These translations are the work of the students, past and present, of the Open University Latin course, particularly Henry Rogers, Angela Cembrola, Fiona Davison and Gill Stoker. I am most grateful for their invaluable assistance and encouragement.
Gaius Julius Hyginus (fl. 1st century AD) was a
Latin author and scholar who, according to Suetonius (De Grammaticis 20), was appointed superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus.
He came to Rome from Spain or Alexandria as a slave, or perhaps a prisoner of war, and was freed by Augustus.
He was a pupil of the learned Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor and a friend of Ovid. Of his numerous works, including topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries on Helvius Cinna and the poems of Virgil, and disquisitions on agriculture and beekeeping, nothing has survived.
The attribution to Hyginus of the 'Fabulae' or 'Genealogiae' and the 'De Astronomia', usually called 'Poetica Astronmica', is not certain.
