Gaius Julius Hyginus

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.

Notes

References

• Brill's New Pauly: 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, 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. .

References

1. ''Brill's New Pauly'', s.v. Hyginus, C. Iulius.
2. Not everyone is sure that the Hyginus of ''Fabulae'' was this freedman of Augustus; for one, Edward Fitch, reviewing Herbert J. Rose, ''Hygini Fabulae'' in ''The American Journal of Philology'' '''56'''(4), 1935, p. 422.
3. ''[[Oxford Classical Dictionary]]'', s.v. Hyginus (3).
4. Smith, p. 101.
5. Hard, p. 13.
6. Smith, p. 100.
7. Fletcher, p. 200.