Get Our Extension
Select Wikiz in another Language
DeutschEspañolSuomiFrançaisItalianoNederlands
Settings
A
A
Text Highlights
Notes/Citations
Edit on Wikipedia

Share This Article

About Wikiz About Us Cookies Policy Terms & Services Privacy Policy Contact Contact us Enjoying Wikipedia Content? DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA
Enjoying Wikipedia Content? DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA

Gaius Julius Hyginus

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
"Hyginus" redirects here. 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 Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20.[1] It is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the Iberian Peninsula or of Alexandria.

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.[2]

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".

Discover more about Gaius Julius Hyginus related topics

Latin

Latin

Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars supplanted it in common academic and political usage. For most of the time it was used, it would be considered a "dead language" in the modern linguistic definition; that is, it lacked native speakers, despite being used extensively and actively.

Alexander Polyhistor

Alexander Polyhistor

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. After his release, he continued to live in Italy as a Roman citizen. He was so productive as a writer that he earned the surname Polyhistor. The majority of his writings are now lost, but the fragments that remain shed valuable light on antiquarian and eastern Mediterranean subjects. Among his works were historical and geographical accounts of nearly all the countries of the ancient world, and the book Upon the Jews which excerpted many works which might otherwise be unknown.

Augustus

Augustus

Caesar Augustus, also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Principate, which is the first phase of the Roman Empire, and is considered one of the greatest leaders in human history. The reign of Augustus initiated an imperial cult as well as an era associated with imperial peace, the Pax Romana or Pax Augusta. The Roman world was largely free from large-scale conflict for more than two centuries despite continuous wars of imperial expansion on the empire's frontiers and the year-long civil war known as the "Year of the Four Emperors" over the imperial succession.

Library of Palatine Apollo

Library of Palatine Apollo

The Library of Palatine Apollo was a public library established by the Roman Emperor Augustus. It was located at the portico of the Temple of Apollo Palatinus and consisted of two halls, one for Greek and one for Latin books. The walls of the library included medallion portraits of famous writers, and the space was large enough for Augustus to hold meetings of the senate. When Augustus assumed the office of pontifex maximus, he moved the Sibylline Books from the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus to the Palatine Apollo. Gaius Julius Hyginus, a freedman of Augustus and accomplished grammarian, was the director of the library.

Iberian Peninsula

Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula, also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in south-western Europe, defining the westernmost edge of Eurasia. It is divided between Peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprising most of the region, as well as Andorra, Gibraltar, and a small part of Southern France. With an area of approximately 583,254 square kilometres (225,196 sq mi), and a population of roughly 53 million, it is the second-largest European peninsula by area, after the Scandinavian Peninsula.

Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in c. 331 BC by Alexander the Great, Alexandria grew rapidly and became a major centre of Hellenic civilisation, eventually replacing Memphis, in present-day Greater Cairo, as Egypt's capital. During the Hellenistic period, it was home to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which ranked among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, as well as the storied Library of Alexandria. Today, the library is reincarnated in the disc-shaped, ultramodern Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Its 15th-century seafront Qaitbay Citadel is now a museum. Called the "Bride of the Mediterranean" by locals, Alexandria is a popular tourist destination and an important industrial centre due to its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez.

Helvius Cinna

Helvius Cinna

Gaius Helvius Cinna was an influential neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic, a little older than the generation of Catullus and Calvus. He was lynched at the funeral of Julius Caesar after being mistaken for an unrelated Cornelius Cinna who had spoken out in support of the dictator's assassins.

Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his authorship of these poems as dubious.

Apiary

Apiary

An apiary is a location where beehives of honey bees are kept. Apiaries come in many sizes and can be rural or urban depending on the honey production operation. Furthermore, an apiary may refer to a hobbyist's hives or those used for commercial or educational usage. It can also be a wall-less, roofed structure, similar to a gazebo which houses hives, or an enclosed structure with an opening that directs the flight path of the bees.

Fabulae

The Fabulae consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely, told myths (such as Agnodice) and celestial genealogies,[3] 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,[4] 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 the Fabulae was all but lost: a single surviving manuscript from the abbey of Freising,[5] in a Beneventan script datable c. 900, formed the material for the first printed edition, negligently and uncritically[6] 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.[7] Another fragmentary text, dating from the 5th century is in the Vatican Library.[8]

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).[9]

Discover more about Fabulae related topics

Agnodice

Agnodice

Agnodice or Agnodike is a legendary figure credited as the first female midwife or physician in ancient Athens. Her story is told by the Roman author Gaius Julius Hyginus in his Fabulae. Agnodice is not generally believed to be a historical figure, but her story has been frequently deployed as a precedent for women practising midwifery or medicine, or as an argument against either of these.

