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Gaius Julius Hyginus, a freedman of Augustus and keeper of the Palatine library, wrote on many subjects. Funaioli prints the fragments of his commentary on Cinna’s Propempticon, his books on Vergil, his Exempla and his work on the cities of Italy, preserved by Charisius, Gellius, Servius and Macrobius. Most of them concern Vergil and the early history of Italy. The text follows Hyginus Funaioli’s Grammaticae Romanae Fragmenta (Leipzig 1907), without his testimonia, notes and apparatus.
The Vergilian fragments, quoted by Gellius, are among the earliest criticisms of the Aeneid, objecting to Palinurus’ mention of the port of Velia, to Theseus’ fate in the underworld and to the confusion of Pyrrhus and Achaicus; the other fragments explain the origins of Caere, Ardea and the Sabines. Funaioli’s numbering is kept. The fragments on Vergil are important evidence that the Aeneid was being studied and criticised in detail by scholars close to its publication, and Gellius preserves the arguments in some detail.
About this edition. The Latin text was transcribed for this library from a public-domain printed edition (edition: Hyginus Funaioli, Grammaticae Romanae Fragmenta, Leipzig 1907 (vol. 1, pp. 527–537)), using the scan and text recognition at the Internet Archive; the editor’s notes and critical apparatus are not reproduced. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.