StilichoSometimes called Flavius Stilicho. The name became a courtesy title by the late 4th century, see (; – 22 August 408) was a military commander in the Roman army who, for a time, became the most powerful man in the Western Roman Empire.Carlton Joseph Huntley Hayes (1911). "Stilicho, Flavius". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 25. (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 920.Stephen Mitchell. A History of the Later Roman Empire AD 284–641. Singapore: Blackwell Publishing, 2007, p. 89. He was partly of Vandal origins and married to Serena, the niece of emperor Theodosius I. He became guardian for the underage Honorius.Joseph Vogt. The Decline of Rome: The Metamorphosis of Ancient Civilization. Trans. Janet Sondheimer. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967, p. 179. After years of struggle against barbarian and Roman enemies, political and military disasters finally allowed his enemies in the court of Honorius to remove him from power. His fall culminated in his arrest and execution in 408.Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, third edition. Oxford University Press, 1996 1444.
Origins and rise to power Besides the relevant legal records in the Codex Theodosianus, the major primary source for the events of Stilicho's time, or at least events prior to 404, are the panegyrics addressed to him by the poet Claudian, whom he patronized after the death of Theodosius I. These are likely quite biased and portray Stilicho in a positive light. For events after 404, Zosimus is the main source; he derived his information on Stilicho from two prior historians, whose texts he copies faithfully, although in summary. One of these historians, Eunapius, was hostile to Stilicho, and the other, Olympiodorus, was supportive, resulting in a bit of a garbled, contradictory account. Stilicho also maintained correspondence with his friend, the renowned pagan senator Symmachus.
StilichoStilic(h)o is a given name of Germanic origin, containing the Germanic element stil(l) – meaning "calm, quiet", from Proto-Germanic *stillijaz. was the son of a Vandal cavalry officer and a provincial woman of Roman birth.Frasetto, Michael (2003). Encyclopedia of Barbarian Europe: Society in Transformation. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. , p. 320. Google Books. Despite his father's origins, there is little to suggest that Stilicho considered himself anything other than a Roman, and his high rank within the empire suggests that he was probably not an Arian like many Germanic Christians but rather a Nicene Christian like his patron Theodosius I, who declared Nicene Christianity the official religion of the empire.
Stilicho joined the Roman army and rose through the ranks during the reign of Theodosius I, who ruled the Eastern half of the Roman Empire from Constantinople, and who was to become the last emperor to rule both the eastern and western halves of the empire jointly. In 383, Theodosius sent him as a tribunus praetorianus, an office in the branch of military administrators known as the notarii, on an embassy mission to the court of the Persian King Shapur III in Ctesiphon to negotiate a peace settlement relating to the partition of Armenia.Williams, S., Friell, G. Theodosius, The Empire at Bay. 1994. p 41 Historians have a difficult time explaining exactly what led to his marriage to Serena which occurred after his return to Constantinople at the successful conclusion of peace talks.Bendle 2024, 167. Claudian claims that Theodosius awarded Stilicho with Serena's hand because of his outstanding achievements, but as Stilicho was actually just a junior member of the embassy and not its leader, nor had he done anything else of note, this is certainly panegyrical publicity. Perhaps the varied duties of the notarii at some point placed Stilicho inside the imperial residence of Constantinople where he encountered Serena and they decided the match themselves, or maybe Theodosius saw a good outcome in tying a young, up-and-coming, half-barbarian general to the imperial household. The marriage would see the birth of a son, who was named Eucherius, and two daughters, Maria and Thermantia.
Whatever its origin, this match undoubtedly raised Stilicho's prospects. He was promoted to comes sacri stabuli and soon after to comes domesticorum in 385. It is unclear whether he participated in the campaign against Magnus Maximus or remained in Constantinople during that time. In 392 or 393, Theodosius promoted Stilicho to comes et magister utriusque militiae and gave him command of soldiers in Thrace.Hughes, Ian, Stilicho, p. 21; Bendle 2024, 113; Codex Theodosianus, 7.9.3.