H. J. Rose

H. J. Rose

Herbert Jennings Rose FBA was a Canadian-born British classical scholar, best remembered as the author of A Handbook of Greek Mythology, originally published in 1928, which became for many years the standard student reference book on the subject, reaching a sixth edition by 1958. Rose's Handbook was brought up-to-date along the same framework by Robin Hard, in The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology, a project that began as a mere revision.

Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.

Livy

Livy

Titus Livius, known in English as Livy, was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled Ab Urbe Condita, ''From the Founding of the City'', covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own lifetime. He was on familiar terms with members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and a friend of Augustus, whose young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, he exhorted to take up the writing of history.

Freising

Freising

Freising is a university town in Bavaria, Germany, and the capital of the Freising Landkreis (district), with a population of about 50,000.

Beneventan script

Beneventan script

The Beneventan script was a medieval script which originated in the Duchy of Benevento in southern Italy. It was also called Langobarda, Longobarda, Longobardisca, or sometimes Gothica; it was first called Beneventan by palaeographer E. A. Lowe.

Jacob Micyllus

Jacob Micyllus

Jacob Micyllus, was a German Renaissance humanist and teacher, who conducted the city's Latin school in Frankfurt and held a chair at the University of Heidelberg, during times of great cultural stress in Germany.

Scholia

Scholia

Scholia are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of the manuscript of ancient authors, as glosses. One who writes scholia is a scholiast. The earliest attested use of the word dates to the 1st century BC.

Apollonius of Rhodes

Apollonius of Rhodes

Apollonius of Rhodes was an ancient Greek author, best known for the Argonautica, an epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. The poem is one of the few extant examples of the epic genre and it was both innovative and influential, providing Ptolemaic Egypt with a "cultural mnemonic" or national "archive of images", and offering the Latin poets Virgil and Gaius Valerius Flaccus a model for their own epics. His other poems, which survive only in small fragments, concerned the beginnings or foundations of cities, such as Alexandria and Cnidus places of interest to the Ptolemies, whom he served as a scholar and librarian at the Library of Alexandria. A literary dispute with Callimachus, another Alexandrian librarian/poet, is a topic much discussed by modern scholars since it is thought to give some insight into their poetry, although there is very little evidence that there ever was such a dispute between the two men. In fact almost nothing at all is known about Apollonius and even his connection with Rhodes is a matter for speculation. Once considered a mere imitator of Homer, and therefore a failure as a poet, his reputation has been enhanced by recent studies, with an emphasis on the special characteristics of Hellenistic poets as scholarly heirs of a long literary tradition writing at a unique time in history.

Argonautica

Argonautica

The Argonautica is a Greek epic poem written by Apollonius Rhodius in the 3rd century BC. The only surviving Hellenistic epic, the Argonautica tells the myth of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to retrieve the Golden Fleece from remote Colchis. Their heroic adventures and Jason's relationship with the dangerous Colchian princess/sorceress Medea were already well known to Hellenistic audiences, which enabled Apollonius to go beyond a simple narrative, giving it a scholarly emphasis suitable to the times. It was the age of the great Library of Alexandria, and his epic incorporates his research in geography, ethnography, comparative religion, and Homeric literature. However, his main contribution to the epic tradition lies in his development of the love between hero and heroine – he seems to have been the first narrative poet to study "the pathology of love". His Argonautica had a profound impact on Latin poetry: it was translated by Varro Atacinus and imitated by Valerius Flaccus, it influenced Catullus and Ovid, and it provided Virgil with a model for his Roman epic, the Aeneid.

Tiberius

Tiberius

Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus was the second Roman emperor. He reigned from AD 14 until 37, succeeding his stepfather, the first Roman emperor Augustus. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC. His father was the politician Tiberius Claudius Nero and his mother was Livia Drusilla, who would eventually divorce his father, and marry the future-emperor Augustus in 38 BC. Following the untimely deaths of Augustus' two grandsons and adopted heirs, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, Tiberius was designated Augustus' successor. Prior to this, Tiberius had proved himself an able diplomat, and one of the most successful Roman generals: his conquests of Pannonia, Dalmatia, Raetia, and (temporarily) parts of Germania laid the foundations for the empire's northern frontier.

De Astronomica or Poeticon Astronomicon

Main article: De Astronomica

De Astronomica 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 Astronomica is a collection of abridgements. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, the style and level of Latin competence and the elementary mistakes (especially in the rendering of the Greek originals) were held to prove that they cannot have been the work of "so distinguished" a scholar as C. 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.[2] The star lists in the Astronomica are in exactly the same order as in Ptolemy's Almagest, reinforcing the idea of a 2nd-century compilation.[10]

Discover more about De Astronomica or Poeticon Astronomicon related topics

De Astronomica

De Astronomica

De Astronomica, or the Astronomy, also known as Poeticon Astronomicon, is a book of stories whose text is attributed to "Hyginus", though the true authorship is disputed. During the Renaissance, the work was attributed to the Roman historian Gaius Julius Hyginus who lived during the 1st century BC. However, the fact that the book lists most of the constellations north of the ecliptic in the same order as Ptolemy's Almagest has led many to believe that a more recent Hyginus or Pseudo-Hyginus created the text.

