HYGINUS, GAIUS IULIUS, Latin author, a native of Spain (or Alexandria), was a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alex ander Polyhistor and a freedman of Augustus, by whom he was made superintendent of the Palatine library (Suetonius, De Gram- maticis, 2o). His numerous 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 : (I) Fabularum Liber, some 30o mythological legends and celestial genealogies, valuable for the use made by the author of the works of Greek tragedians now lost ; (2) De Astronomia, usually called Poetica Astronomica, containing an elementary treatise on astronomy and the myths connected with the stars, chiefly based on Eratosthenes. Both are abridgments and both are by the same hand; but the style 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 Hyginus. It is suggested that they are an abridgment (made in the latter half of the 2nd century) of the Genealogiae of Hyginus by an unknown gram marian, who added a complete treatise on mythology.
by M. Schmidt (1872) ; De Astronomia, by B. Bunte (1875) ; see also Bunte, De C. Julii Hygin, Augusti Liberti, Vita et Scriptis (1826) .