HYGINUS is said to have been a native of Alexandria, or, according to
others, a Spaniard. He was, like Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus; but,
though industrious, he seems not to have improved himself so much as his
companion, in the art of composition. He wrote, however, a mythological
history, under the title of Fables, a work called Poeticon Astronomicon,
with a treatise on agriculture, commentaries on Virgil, the lives of
eminent men, and some other productions now lost. His remaining works
are much mutilated, and, if genuine, afford an unfavourable specimen of
his elegance and correctness as a writer.

CELSUS was a physician in the time of Tiberius, and has written eight
books, De Medicina, in which he has collected and digested into order all
that is valuable on the subject, in the Greek and Roman authors. The
professors of Medicine were at that time divided into three sects, viz.,
the Dogmatists, Empirics, and Methodists; the first of whom deviated less
than the others from the plan of Hippocrates; but they were in general
irreconcilable to each other, in respect both of their opinions and
practice. Celsus, with great judgment, has occasionally adopted
particular doctrines from each of them; and whatever he admits into his
system, he not only establishes by the most rational observations, but
confirms by its practical utility. In justness of remark, in force of
argument, in precision and perspicuity, as well as in elegance of
expression, he deservedly occupies the most distinguished rank amongst
the medical writers of antiquity. It appears that Celsus likewise wrote
on agriculture, rhetoric, and military affairs; but of those several
treatises no fragments now remain.

To the writers of this reign we must add APICIUS COELIUS, who has left a
book De Re Coquinaria [of Cookery]. There were three Romans of the name
of Apicius, all remarkable for their (250) gluttony. The first lived in