for its description of the nature and birth of the goat-footed god. Translations are
available in the Hesiod volume in the Loeb series and elsewhere; they make delightful
reading even in a plain prose translation.HYGINUS (Gaius Julius Hyginus), a learned freedman of Augustus who became
the librarian of the Palatine Library, the putative author of two works of mythological interest, the Fabulae (i.e. Mythical Tales, also known as the Genealogiae), 
a handbook of mythology, and the Astronomia, a popular treatise on astronomy. Both
books were compiled from Greek sources. Since their author was a scholar of limited
competence who could make elementary mistakes in translating from the Greek, it
is generally agreed that these cannot be genuine works of Hyginus, and they were
probably written after his time in the second century AD. The 220 chapters of the
Fabulae consist either of brief mythological narratives or of catalogues (e.g. of mothers
who killed their sons, persons who were suckled by animals, inventors and their
inventions). Although the sources of the narratives are rarely indicated, the book
seems to draw most heavily on tragic sources. The second book of the Astronomia
contains the fullest surviving collection of constellation myths, derived mainly from
*Eratosthenes. English translations of the Fabulae and this ‘poetic astronomy’ may
be found in Hyginus, The Myths, ed. and trans. M. Grant (Lawrence, Kansas, 1960),
and there are good French translations, with useful notes, in the Budé series.