The only information we have about the grammaticus Rufinus of Antiochia comes from his brief work, which Keil assigned the conjectural title Commentarii de metris comicorum et de numeris oratorum.  This compilation is hard to reconstruct.  It most likely derives from a combination and reorganization of two related texts by the same author, the first focused on explaining the meters of Latin comic poetry and the other dealing with prose rhythm and its use of rhythmical clausulae.  Between those two parts we find an elegiac distich that probably made up the subscriptio of the first treatise (haec ego Rufinus collegi mente benigna | discipulisque dedi munera pulchra libens).  This confirms the author’s name and profession, as well as the text’s scholastic audience.  The inscriptio found in the manuscripts further informs us that he was a vir devotus, a title common among functionaries of the imperial court from the second half of the 4^th c. (Commentarium Rufinini V.D. grammatici Antiochensis in metra Terentiana) - this, at least, according to the explication of the abbreviation V.D. that was proposed by the most recent editor (d’Alessandro 2004: xix n. 10; but cf. the title vir dissertissimus contained in some codices).  Rufinus is also called a litterator (a synonym for grammaticus) and a vir clarissimus in the inscriptio of the works’ second section, the latter of which titles recurs again in the body of the work.  This seems to attest that the author enjoyed a certain level of prestige, viz. the same senatorial status as Aelius Donatus, Marius Victorinus, and other late-antique grammatici.

  It is impossible to establish a precise chronology for the work.  A terminus post quem is provided by a reference to the grammaticus Servius, who was active at Rome at the end of the 4^th c. AD.  A terminus ante quem can only be established from an argument ex silentio: while Rufinus knows the most important grammatici of Servius’s day (Donatus, Evantius, Charisius, Diomedes, etc.), he does not cite Priscian even though that author wrote a work De metris Terentii et aliorum comicorum.  This suggests a dating for Rufinus between second half of the 5^th c. an the early years of the 6^th, a chronological range in which many Latin grammatici were also active at Alexandria and Constantinople.  It is also conceivable that Rufinus was the author of a hexameter work on the same theme - De re metrica - that he covered in prose, since it seems possible to trace back to this work the sections of verses that appear above all at the start of the treatise’s second part, interspersed with introductory formulas that expose the hand of an excerptor.  As concerns the state of transmission, we may attribute certain omissions, incongruences, and errors in the work of Rufinus to this act of compilation, which dates perhaps to the threshold of the Middle Ages.  Indeed, his work must originally have been more organic and full of citations, as evidenced by the differences between the lists of auctores that are mentioned in the index of the collected sources and the corresponding exempla.  It seems likely that the unknown compiler not only reduced the text drastically, but also altered its order and intervened here and there with explanatory and summary formulas.

An old hypothesis attributes to Rufinus a collection of 22 verses about Pasiphaë that are found in ms. Voss. Lat. Q. 33 (Anth. 732 Riese = PLM 5, nr. 51 Baehrens). Demonstrating all of Horace’s meters, these lines come immediately after an extract of Rufinus’s work and a brief list of meters with relevant examples. The work’s most recent editor has nevertheless rejected this attribution (D’Alessandro 2004: lxxxv).

Commentators on Terence from the Carolingian period, as well as authors of the 9^th c. such as Rabanus Maurus, Sedulius Scotus, and Mico of Saint Riquier, were all familiar with Rufinus.  This attests to the wide circulation of the grammaticus of Antiochia during that era.  [A. Lagioia; tr. C. L. Caterine].