Certain figures in history undertake actions that reverberate down through time; their successes and failure continue to have consequences centuries after they have died. One such man was Flavius Stilicho, magister utriusque militiae of the Western Roman Empire, guardian of the child Emperor Honorius, senior military commander of all Roman forces in the west and de facto ruler of the Western Empire from the death of Theodosius I in January 395 until his execution on August 23rd, 408.
Stilicho (365-408) was half-Roman, half Vandal. In 383 Stilicho served on an embassy to the Persian king Shāpūr III, afterward marrying Serena, the favorite niece of the emperor Theodosius. In 385 he was appointed master of the soldiery (magister militum) in Thrace, and shortly afterwards directed energetic campaigns in Britain against Picts, Scots and Saxons, and along the Rhine against other barbarians. Stilicho and Serena were named guardians of the youthful Honorius when the latter was created joint emperor in 394 with special jurisdiction over Italy, Gaul, Britain, Spain and Africa, and Stilicho was even more closely allied to the imperial family in the following year by betrothing his daughter Maria to his ward and by receiving the dying injunctions of Theodosius to care for his children.
Rivalry had already existed between Stilicho and Rufinus, the praetorian praefect of the East, who had exercised considerable influence over the emperor and who now was invested with the guardianship of Arcadius. Consequently in 395, after a successful campaign against the Germans on the Rhine, Stilicho marched to the east, nominally to expel the Goths and Huns from Thrace, but really with the design of displacing Rufinus, and by connivance with these same barbarians he procured the assassination of Rufinus at the close of the year, and thereby became virtual master of the empire. In 396 he fought in Greece against the Visigoths, but an arrangement was effected whereby their chieftain Alaric was appointed master of the soldiery in Illyricum (397). In 398 he quelled Gildo's revolt in Africa and married his daughter Maria to Honorius. Two years later he was consul. He thwarted the efforts of Alaric to seize lands in Italy by his victories at Pollentia and Verona in 402-3 and forced him to return to Illyricum, but was criticized for having withdrawn the imperial forces from Britain and Gaul to employ against the Goths. He maneuvered so skillfully in the campaign against Radagaisus, who led a large force of various Germanic peoples into Italy in 405, that he surrounded the barbarian chieftain on the rocks of Fiesole near Florence and starved him into surrender.
Empress Maria had died and in early 408 Honorius married another daughter of Stilicho, Thermantia. Stilicho’s influence, however, had declined. It was rumored that he wished to have his son Eucherius elevated to the throne. Reports reached him early in 408 that his army was disaffected. Then came news of the death of the Eastern emperor, Arcadius, and Stilicho proposed to go to Constantinople. Olympius, a palace official, spread the rumor that Stilicho was preparing to put his own son on the Eastern throne, and so the troops in Pavia killed nearly all of the officials present on August 13. Stilicho went to Ravenna but was imprisoned by Honorius’ orders. He was beheaded on August 22; his son Eucherius was put to death shortly thereafter.
In the disturbances which followed the downfall and execution of Stilicho, the wives and children of barbarian foederati throughout Italy were slain by the local Romans. The Gothic army broke through the gates of Rome and sacked the city in August of 410. Many historians argue that the removal of Stilicho was the main catalyst leading to this monumental event, the first barbarian capture of Rome in nearly eight centuries and a part of the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Art by Vilius Petrauskas: King Alaric and his staff during the siege of Rome.
