Rufinus (Eastern Roman general)

Rufinus ( Greek  Ρουφῖνος ; * around 335 in Eauze in Aquitaine ; † November 27, 395 ) was an Eastern Roman general and statesman.

Life

Flavius ​​Rufinus came from Gaul and came to the Eastern Roman court under the rule of Theodosius I , where the emperor was supposedly especially taken with his religious zeal: Rufinus was a Christian and had successfully mediated between Ambrose of Milan and the emperor. He was appointed praefectus praetorio per Orientem in 392 ; at the same time he held the consulate together with Arcadius , which was a great honor. After Theodosius' death in January 395, Rufinus actually took over the government of the eastern half of the empire as the strong man behind the young emperor Arcadius.

He rejected the help offered by the western Roman army master Stilicho against the mutinous Visigoths , who rose up after Theodosius' death and devastated Macedonia and Greece, and had the Visigoths billeted in Illyria , allegedly in the expectation that they would move from there towards the west would. The background was rivalries between the two imperial courts: Stilicho raised the claim to the highest authority in the entire empire, which Rufinus and Arcadius did not accept; In Constantinople it was feared that a Western Roman intervention against the Visigoths might be a pretext to wrest the Balkans from the East. Therefore Rufinus demanded the return of the Eastern Roman legions that had accompanied Theodosius to the west in 394 instead. Claudian , meanwhile, gave a traditional speech at the western imperial court ( In Rufinum ), which denounced Rufinus as a high traitor; although it is obviously propaganda, the text has shaped the negative image of the Praetorian prefect into modern scholarship.

Rufinus wanted to marry off his daughter to Arcadius in order to secure his position. However, the plan was thwarted by the resistance of the Minister Eutropios , who made sure that Arcadius married Eudoxia instead. Rufinus was murdered in November 395 on the orders of Gainas , the commander of the Eastern Roman troops, which he had called back to Constantinople , possibly on behalf of Stilichos.

literature

• Alan Cameron : Claudian. Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1970, pp. 63ff.
• John R. Martindale: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire . Volume I, Cambridge 1971, pp. 778 ff.
• Otto Seeck : Rufinus 23 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IA, 1, Stuttgart 1914, Sp. 1189-1193.