Gaius Julius Hyginus

Gaius Julius Hyginus (/hᵻˈdʒaɪnəs/; c. 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20. It is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the Iberian Peninsula 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".

Fabulae

Fabulae consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely told myths and celestial genealogies, 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, 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.

Hyginus (crater)

Hyginus is a small lunar caldera located at the east end of the Sinus Medii. Its rim is split by a long, linear rille Rima Hyginus that branches to the northwest and to the east-southeast for a total length of 220 kilometers. The crater is deeper than the rille, and lies at the bend where they intersect. Together the crater Hyginus and Rima Hyginus form a distinctive and prominent feature in an otherwise flat surface. Smaller craterlets can also be discerned along the length of this rille, possibly caused by a collapse of an underlying structure.

Hyginus is one of the few craters on the Moon that was not created as a result of an impact, and is instead believed to be volcanic in origin. It lacks the raised outer rim that is typical with impact craters.

It was also the planned site for the canceled Apollo 19 mission.

Satellite craters

By convention these features are identified on lunar maps by placing the letter on the side of the crater midpoint that is closest to Hyginus.

References

Hyginus (disambiguation)

Hyginus can refer to:

People:

Other: