{{Short description|Roman senator}} '''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.<ref>Attilio Degrassi, ''I fasti consolari dell'Impero Romano dal 30 avanti Cristo al 613 dopo Cristo'' (Rome, 1952), p.&nbsp;4</ref> 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.<ref>''Incerti auctoris panegyricus Messallae'', l.&nbsp;181; [http://www.attalus.org/poetry/messalla.html English translation] (attilus.org; last accessed 17 March 2020)</ref>

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.<ref>{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Rufus, Gaius Valgius|volume=23|page=821}}</ref>

==References== {{Reflist}}

==Further reading== *Jonathan August Weichert, ''Poetarum Latinorum...Vitae et Carminum Reliquiae'' (1830) *Robert Unger, [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_e0zyLPTkf1oC/page/n3/mode/2up ''De Valgii Rufi poematis''] (1848) *Kronenberg, L. (2018). [https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/illiclasstud.43.1.0179 "Valgius Rufus and the Poet Macer in Tibullus and Ovid"]. ''Illinois Classical Studies'', Vol. 43, No. 1 (Spring 2018), pp. 179–206. *Kronenberg, L. (2019). [https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/717484/summary "Gallus and Valgius Rufus in Horace Odes 2.9."] ''Classical World'', 112(2), 57–69. *Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel, ''History of Roman Literature'' (Eng. trans., 1900), 241

{{S-start}} {{s-off}} {{s-bef|before=Marcus Valerius Messalla Appianus<br/>and Publius Sulpicius Quirinius|as=ordinary consuls}} {{s-ttl|title=Suffect consul of the Roman Empire|years=12 BC|as=Suffect consul}} {{s-aft|after=Gaius Caninius Rebilus<br/>and Lucius Volusius Saturninus|as=suffect consuls}} {{S-end}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Valgius Rufus}} Category:Golden Age Latin writers Category:1st-century BC Romans Category:1st-century BC Roman poets Category:Suffect consuls of Imperial Rome