De astronomia

However, the art historian Kristen Lippincott argues that the author was likely Gaius Julius Hyginus, who served as the superintendent of the Palatine library under Caesar Augustus.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, the style and level of Latin competence and the elementary mistakes (especially in the rendering of the Greek originals) were held to prove that they cannot have been the work of "so distinguished" a scholar as C. Julius Hyginus.

[6] Less than a decade later, in 1482, Erhard Ratdolt published an edition of De astronomia, which carried the full title Clarissimi Viri Hyginii Poeticon Astronomicon Opus Utilissimum.

[8] As a result of the inaccuracy of the depicted star positions and the fact that the constellations are not shown with any context, the De astronomia is not particularly useful as a guide to the night sky.

However, the illustrations commissioned by Ratdolt served as a template for future sky atlas renderings of the constellation figures.