Three short works are attributed to the rhetorician Julius Rufinianus - a De figuris sententiarum et elocutionis, a De schematis lexeos, and a De schematis dianoeas - but biographical data about the author are virtually nonexistent. An inscription at Atripalda (near Avellino) describes Gaius Iulius Rufinianus Ablabius Tatianus as a vir clarissimus, former consul, governor of numerous provinces in the period after Constantine, and son of a certain orator Rufinianus (CIL 10, 1125 = Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae selectae 2942). Mommsen identified this man with our rhetorician Rufinianus, an attribution that - if correct - will place the author between the second half of the 3^rd c. and the first half of the 4^th, and will mean that he held a high rank. No firm connection, however, can be established between our rhetorician and the C. Iulius Rufinianus mentioned in an epitaph at Thugga (mod. Dougga, Tunisia) that claims the deceased died in his 76^th year (CIL 8, 26949). At the very least, the opening words of the De figuris allow us to place him after Aquila Romanus, a rhetorician conventionally dated to the 3^rd c. AD: hactenus Aquila Romanus ex Alexandro Numenio: exinde ab eo praeteritas, aliis quidem proditas, subtexuimus. [A. Balbo; tr. C. L. Caterine].