The Greek Sources of Hyginus and Narrator

Abstract It is time to take a closer look at Hyginus. In addition to the Fabulae, he is also credited with another largely mythographic work entitled De astronomia, and on the basis of a number of verbal and thematic parallels it has been generally assumed that both works are by the same hand. It is not in itself a serious objection that they sometimes offer differing versions of the same story, since this can be explained as a consequence of the two books being compiled at different times from different sources (both are of sufficiently low intellectual level to make it unlikely that the writer was committed to the “truth” of any particular version). More telling is the one cross-reference. In a passage otherwise translated fairly literally from Ps-Eratosthenes, the writer cites book 1 of his own Genealogiae (de quo in primo libro Genealogiarum scripsimus) on the subject of the Graeae, and we have already seen that Ps-Dositheus cites the Fabulae under the title Genealogia. Although the text of the Fabulae as extant is not divided into books, even its abridged state is much longer than the average ancient book, and the surviving chapters fall fairly clearly into three categories, the first of which is certainly genealogical. It is true that there is no such discussion of the Graeae in the surviving text of the Fabulae, but that is simply one more indication that the text we have is abridged. In view of its lengh, De astronomia was likewise presumably once divided into at least three books, though there is no trace in the many manuscripts of the four books in which they appear in printed editions.