Marcus Bassaeus Rufus

Marcus Bassaeus Rufus was a Roman senator, who held a number of appointments during the reigns of the emperors Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. The most notable of these were praefectus vigilum, praefectus or governor of Roman Egypt, and praetorian prefect.

Anthony Birley describes Rufus as "a tough soldier who had risen from humble Italian peasant origins".^[1] Cassius Dio records two anecdotes that emphasize his humbler beginnings. In one, Rufus had a caller while he was engaged in pruning a vine that grew upon a tree; when Rufus did not climb down at the first summons, the man had rebuked him and said: "Come now, prefect, get down." Dio explains, "That is, he had used this title in speaking to him as to one who was now bearing himself haughtily but had formerly been of lowly station; and it was precisely this title that Fortune subsequently gave him."^[2] In the second, Rufus was present when Marcus Aurelius was talking in Latin to someone in Latin, but neither the man addressed nor anyone else nearby, either, understood the emperor; Rufus then exclaimed: "No wonder, Caesar, that he does not know what you said; for he does not understand Greek either." Dio explains that even Rufus was ignorant of what Marcus Aurelius said.^[2] Karol Kłodziński notes that not only of "five praetorian prefects of the Antonines, whose full cursus honorum is known, only Marcius Turbo and Bassaeus Rufus achieved the praetorian prefecture without holding equestrian tres militiae", and in addition "both got promotion to ordo equester through the primipilat".^[3]