Gaius Julius Hyginus

Gaius Julius Hyginus^{[pronunciation?]} (ca. 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was by Augustus elected superintendent of the Palatine library according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20.^[1] It is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of Spain or of Alexandria.

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. 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".

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

Fabulae

Fabulae consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely told myths and celestial genealogies,^[2] made by an author who was characterized by his modern editor, H. J. Rose. 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 for the Loeb Classical Library^[3] wondered "at the caprices of Fortune who has allowed many of the plays of an Aeschylus, the larger portion of Livy'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 Fabulae was all but lost: a single surviving manuscript from the abbey of Freising,^[4] in a Beneventan script datable c. 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. 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.^[6] Another fragmentary text, dating from the 5th century is in the Vatican Library. (Major 2002)

Among Hyginus' sources are the scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, which were dated to about the time of Tiberius by Apollonius' editor R. Merkel, in the preface to his edition of Apollonius (Leipzig, 1854).^[7]

De Astronomia or Poeticon astronomicon

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," chiefly tells us the myths connected with the constellations, in versions that are chiefly based on Catasterismi, a work that was traditionally attributed to Eratosthenes.

Like the Fabulae the Astronomia is a collection of abridgements, and the style and level of Latin competence and the elementary mistakes (especially in the rendering of the Greek originals) were held by the anonymous contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th ed., 1911, to prove that they cannot have been the work of "so distinguished" a scholar as G. 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.^[8] The star lists in the Astronomia are in exactly the same order as in Ptolemy's Almagest reinforcing the idea of a 2nd century compilation.^[9]

Notes

References

• P.K. Marshall, ed. Hyginus: Fabulae 1993; corrected ed. 2002.
• Rose, Herbert Jennings Hygini Fabulae (1934) 1963. The standard text, in Latin.
• This article incorporates text from  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hyginus, Gaius Julius". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links

• Online Text: Hyginus, Fabulae translated by Mary Grant
• Online Text: Hyginus, Astronomica (Book II) translated by Mary Grant
• Online Text of Hyginus. excerpted (Latin)
• Review by Wilfred E. Major of P.K. Marshall, Hyginus: Fabulae. Editio altera. 2002
• Online Digital copy of the first Latin edition by Jacob Micyllus (Basel, 1535)
• Poeticon Astronomicon, a 1482 and a 1485 edition, in the Digital Collections at the Linda Hall Library.
• De Mundi et Sphere, 1512. - in the Digital Collections at the Linda Hall Library.
• Online Galleries, History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries High resolution images of works by Hermes Trismegistus in .jpg and .tiff format.