Second Thoughts On Hyginus

Abstract

When in 1934 I edited the Fabulae (more correctly Genealogiae) of Hyginus x) I grappled with its many difficulties and strange aberrations as well as I could, but was not so inexperienced as to imagine that I had explained everything. From time to time I have noted on the margins of my copy various points on which further light has been thrown from later reading, or I have discovered a blunder in my work. This paper is a collection of those marginalia, set down in the order in which they occur. The references are to the chapters and sections of my text. Praef. 1. Among the children of Night Hyginus strangely reckons Euphrosyne; strangely, for that name occurs elsewhere as an appellation of one of the Charit?s, whom it is not easy to conceive as the offspring of Nyx and Erebos. I had overlooked the short article of Stoll in Roscher's Lexikon, I, 1408-1409, which brings forward two interesting parallels. One is the actual occurrence of e?f??s??? as either an epithet of Night or another name for her; it is one of a string of complimentary addresses to her, thus : e?f??s???, te?p??, f???p?????e, ??te? ??e????2). The other is a curious passage in Cicero, N.D. Ill, 44, which lists, on the authority of genealogi antiqui (unnamed, but at that date hardly likely to include Hyginus' Greek source, since that seems to have used the scholia on Apollonios Rhodios and these are perhaps of about the time of Tiberius) 3), Gratia among the children of Nox and Erebus. That this means unfair influence, as J. B. Mayor supposes in his commentary, I do not think probable; it is more likely to be Euphrosyne again, since she, being one of the Charit?s, as already mentioned, could readily be Gratia to a Latin writer.