising () is a university town in Bavaria, Germany, and the capital of the Freising ''Landkreis'' (district), with a population of about 50,000. Location Freising is the oldest town between Regensburg and Bolzano, and is located on the ...

, in a Beneventan script datable c. 900, formed the material for the first printed edition, negligently and uncritically transcribed by Jacob Micyllus, 1535, who may have supplied it with the title we know it by. In the course of printing, following the usual practice, by which the manuscripts printed in the 15th and 16th centuries have rarely survived their treatment at the printshop, the manuscript was pulled apart: only two small fragments of it have turned up, significantly as stiffening in book bindings. Another fragmentary text, dating from the 5th century is in the Vatican Library. Among Hyginus' sources are the ''

scholia Scholia (singular scholium or scholion, from grc, σχόλιον, "comment, interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of t ...

'' on

Apollonius of Rhodes Apollonius of Rhodes ( grc, Ἀπολλώνιος Ῥόδιος ''Apollṓnios Rhódios''; la, Apollonius Rhodius; fl. first half of 3rd century BC) was an ancient Greek author, best known for the '' Argonautica'', an epic poem about Jason and ...

' ''

Argonautica The ''Argonautica'' ( el, Ἀργοναυτικά , translit=Argonautika) is a Greek epic poem written by Apollonius Rhodius in the 3rd century BC. The only surviving Hellenistic epic, the ''Argonautica'' tells the myth of the voyage of Jas ...

'', which were dated to about the time of

Tiberius Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was the second Roman emperor. He reigned from AD 14 until 37, succeeding his stepfather, the first Roman emperor Augustus. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC. His father ...

by Apollonius' editor R. Merkel, in the preface to his edition of Apollonius (Leipzig, 1854).

''De Astronomica'' or ''Poeticon Astronomicon''

''De Astronomica'' was first published, with accompanying figures, by Erhard Ratdolt in Venice, 1482, under the title '' Clarissimi uiri Hyginii Poeticon astronomicon opus utilissimum.'' This "Poetic astronomy by the most renowned Hyginus, a most useful work," chiefly tells us the myths connected with the constellations, in versions that are chiefly based on ''

Catasterismi The ''Catasterismi'' or ''Catasterisms'' (Greek Καταστερισμοί ''Katasterismoi'', "Constellations" or "Placings Among the Stars"), is a lost work attributed to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. It was a comprehensive compendium of astral myth ...

'', a work that was traditionally attributed to

Eratosthenes Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; grc-gre, Ἐρατοσθένης ; – ) was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandr ...

. Like the ''Fabulae,'' the ''Astronomica'' is a collection of abridgements. According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh Edition, the style and level of Latin competence and the elementary mistakes (especially in the rendering of the Greek originals) were held to prove that they cannot have been the work of "so distinguished" a scholar as C. Julius Hyginus. It was further suggested that these treatises are an abridgment made in the latter half of the 2nd century of the ''Genealogiae'' of Hyginus by an unknown adapter, who added a complete treatise on mythology. The star lists in the ''Astronomica'' are in exactly the same order as in

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...

's ''

Almagest The ''Almagest'' is a 2nd-century Greek-language mathematical and astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths, written by Claudius Ptolemy ( ). One of the most influential scientific texts in history, it can ...

,'' reinforcing the idea of a 2nd-century compilation.

Legacy

The lunar crater Hyginus and the minor planet 12155 Hyginus are named after him. The English author Sir

Thomas Browne Sir Thomas Browne (; 19 October 160519 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a deep curi ...

opens his discourse ''

The Garden of Cyrus ''The Garden of Cyrus'', or ''The Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, naturally, artificially, mystically considered'', is a discourse by Sir Thomas Browne. First published in 1658, along with its diptych companion '' Ur ...

'' (1658) with a Creation myth sourced from the ''Fabulae'' of Hyginus.

Notes

References

* Grant, Mary (transl.), ''The Myths of Hyginus'' (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960). * Marshall, P.K. (ed.), ''Hyginus: Fabulae'' (Munich: Saur, 1993 orr. ed. 2002. * Rose, Herbert Jennings (ed.), ''Hygini Fabulae'' (Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1934 nd ed. 1963. The standard text, in Latin. * Smith, R. Scott & Trzaskoma, Stephen M. (transl.), ''Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology'' (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 2007), . *

External links

Online Text: Hyginus, ''Fabulae'' translated by Mary Grant

* ttp://www.thelatinlibrary.com/hyginus.html Online Text of Hyginus. excerpted
Online Digital copy of the first Latin edition by Jacob Micyllus (Basel, 1535)

''Poeticon Astronomicon'', 1482
��Full digital facsimile, Linda Hall Library.
''De Mundi et Sphere'', 1512
��Full digital facsimile, Linda Hall Library.
Online Galleries, History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries
��High resolution images of works by Hermes Trismegistus in JPEG and TIFF formats * ''Grammaticae Romanae Fragmenta'', Gino Funaioli (a cura di), Lipsiae, in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1907, vol. 1
pagg. 525 sgg.
* '' Historicorum Romanorum reliquiae'', Hermann Peter (ed.), Lipsiae, in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, vol. 1, 1906
pp. 72–77
{{DEFAULTSORT:Julius Hyginus, Gaius 17 deaths 1st-century BC Romans 1st-century BC Latin writers 1st-century Romans 1st-century Latin writers 60s BC births Ancient Roman astronomers Ancient Roman writers Golden Age Latin writers Hyginus, Gaius Emperor's slaves and freedmen Mythographers