[5] 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.
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.
Rose's edition (1934) of Hygini Fabulae,[8] 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.
[17] In fact the text of the Fabulae was all but lost: a single surviving manuscript from the abbey of Freising,[18] in a Beneventan script datable c. 900, formed the material for the first printed edition, negligently and uncritically[19] transcribed by Jacob Micyllus, 1535, who may have supplied it with the title we know it by.