Erhard Ratdolt

Erhard Ratdolt

Erhard Ratdolt (1442–1528) was an early German printer from Augsburg. He was active as a printer in Venice from 1476 to 1486, and afterwards in Augsburg. From 1475 to 1478 he was in partnership with two other German printers.

Catasterismi

Catasterismi

The Catasterismi or Catasterisms, is a lost work attributed to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. It was a comprehensive compendium of astral mythology including origin myths of the stars and constellations. Only a summary of the original work survives, called the Epitome Catasterismorum, by an unknown author sometimes referred to as pseudo-Eratosthenes.

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. His work is comparable to what is now known as the study of geography, and he introduced some of the terminology still used today.

Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition

Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition

The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopaedia, containing 40,000 entries, has entered the public domain and is easily available on the Internet. Its use in modern scholarship and as a reliable source has been deemed problematic due to the outdated nature of some of its content. Modern scholars have deemed some articles as cultural artifacts of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy was a Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importance to later Byzantine, Islamic, and Western European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, although it was originally entitled the Mathēmatikē Syntaxis or Mathematical Treatise, and later known as The Greatest Treatise. The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion on maps and the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the Apotelesmatika but more commonly known as the Tetrábiblos, from the Koine Greek meaning "Four Books", or by its Latin equivalent Quadripartite.

Almagest

Almagest

The Almagest is a 2nd-century Greek-language mathematical and astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths, written by Claudius Ptolemy. One of the most influential scientific texts in history, it canonized a geocentric model of the Universe that was accepted for more than 1,200 years from its origin in Hellenistic Alexandria, in the medieval Byzantine and Islamic worlds, and in Western Europe through the Middle Ages and early Renaissance until Copernicus. It is also a key source of information about ancient Greek astronomy.

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.

Discover more about Legacy related topics

Hyginus (crater)

Hyginus (crater)

Hyginus is a lunar caldera located at the east end of the Sinus Medii. It was named after ancient Roman astronomer Gaius Julius Hyginus. Its rim is split by a 220 kilometer-long rille, Rima Hyginus, that branches to the northwest and to the east-southeast. The crater is deeper than the rille, and lies at intersection of the rille's branches. Together, the crater and the rille form a prominent feature in an otherwise flat surface. Smaller craters along the length of the rille may have been caused by the collapse of an underlying structure.

Thomas Browne

Thomas Browne

Sir Thomas Browne was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry and are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality. Although often described as suffused with melancholia, Browne's writings are also characterised by wit and subtle humour, while his literary style is varied, according to genre, resulting in a rich, unique prose which ranges from rough notebook observations to polished Baroque eloquence.

The Garden of Cyrus

The Garden of Cyrus

The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, naturally, artificially, mystically considered, is a discourse by Sir Thomas Browne. First published in 1658, along with its diptych companion Urn-Burial, in modern times it has been recognised as Browne's major literary contribution to Hermetic wisdom.

Source: "Gaius Julius Hyginus", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 20th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Julius_Hyginus.

Enjoying Wikiz?

Enjoying Wikiz?

Get our FREE extension now!

Download Extension

Further Reading

Anius

Erysichthon of Thessaly

Philyra (Oceanid)
Notes
  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ a b Chisholm 1911.
  3. ^ "the Fabulae (more correctly Genealogiae) of Hyginus", according to H. J. Rose, "Second Thoughts on Hyginus" Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, 11.1 (1958:42–48) p. 42; the article is in the way of a set of marginalia to Rose's edition of Fabulae.
  4. ^ A.L. Keith, in The Classical Journal 31.1 (October 1935) p. 53.
  5. ^ A Codex Freisingensis, noted by Fitch, reviewing Rose, Hygini Fabulae 1934:421.
  6. ^ A. H. F. Griffin, "Hyginus, Fabula 89 (Laomedon)" The Classical Quarterly New Series, 36.2 (1986), p. 541 note.
  7. ^ One was discovered at Regensburg in 1864, another in Munich, 1942. Both fragments are conserved in Munich. See M.D. Reeve on Hyginus, Fabulae in L.D. Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmission (Oxford) 1983, pp 189f.
  8. ^ Review by Wilfred E. Major of P.K. Marshall, Hyginus: Fabulae. Editio altera. 2002
  9. ^ Noted by Rose 1958:42 note 3.
  10. ^ "Julius Hyginus Poeticon Astronomicon". Retrieved 2019-01-18.
References
External links
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Gaius Julius Hyginus
Categories

The content of this page is based on the Wikipedia article written by contributors..
The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence & the media files are available under their respective licenses; additional terms may apply.
By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use & Privacy Policy.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization & is not affiliated to WikiZ.com.