SECOND THOUGHTS on HYGINUS by HJ ROSE When in 1934 I

SECOND THOUGHTS ON HYGINUS

H. J. ROSE

When in 1934 I edited the Fabulae (more correctly Genealogiae) of Hyginus 1) I grappled with its many difficulties and strange ab- errations as well as I could, but was not so inexperienced as to imagine that I had explained everything. From time to time I have noted on the margins of my copy various points on which further light has been thrown from later reading, or I have discovered a blunder in my work. This paper is a collection of those marginalia, set down in the order in which they occur. The references are to the chapters and sections of my text. Praef. i. Among the children ot Night Hyginus strangely reckons Euphrosyne; strangely, for that name occurs elsewhere as an appellation of one of the Charites, whom it is not easy to conceive as the offspring of Nyx and Erebos. I had overlooked the short article of Stoll in Roscher's Lexikon, I, 14o8-I409, which brings forward two interesting parallels. One is the actual occurrence of eucppoauv7) as either an epithet of Night or another name for her; it is one of a string of complimentary addresses to her, thus: eucppoauv?, cpLÀ01t'eXWUxe, 1 1 2). The other is a curious passage in Cicero, N.D. III, 44, which lists, on the authority of genealogi antiqui (unnamed, but at that date hardly likely to include Hyginus' Greek source, since that seems to have used the scholia on Apollonios Rhodios and these are perhaps of about the time of Tiberius) 3), Gyatia among the children of Nox and Erebus. That this means "unfair influence", as J. B. Mayor supposes in his commentary, I do not think probable; it is more likely to be Euphrosyne again, since she, being one of the Charites, as already mentioned, could readily be Gratia to a Latin writer.

i ) Hygini Fabulae, recensuit etc. H. 1. Rose, Lugduni Batauorum, n. d. (1934 ) . 2 ) Hymn. Orph. 3, 5 (misprinted 2, 8 in Roscher). 3) So, following Ruhnken, R. Merkel in the prae f atio to his larger edition of Apollonios (Leipzig, 1854), p. lxvi. 43

Her genesis I suppose is nothing more recondite than the common euphemistic name for the night, I eùcpp6v'YJ.A mere scribal error of early date might have played a part here; -auv- is not a hard or unlikely syllable to have been accidentally inserted between the o and the v of at any period when book-hands commonly employed the C-shaped sigma; and some unknown poetaster or minor genealogist might well have made Euphrone daughter of Nyx, i.e., made Night her own child, for we know how commonly mythological names slip from one generation to another, Hyperion for instance being in Hesiod the father of Helios, in Homer Helios himself 1). Or, which I think more likely, this hypothetical author may have indulged in a little variety in the name, following perhaps some such fancy as made Hesiod include among the offspring of Night. Praef. 9, 39. In both these passages we hear of a male person named Gorgon, who in the former place is father of the three Gorgons, in the latter son of Typhon and Echidna. I had already suggested in my notes that he may have been, so to speak, pro- jected from his own daughters, as the Korybantes are furnished with a father Korybas by one or two late authors. Now I find that he has another parallel, this time very late. The scholia on Horace published by H. L. Botschuyver 2) gravely inform us in their note on C. II, 13, 30, that Eumenides f iliae luerunt Eumenis, and this Eumenes, as I suppose he must be in the nom., is a very similar phantom to Hyginus' Gorgon. Fab. II-IV. Since I commented on these chapters, J. Fontenrose has written learnedly and interestingly on the type of story which they illustrate, legends of the dire consequences following on one man becoming over-familiar with two women, whether sisters (as Prokne and Philomela) or not. His work appeared in Vol. LXXIX of the Trans. Am. Phil. Ass., pp. 125-67. VII, 3. I should have noted another of Hyginus' many mis- translations ; 8Eo8oS does not mean biuium, but a pass (saltus, an- gustiae). ..

i) Hesiod, Theog. 371 -74 : Homer, a 8. 2) Scholi-a in Horatium codicum Parisinorum Latinorum 7972, 7974, 7971 edidit.... H. Botschuyver. Amstelodami, MCMXXXV.