4. RUFINUS, the author of thirty-eight epigrams in the Greek
Anthology, and probably of one more, which is ascribed in the Planudean Anthology to an
otherwise unknown Rufius Domesticus, but is headed in the Palatine MS.
Gloss. Med. et Inf. Graec.) There can be no doubt
that the author was a Byzantine, and his verses are of the same light amatory character as
those of Agathias, Paulus, Macedonius, and others; but beyond this there is no other
indication of his age. Jacobs rejects the supposition of Reiske, that he should be identified
with the author of the Pasiphae, (Brunck, Anal. vol. ii. pp. 390, 490;
Jacobs, >Anth. Graee. vol. iii. pp. 98, 193, vol. xiii. pp. 947,948 ;
Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. iv. p. 494.)
There were also two or three sophists and rhetoricians of this name, for whom a bare mention
will suffice, namely, Rufinus of Cyprus, a peripatetic philosopher, mentioned as a
contemporary by Lucian (Demonact. 54. vol. ii. p. 393); Rufinus, of
Nancratis, an illegitimate son of Apollonius of Naucratis (Philost. Vit.
Sophist. 2.19, p. 599); Rufinus, praetor of Smyrna under Severus and Caracalla, and
perhaps some others. (See Olearius, ad Philost 2.25, p. 608; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. vi. p. 137.)