or HI'GINUS, C. JU'LIUS. Suetonius, in his lives of illustrious grammarians, informs us that C. Julius Hyginus was a native of Spain, not, as others had less accurately stated, of Alexandria, that he was a pupil and imitator of the celebrated Cornelius Alexander, surnamed Polyhistor [ALEXANDER, p. 115], that he was the freedman of Augustus, and that he was placed at the head of the Palatine library. We learn from the same authority that he lived upon terms of close intimacy with the poet Ovid and with C. Licinius, " the historian and consular," a personage not mentioned elsewhere, and that having fallen into great poverty, he was supported in old age by the liberality of the latter, but no hint is given of the causes which led to this reverse of fortune.
We find numerous references in Pliny, Gellius, Servius, Macrobius, and others, to various works by "Hyginus" or "Julius Hyginus," which are generally supposed to have been the productions of the Hyginus who was the freedman of Augustus. Of these we may notice,--
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