HYGINUS, CaiusJulius, a native of Spain, and the freedman of Augustus, by whom he was made chief of the Palatine library. He is said to have fallen into great poverty in his old age, and to have been supported by one C. Licinius. He was a voluminous author, and his works included topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries on Cinna and on Virgil, and disquisitions on. agriculture, bee-keeping, and the military art. All of these are lost. But there have come down under his name two school treatises on mythology, which have produced much discussion. They are entitled (1) Fabularum Liber, containing 277 mythological legends, and valuable for the use made of the Greek tragedians; and (2) Poeticon Astrono-rnicon Libri IV., an astronomical treatise of little value. Both are abridgments; both are by the same hand; but from the “tyro-like mistakes” in both they have been thought unworthy of the librarian of Augustus. It is not, however, impossible that they are early compositions of his, written before he had gained full command of the Latin language. A suggestion has also been made (Bursian in Fleckeisen’s Jahrbuch, xciii. p. 773) that a work of Hyginus, named Genealogies, was abridged by a grammarian of the latter half of the 2d century, who appended a treatise on the whole mythology arranged according to mythological views. This text-book, retaining the name of Hyginus, would be used in the schools, and would be from time to time altered and augmented. But in these, as in the many other opinions that have been advanced, there is nothing beyond conjecture....