Rufinus
(1) P. Cornelius Rufīnus. A Roman who was consul in B.C. 290 with M' Curius Dentatus, and in conjunction with his colleague brought the Samnite War to a conclusion, and obtained a triumph in consequence. He was consul a second time in 277, and carried on the war against the Samnites and the Greeks in Southern Italy. The chief event of his second consulship was the capture of the important town of Croton. In 275 Rufinus was expelled from the Senate by the censors C. Fabricius and Q. Aemilius Papus, on account of his possessing ten pounds of silver plate. The dictator Sulla was descended from this Rufinus. His grandson was the first of the family who assumed the surname of Sulla.
(2) Licinius Rufīnus. A jurist who lived under Alexander Severus. There are in the Digest seventeen excerpts from twelve books of Regulae by Rufinus.
(3) The chief minister of state under Theodosius the Great, and an able but at the same time a treacherous and dangerous man. He instigated Theodosius to those cruel measures which brought ruin upon Antioch, A.D. 390. After the death of Theodosius in 395, Rufinus exercised paramount influence over the weak Arcadius; but towards the end of the year a conspiracy was formed against him by Eutropius and Stilicho, who induced Gainas, the Gothic ally of Arcadius, to join in the plot. Rufinus was in consequence slain by the troops of Gainas.
(4) Surnamed Tyrannius or Turranius, or Torānus. A celebrated ecclesiastical writer, born probably about A.D. 345 in Italy. He was at first an inmate of the monastery at Aquileia, and he afterwards resided many years at a monastery in Palestine, where he became very intimate with St. Jerome. The two friends afterwards quarrelled, and Jerome attacked Rufinus with the utmost vehemence on account of his supporting the tenets of Origen. After remaining in the East for about twenty-six years, Rufinus returned to Italy in 397, where he published a Latin translation of the Apology for Origen by Pamphilus, and of the books of Origen, De Principiis, together with an original tract, De Adulteratione Librorum Origenis. In the preface to the De Principiis he quoted a panegyric which Jerome had at an earlier period pronounced upon Origen. This led to a bitter correspondence between the two former friends, which was crowned by the Apologia of the one adversus Hieronymum, and the Apologia of the other adversus Rufinum. Rufinus died in Sicily in 410, to which island he had fled upon the invasion of Italy by Alaric. Several of his works are extant, the chief edition being that of Vallarsi (Verona, 1745).
(5) The author of a little poem in twenty-two lines, Pasiphaës Fabula ex Omnibus Metris Horatianis, which, as the name imports, contains an example of each of the different metres employed by Horace. His date is quite uncertain, but he may be the same person with the following. Edited by Bährens in the Poet. Lat. Min. vol. v.
(6) A grammarian of Antioch, whose treatise De Metris Comicis, or rather extracts from it, is contained in the Grammatici Latini of Keil, vi. 569.
(7) The author of thirty-eight epigrams in the Greek Anthology. His date is uncertain, but there can be no doubt that he was a Byzantine. His verses are of the same light amatory character as those of Agathias, Paulus, Macedonius, and others.