Suetonius remarks that Hyginus fell into great poverty in his old age and was supported by the historianClodius Licinus. Hyginus was a voluminous author: his works included topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries onHelvius Cinna and the poems ofVirgil, and disquisitions on agriculture andbee-keeping. All these are lost.[3]
Two Latin works which have survived under the name of Hyginus are a mythological handbook, known as theGenealogiae or theFabulae, and an astronomical work, entitledDe astronomia.[4] Though there a handful of scholars who posit that Gaius Julius Hyginus was the Hyginus who authored these works,[5] there is general agreement that they were composed by a separate author.[6] In the earliest edition of theFabulae, produced in 1535 byJacob Micyllus, the work is ascribed to Gaius Julius Hyginus,[7] though it is unclear whether this attribution was added by Micyllus himself, or was there prior to him.[8]
^Not everyone is sure that the Hyginus ofFabulae was this freedman of Augustus; for one, Edward Fitch, reviewing Herbert J. Rose,Hygini Fabulae inThe American Journal of Philology56(4), 1935, p. 422.
Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Antiquity, Volume 6, Hat – Jus, edited by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, Brill, 2005.ISBN9004122699.
Fletcher, "Hyginus,Fabulae", inThe Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography, pp. 97–114, edited by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Oxford University Press, 2022.ISBN978-0-190-64831-2.
Smith, R. Scott, "Mythography in Latin", inThe Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography, pp. 97–114, edited by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Oxford University Press, 2022.ISBN978-0-190-64831-2.
Smith, R. Scott, and Stephen M. Trzaskoma,Apollodorus'Library and Hyginus'Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, Indianapolis and Cambridge, Hackett Publishing, 2007.ISBN9780872208216.Internet Archive.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hyginus, Gaius Julius".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 14 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 175.
