Gaius Julius Hyginus (ca. 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, but whether a native of Spain or of Alexandria is not sure, a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus, by whom he was made superintendent of the Palatine library, according to Suetonius, De Grammaticis, 20. Year 64 BC was a year of the pre-Julian calendar. Events By place Rome Servilius Rullus, Roman Tribune Year 17 was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Julian calendar. Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Spain () or the Kingdom of Spain (Reino de España is a country located mostly in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Alexandria ( Egyptian Arabic: اسكندريه Eskendereyya; Standard Arabic: ar الإسكندرية Al-Iskandariyya; Ἀλεξάνδρεια Lucius Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor was a Greek scholar who was enslaved by the Romans during the Mithridatic War and taken to Rome as a tutor Augustus ( Latin: IMPERATOR·CAESAR·DIVI·FILIVS·AVGVSTVS September 23 63 BC – August 19 AD 14) born Gaius Octavius Thurinus, was Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius (ca 69/75 &ndash after 130 was an equestrian and a historian during the Roman Empire. ^[1]

Suetonius remarks that he 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. Gaius Helvius Cinna was a Poet of the late Roman Republic. Practically nothing is known of his life except that he was the friend of Catullus, whom Publius Vergilius Maro ( October 15, 70 BCE &ndash September 21, 19 BCE later called Virgilius, and known in English as Virgil or 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; one is a collection of Fabulae ("stories"), the other a "Poetical Astronomy".

Fabulae consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely told myths and celestial genealogies, valuable for the use made by an author characterized by his modern editor as adulescentem imperitum, semidoctum, stultum^[2] of the works of Greek writers of tragedy that are now lost. This school-boy^[3] 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 Fabulae was all but lost: a single surviving manuscript from the abbey of Freising^[4], in a Beneventan script datable c. Freising is a town in Bavaria, Germany, capital of the district Freising. Beneventan script was a medieval script, so called because it originated in the Duchy of Benevento in Southern Italy. 900, formed the material for the first printed edition, negligently and uncritically^[5] transcribed by Jacob Micyllus, 1535, who may have supplied it with the title we know it by. Jacob Micyllus, born Jakob Moltzer ( 6 April 1503, Strasbourg — 28 January 1558, Heidelberg) was a German In the course of printing, following the usual practice, by which the manuscripts printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have rarely survived their treatment at the printshop, the manuscript was pulled apart, and only two small fragments of it have turned up, significantly as stiffening in book bindings. ^[6] Another fragmentary text, dating from the fifth century is in the Vatican Library. (Major 2002)

De Astronomia 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," lists the stars in each constellation, but chiefly tells the myths connected with the constellations, in versions that are chiefly based on Catasterismi, a work that was traditionally attributed to Eratosthenes. Erhard Ratdolt (1442–1528 was an early German printer From Augsburg, he was active printing in Venice, where he worked from 1476 to 1486 Poeticon astronomicon is a Star atlas whose text is attributed to " Hyginus " though the true authorship is disputed Catasterismi ( Greek Καταστερισμοί, "placings Eratosthenes of Cyrene ( Greek; 276 BC - 194 BC was a Greek Mathematician, Poet, athlete, Geographer and

Both works are abridgments, and the style and level of Latin competence and the elementary mistakes (especially in the rendering of the Greek originals) are held to prove that they cannot have been the work of so distinguished a scholar as G. Julius Hyginus. It is suggested that these treatises are an abridgment made in the latter half of the second century of the Genealogiae of Hyginus by an unknown adapter, who added a complete treatise on mythology. ^[7]

Notes

External links

• Online Text: Hyginus, Fabulae translated by Mary Grant
• Online Text: Hyginus, Astronomica translated by Mary Grant
• Online Text of Hyginus. complete (Latin)
• Review by Wilfred E. Major of P.K. Marshall, Hyginus: Fabulae. Editio altera. 2002

Bibliography

• P. K. Marshall, ed. Hyginus: Fabulae 1993; corrected ed. 2002.
• Rose, H. I. Hygini Fabulae (1934) 1963. The standard text, in Latin.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911 is a 29-volume reference work that marked the beginning of the Encyclopædia Britannica The public domain is a range of abstract materials &ndash commonly referred to as Intellectual property &ndash which are not owned or controlled by anyone