Munckerus, Thomas. Mythographi latini. Amsterdam, 1681.
It is easy to confuse Aratus, the Greek poet of the Phaenomena, and Hyginus, the Latin author of the Poeticon Astronomicon. The confusion is not lessened by the fact that publishers often moved illustrations from one author to another. The 1482 edition of Hyginus was the first to contain images of the constellations (Out of This World, item 1), and these were borrowed for the first illustrated edition of Aratus in 1499 (Out of This World, item 3). Then, in 1600 Aratus acquired some original illustrations of its own (Out of This World, item 8). And those Aratus figures were then used by Thomas Munckerus for this 1681 edition of Hyginus. Confusing indeed.
The situation is softened, however, by the fact that the 1600 Aratus engravings are among the most beautiful constellation figures ever printed, so it is not at all distressing to see them used again, in this smaller format. The figures from the Munckerus edition above depict Leo (first) and Eridanus (second). Eridanus is depicted as a river god, which is unusual; in other editions of Hyginus, it was shown as a river with a swimming figure, and on most star maps, it was just a river, without personification. Below, for comparison, are the Eridanus illustrations form the 1482 edition of Hyginus and from Bayer’s Uranometria.