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 spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

author, a pupil of the scholar

Alexander Polyhistor Lucius Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor (; 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 Mithridatic War and taken to Rome as a tutor. After his r ...

, and a freedman of

Augustus Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire, who reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in A ...

, and reputed author of the ''

Fabulae The ''Fabulae'' is a Latin handbook of mythology, attributed to an author named Hyginus, who is generally believed to have been separate from Gaius Julius Hyginus. The work consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely, told ...

'' and the ''

De astronomia __NOTOC__ ''De astronomia'' (; ''Concerning Astronomy'') is a book of stories written in Latin, probably during the reign of Augustus ( 27 BC AD 14). Attributed to "Hyginus", the book's true author has been long debated. However, the art histor ...

'', although this is disputed.

Life and works

Hyginus may have originated either from

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

, or from the

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

ian city of

Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Grammaticis'', 20. 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 (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...

, and disquisitions on agriculture and

bee-keeping Beekeeping (or apiculture, from ) is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in artificial beehives. Honey bees in the genus '' Apis'' are the most commonly kept species but other honey producing bees such as '' Melipona'' stingless bees are al ...

. All these are lost.

Attributed works

Two Latin works which have survived under the name of Hyginus are a mythological handbook, known as the ''Genealogiae'' or the ''

'', and an astronomical work, entitled ''

''. Though there a handful of scholars who posit that Gaius Julius Hyginus was the Hyginus who authored these works, there is general agreement that they were composed by a separate author. In the earliest edition of the ''Fabulae'', produced in 1535 by

Jacob Micyllus __NOTOC__ Jacob Micyllus,In Antiquity Micyllus was the poor cobbler of Lucian's ''Gallus'' (6 April 1503 – 28 January 1558) was a German Renaissance humanist and teacher, who conducted the city's Latin school in Frankfurt and held a chair at ...

, the work is ascribed to Gaius Julius Hyginus, though it is unclear whether this attribution was added by Micyllus himself, or was there prior to him.Fletcher, p. 200.

Legacy

The lunar crater

Hyginus Hyginus may refer to: People *Hyginus, the author of the '' Fabulae'', an important ancient Latin source for Greek mythology. *Hyginus, the author of the ''Astronomia'', a popular ancient Latin guide on astronomy, probably the same as the author ...

and the minor planet

12155 Hyginus 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sp ...

are named after him. The English author Sir

Thomas Browne Sir Thomas Browne ( "brown"; 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 d ...

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 Thomas Browne concerned with the quincunx—a pattern of five points arranged in an ...

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

Notes

References

* ''

Brill's New Pauly The Pauly encyclopedias or the Pauly-Wissowa family of encyclopedias, are a set of related encyclopedia An encyclopedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field o ...

: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Antiquity, Volume 6'', Hat – Jus, edited by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, Brill, 2005. . * * Fletcher, "Hyginus, ''Fabulae''", in ''The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography'', pp. 97–114, edited by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Oxford University Press, 2022. . * Hard, Robin, ''The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology"'', London and New York, Routledge, 2004. .
Google Books
* ''

Oxford Classical Dictionary The ''Oxford Classical Dictionary'' (''OCD'') is generally considered "the best one-volume dictionary on antiquity," an encyclopædic work in English consisting of articles relating to classical antiquity and its civilizations. It was first pub ...

'', edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Internet Archive
* Smith, R. Scott, "Mythography in Latin", in ''The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography'', pp. 97–114, edited by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Oxford University Press, 2022. .

External links

''De Mundi et Sphere'', 1512
—Full digital facsimile,

Linda Hall Library The Linda Hall Library is a privately endowed American library of science, engineering and technology located in Kansas City, Missouri, on the grounds of a urban arboretum. It claims to be the "largest independently funded public library of sc ...

.
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 Junius Philargyrius (Philargirius, Filargirius) was an early commentator on the '' Bucolica'' and '' Georgica'' of Vergil, dedicated to a certain Valentinianus. He was a member of the Junia gens, active in Milan. The commentary is preserved in tw ...

(a cura di), Lipsiae, in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1907, vol. 1
pagg. 525 sgg.
* ''

Historicorum Romanorum reliquiae The ''Historicorum Romanorum reliquiae'' is the "monumental" two-volume collection of scholarly editions of fragmentary Roman historical texts edited by Hermann Peter and published between 1870 and 1914. Peter published the Latin editions of these ...