The Fabulae is a Latin handbook of mythology, attributed to an author named Hyginus, who is generally believed to have been separate from Gaius Julius Hyginus.[Hard 2004, p. 13.] The work consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely, told myths (such as Agnodice) and celestial genealogies.["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.]
Date, authorship, and composition
In the earliest published edition of the
Fabulae, produced in 1535 by
Jacob Micyllus, the work is attributed to "Gaius Julius Hyginus, freedman of
Augustus", an ascription which may have been present in the manuscript itself, or may have added by Micyllus himself.
[Fletcher, p. 200.] There were numerous works which were attributed in antiquity to Gaius Julius Hyginus, and, though the work may not have been composed after his lifetime (1st century BC/AD),
[Fletcher, p. 201.] modern scholarship, for the most part, rejects the idea that this Hyginus was the author of the work.
[Smith and Trzaskoma, p. xliii.] According to R. Scott Smith, it is reasonable to suppose that the Hyginus who authored the work lived during the latter half of the 2nd century AD.
[Smith, p. 101.] A handful of scholars, however, do hold that Gaius Julius Hyginus was in fact the author of the work.
[Smith, p. 101; cf. Fletcher, p. 201; Hard 2015, p. xxvi.]
The author of the Fabulae is characterised by 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,[A.L. Keith, in The Classical Journal 31.1 (October 1935) p. 53.] 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.
Content
Alongside the
Bibliotheca of the Greek mythographer Apollodorus, the
Fabulae is one of the most comprehensive handbooks of mythology to survive from antiquity.
[Fletcher, p. 199.] The work consists of various narratives and lists, which are organised into a number of distinct sections, rather than being presented in a continuous narrative.
[Smith and Trzaskoma, p. xliv.] The work begins with a (an account of the origin of the gods), which outlines a genealogy of the gods.
[Smith and Trzaskoma, pp. xliv–xlv.] It is a somewhat peculiar account, beginning with a figure unattested elsewhere, Mist (
Caligo), who is placed before even Chaos, the earliest being in the
Theogony of
Hesiod.
[Smith and Trzaskoma, p. xlv.] This theogony, which is untitled in the text itself, may have been attached to the work at a later date.
[Smith and Trzaskoma, p. xlv.] After the theogony comes a number of sections which tell of various mythical stories (sections 1–220), and then sections which consist of lists (sections 221–277), often of names of mythological figures, or of myths; a number of such lists are also present in the part of the work devoted mostly to mythical narratives (sections 1–220).
[Smith and Trzaskoma, pp. xliv–xlv, xlvi.]
Though composed in Latin, and reliant upon Latin literature to a limited extent, the work is almost entirely concerned with Greek mythology, with it containing little in the way of Roman mythical content.[Smith and Trzaskoma, p. xlvi.] 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).[Noted by Rose 1958:42 note 3.] In the work, there are also some passages which were translated from earlier Greek texts.[Smith, p. 101.]
Textual history
In fact the text of the
Fabulae was all but lost: a single surviving manuscript from the abbey of
Freising,
[A Codex Freisingensis, noted by Fitch, reviewing Rose, Hygini Fabulae 1934:421.] in a Beneventan script datable , formed the material for the first printed edition, negligently and uncritically
[A. H. F. Griffin, "Hyginus, Fabula 89 (Laomedon)" The Classical Quarterly New Series, 36.2 (1986), p. 541 note.] transcribed by
Jacob Micyllus, 1535, who may have supplied it with the title we know it by.
[Smith, p. 100.] 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.
[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.] Another fragmentary text, dating from the 5th century is in the Vatican Library.
[ Review by Wilfred E. Major of P.K. Marshall, Hyginus: Fabulae. Editio altera. 2002]
Editions and translations
-
Mary A. Grant, The Myths of Hyginus, Lawrence, University of Kansas Press, 1960. ToposText.
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Marshall, Peter K., Hyginus : Fabulae, Bibliotheca Teubneriana, Munich and Leipzig, K. G. Saur Verlag, 2002. . .
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Smith, Scott R., and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae : Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, Indianapolis and Cambridge, Hackett Publishing, 2007. . Internet Archive.
Notes
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Fletcher, "Hyginus, Fabulae", in The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography, pp. 199–210, edited by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Oxford University Press, 2022. .
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Hard, Robin (2004), The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", London and New York, Routledge, 2004. . . Google Books.
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Hard, Robin (2015), Eratosthenes and Hyginus: Constellation Myths, With Aratus's Phaenomena, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015. .
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Marshall, Peter K., Hyginus : Fabulae, Bibliotheca Teubneriana, Munich and Leipzig, K. G. Saur Verlag, 2002. . .
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Rose, Herbert Jennings (ed.), Hygini Fabulae (Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1934 2nd). The standard text, in Latin.
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Smith, R. Scott, "Mythography in Latin", in The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography, pp. 97–114, edited by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Oxford University Press, 2022. .
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Smith, Scott R., and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae : Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, Indianapolis and Cambridge, Hackett Publishing, 2007. . Internet Archive.
External links
