Valgius Rufus

Gaius Valgius Rufus, was a Roman senator, and a contemporary of Horace and Maecenas. He succeeded Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus as suffect consul upon the latter's death in 12 BC.[1] Rufus is best known as a writer of elegies and epigrams, and his contemporaries believed him capable of great things in epic writing. The author of the panegyric on Messalla Corvinus compared Rufus as the equal of Homer.[2]

Rufus did not confine himself to poetry. He discussed grammatical questions by correspondence, translated the rhetorical manual of his teacher Apollodorus of Pergamon, and began a treatise on medicinal plants, dedicated to Augustus. Horace addressed to him the ninth ode of the second book of his poems.[3]

References
  1. Attilio Degrassi, I fasti consolari dell'Impero Romano dal 30 avanti Cristo al 613 dopo Cristo (Rome, 1952), p. 4
  2. Incerti auctoris panegyricus Messallae, l. 181; English translation (attilus.org; last accessed 17 March 2020)
  3. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Rufus, Gaius Valgius". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 821.

Further reading
  • Jonathan August Weichert, Poetarum Latinorum...Vitae et Carminum Reliquiae (1830)
  • Robert Unger, De Valgii Rufi poematis (1848)
  • Otto Ribbeck, Geschichte der romischen Dichtung (1889), ii.
  • Martin Schanz, Geschichte der romischen Litteratur (1899), ii.
  • Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel, History of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., 1900), 241
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