A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

Smith, William

A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. William Smith, LLD, ed. 1890

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. Ῥουθίνου δομεστικοῦ. (Concerning the meaning of this title, see Du Cange, 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.)

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