Gaius Julius Hyginus (/hɪˈdʒaɪnəs/; c. 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Augustus, and reputed author of the Fabulae and the De astronomia, although this is disputed.
[1] He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20.
[2] Suetonius remarks that Hyginus fell into great poverty in his old age and was supported by the historian Clodius Licinus.
Hyginus was a voluminous author: his works included topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries on Helvius Cinna and the poems of Virgil, and disquisitions on agriculture and bee-keeping.
The English author Sir Thomas Browne opens his discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) with a Creation myth sourced from the Fabulae of Hyginus.