Gaius Julius Hyginus

For other uses, see Hyginus (disambiguation).

Gaius Julius Hyginus (/hɪˈdʒaɪnəs/; c. 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Augustus, and reputed author of the Fabulae and the De astronomia, although this is disputed.

Life and works

Hyginus may have originated either from Spain, or from the Egyptian city of Alexandria. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius's 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 and the poems of Virgil, and disquisitions on agriculture and bee-keeping. 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 Fabulae, and an astronomical work, entitled De astronomia. 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, 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.

Legacy

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

The English author Sir Thomas Browne opens his discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) with a Creation myth sourced from the Fabulae of Hyginus.

References

• Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Antiquity, Volume 6, Hat – Jus, edited by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, Brill, 2005. .
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 
• 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, 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. .

Further reading

• Smith, R. Scott, and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, Indianapolis and Cambridge, Hackett Publishing, 2007. . Internet Archive.

External links

• De Mundi et Sphere, 1512 Archived 2019-12-21 at the Wayback Machine—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.