After the death of the Western emperor Valentinian II in 392, Theodosius appointed Stilicho as co-commander of the army with Timasius.Bendle 2024, 119. They were victorious over the Western army at the Battle of the Frigidus. One of his comrades during the campaign was the Visigothic warlord Alaric, who commanded a substantial number of Gothic auxiliaries. Alaric would go on to become Stilicho's chief adversary during his later career as the head of the Western Roman armies. Stilicho distinguished himself at the Frigidus, and Theodosius, exhausted by the campaign, saw him as a man worthy of responsibility for the future safety of the empire. In several of the Claudian poems celebrating Theodosius' victories, Stilicho's participation and contribution to the campaign were highlighted. This helped him gain popularity in the empire. The last emperor of a united Rome appointed Stilicho guardian of his son Honorius, with the rank of comes et magister utriusque militiae praesentalis (supreme commander), shortly before his death in 395.Randers-Pehrson, Justine Davis. Barbarians and Romans: The Birth Struggle of Europe, A.D. 400–700. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. pp. 78–81
At the time of Theodosius' death, the field armies that had clashed at the Frigidus were still in disarray and fighting was still continuing. Claudian, Stilicho's panegyrist, makes Theodosius' spirit say "When I was raised to heaven disorder... and tumult did I leave behind me. The army was still drawing the forbidden sword in that Alpine war, and conquerors and conquered gave alternate cause for dissension. Scarce could this madness have been calmed by my vigilance, much less by a boy's rule... 'Twas then that Stilicho took my place..."De Bello Gildonico The War Against Gildo. Claudian. Loeb Classical Library, 1922. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Claudian/De_Bello_Gildonico*.html accessed 28 Sept 2020
Serving Honorius Following the death of Theodosius, Honorius became emperor of the Western Roman Empire while his brother Arcadius was placed on the Eastern throne in Constantinople. As both were underage, Stilicho remained the caretaker for Honorius until he came of age.Mitchell, 89. He would claim to have been given a similar role in regards to Arcadius, although no independent verification of this exists. Neither proved to powerfully assert themselves as leaders, and Stilicho came to be the de facto commander-in-chief of the Roman armies in the west while his rival Rufinus became the power behind the throne in the east. To strengthen his hold over the emperor, he gave Honorius his daughter Maria's hand in marriage in 398, and after her death, Thermantia's in 408. Both of these marriages did not produce any children. Stilicho used his military leadership as well as Honorius' youth and inexperience to consolidate his authority over the empire, though he acquired many rivals and enemies in the process, both in the West and East.
Balkans Campaign
His first brush with such court politics came in 395. After the Battle of Frigidus the Goths, under their new king Alaric, were returning to their allotted lands in Lower Moesia when they decided to raid the countryside. By doing so Alaric effectively broke his treaty with Rome. Unfortunately for the Romans, the armies of the Eastern Empire were occupied with Hunnic incursions in Asia Minor and Syria. Rufinus, Praetorian Prefect of the East, attempted to negotiate with Alaric in person. Officials in Constantinople suspected Rufinus was in league with the Goths. Stilicho led the army, which had been victorious at the Frigidus and was still assembled in Italy, into the Balkans to confront the Goths, eventually surrounding them somewhere in Thessaly.Hughes, Stilicho, p. 81. According to Claudian, Stilicho was in a position to destroy them, but was ordered by Arcadius to return the Eastern Empire's forces and leave Illyricum.Hughes, Stilicho, pp. 81–85. Stilicho resented the orders, for he was in a position to defeat Alaric's Goths, but he obeyed them anyway.Hughes, Stilicho, pp. 82–85. When the Eastern Empire's forces arrived at Constantinople, Arcadius and Rufinus rode out to meet them. At this meeting Rufinus was murdered by the troops. Many historians suspect the involvement of Stilicho in the assassination/murder of Rufinus.Hughes, Stilicho, pp. 85–87.
In 396 Stilicho campaigned against the Franks and other Germanic tribes in Gaul. He used the campaign to boost the morale of the western army – which had suffered three consecutive defeats in the civil wars against Theodosius – and to recruit Germanic auxiliaries to bolster its depleted ranks.Hughes, Stilicho, pp. 93–95. The next year, in 397, Stilicho defeated Alaric's forces in Macedonia, but Alaric himself escaped into the surrounding mountains. Edward Gibbon, drawing on Zosimus, criticizes Stilicho for being overconfident in victory and indulging in luxury and women, allowing Alaric to escape.Gibbon, 245 Contemporary scholarship disagrees, and finds a variety of possible explanations, including an order from Arcadius directing him to evacuate the Eastern Empire, the unreliability of his mostly barbarian troops, the revolt of Gildo in Africa or the possibility that he simply was never as close to Alaric as Claudian suggests.Blockley, 113f. Emma Burrell. "A Re-Examination of Why Stilicho Abandoned His Pursuit of Alaric in 397." Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte. Vol. 53, No. 2 (2004): 251–256.
Revolt in Africa
Later that year, Gildo, the comes et magister utriusque militiae per Africam (the commander of all troops in Africa), revolted. He declared his intention to place the African provinces, the critical source of Rome's grain supply, under the control of the Eastern Empire. Stilicho sent Mascezel, the brother of Gildo, into Africa with an army, which quickly suppressed the rebellion. However, upon his return to Italy, Mascezel was drowned under questionable circumstances, perhaps on the orders of a jealous Stilicho.Gibbon, 233–235. The year 400 also saw Stilicho awarded the highest honour within the Roman state by being appointed consul.Albrecht, M. von and Schmeling, G. L., A History of Roman Literature: From Livius Andronicus to Boethius: with Special Regard to Its Influence on World Literature, Brill, 1996. p. 1340
Pictish Campaign
Stilicho also fought a war in Britain in this time period, likely in the year 398, dubbed Stilicho's Pictish War. The campaign against the Picts is highly disputed. The troops defending the British provinces probably defeated an invasion by the Picts without any support from Stilicho – who is never recorded to have left Italy in 398. Claudian refers to Stilicho providing Britannia with forts and a legion to protect it from incursions by Picts and Scots.Reid, John H. (2023), The Eagle and the Bear: A New History of Roman Scotland, Birlinn Ltd., Edinburgh, p. 199, However, a critical analysis of his panegyric suggests that things went badly.M. Miller "Stilicho's Pictish War." Britannia. Vol. 6, (1975), 141–144
The Gothic War