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Poeticon astronomicon

 
Poeticon Astronomicon

 
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Poeticon astronomicon is a star atlas whose text is attributed to "Hyginus
Hyginus

Hyginus can refer to:*Gaius Julius Hyginus , Roman poet, author of Fabulae, reputed author of Poeticon astronomicon*Hyginus Gromaticus, Roman surveyor...
", though the true authorship is disputed. During the Renaissance
Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
, the work was attributed to the Roman
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
 historian Gaius Julius Hyginus
Gaius Julius Hyginus

Gaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, though whether a native of Spain or of Alexandria it is not clear, a pupil of the famous Alexander Cornelius, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus, by whom he was made superintendent of the Palatine library, according to Suetonius' minor works, De Grammaticis, 20....
 who lived during the first century B.C.






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Poeticon Astronomicon Casand
Poeticon astronomicon is a star atlas whose text is attributed to "Hyginus
Hyginus

Hyginus can refer to:*Gaius Julius Hyginus , Roman poet, author of Fabulae, reputed author of Poeticon astronomicon*Hyginus Gromaticus, Roman surveyor...
", though the true authorship is disputed. During the Renaissance
Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
, the work was attributed to the Roman
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
 historian Gaius Julius Hyginus
Gaius Julius Hyginus

Gaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, though whether a native of Spain or of Alexandria it is not clear, a pupil of the famous Alexander Cornelius, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus, by whom he was made superintendent of the Palatine library, according to Suetonius' minor works, De Grammaticis, 20....
 who lived during the first century B.C. However, the fact that the book lists the constellation
Constellation

A constellation is a group of stars that appear to have a physical proximity in the sky. The stars in a constellation are often vastly distant from each other, but they appear close to each other from the perspective of Earth....
s in the same order as Ptolemy
Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman Greek mathematics, Greek astronomy, geographer and astrologer. He lived in History of Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou; he died in Alexandria around 168 AD....
's Almagest
Almagest

Almagest is the Latin form of the Arabic language name of a mathematical and astronomical treatise proposing the complex motions of the stars and planetary paths, originally written in Greek language as by Ptolemy of Alexandria, Egypt, written in the 2nd century....
 (written in the second century A.D.) has led many to believe that a more recent Hyginus created the text.

The text describes 47 of the 48 Ptolemaic constellations, centering primarily on the Greco-Roman mythology surrounding the constellations, though there is some discussion of the relative positions of stars. The first known printing was in 1475, attributed to "Ferrara."

The Poeticon astronomicon was not formally published until 1482, by Erhard Ratdolt
Erhard Ratdolt

Erhard Ratdolt was an early German printer. From Augsburg, he was active printing in Venice, where he worked from 1476 to 1486.There he produced a Kalendario for Regiomontanus, and editions of the Historia Romana of Appianus , and Euclid's Elements , solving the problem of reproducing mathematical diagrams....
 in Venice
Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy, the capital city of the Italian regions Veneto, a population of 271,251 . Together with Padua, Italy, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area ....
, Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
. This edition carried the full title Clarissimi uiri Hyginii Poeticon astronomicon opus utilissimum. Ratdolt commissioned a series of woodcuts depicting the constellations to accompany Hyginus' text. As with many other star atlases that would follow it, the positions of various stars are indicated overlaid on the image of each constellation. However, the relative positions of the stars in the woodcuts bear little resemblance to the descriptions given by Hyginus in the text or the actual positions of the stars in the sky.

As a result of the inaccuracy of the depicted star positions and the fact that the constellations are not shown with any context, the Poeticon astronomicon is not particularly useful as a guide to the night sky. However, the illustrations commissioned by Ratdolt served as a template for future sky atlas renderings of the constellation figures. The text, by contrast, is an important source, and occasionally the only source, for some of the more obscure Greek myths.

See also

  • Star atlas


External links