Hyginus' Book of Fables and Poetic Astronomy

much for this reason, I know well, our grammarians will soon applaud themselves no less than merchants are sometimes accustomed to exult when some more precious gem or pearl is found. So that you may, for this reason alone, congratulate yourself that under your title, such joy and pleasure will soon be brought to those men whom I know you love, and whose studies you yourself also sometimes enjoy. Especially since you yourself are, as I hear, so devoted to poetic matters that you sometimes compose some poem with much praise, following the example of the ancients. And although I would not dare to affirm that this is entirely the same Hyginus whom Aulus Gellius mentions in the first book, chapter 21, of his Attic Nights original: "Noctium Atticarum", whom he indeed records as having published commentaries on Virgil original: "Vergilium"—while Volaterranus believes him to be the same person who lived during the times of Quintilian and left behind those four books on the Astronomical subject (if that should instead be called one continuous work), which we have joined in this same volume, themselves much more corrected than before, with the rest of the authors of the same kind; and likewise left another Grammaticon a grammatical work, that is, one inscribed regarding military camp affairs—because Pliny original: "Plinius" also frequently cites a certain Hyginus, and it often happens that many are called by the same name: nevertheless, many likely things converge that impel me to doubt. For the work itself is of such a kind that you would easily recognize a man who is a grammarian and an imitator of the Greeks. And as far as diction is concerned, you see that it is entirely similar and equal to the other writings of Hyginus. Sometimes it even bears the very forms of speech as if repeated from there. Added to this is the fact that in the work of the Astronomica, Hyginus himself mentions genealogies written by himself, of which certainly these fragments, or an epitome, can be seen to be excerpted and abbreviated by some scholar from his books. Furthermore, how much labor had to be undertaken and exhausted by us in correcting and restoring that work can be conjectured from the fact that the book itself (which was communicated to us by the kindness of the most excellent Lord Johannes Vueyer of Augsburg, Canon of the church of Freising, and M. Johannes Chrumerus, Canon at Saint Andrew in Freising, a most upright notary, as well as Vitus Chrumerus, who teaches good letters there not without praise—to whom their own thanks are also due, because they do not neglect to promote studies if any opportunity is given) was written in foreign and Lombardic scripts original: "Longobardicis notis": in which matter, however, we were helped somewhat by the one who had begun to transcribe it into Latin previously, whose example we followed at the beginning as a kind of thread.