Flavius Stilicho

Roman general

• Born: c. 365
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: August 22, 0408
• Place of death: Ravenna (now in Italy)

For a period of some fifteen years, Stilicho acted as the generalissimo of the Western Roman Empire (and as much of the Eastern as he was allowed), repeatedly staving off barbarian assaults on Rome and on Constantinople.

Early Life

The father of Flavius Stilicho (FLAY-vee-uhs STIHL-ih-koh) was a Vandal cavalry officer, his mother a Roman. The Vandals at that time did not have the reputation for ferocity and destruction that they were later to acquire. Nevertheless, it was never forgotten that Stilicho was a “half barbarian.” He was never fully trusted by all of his Greek or Roman civilian masters and colleagues. He began his career as a protector, a member of the personal bodyguard of Theodosius the Great (c. 347-395). Following the normal course of events, he was presumably made a tribune, attached to the Roman Imperial general staff, and sent on a diplomatic mission to Persia in 383 or 384.

Shortly after this, an unexpected event took place that catapulted Stilicho firmly into prominence: He married Serena, niece and adopted daughter of Theodosius. It has been suggested that this was a love match instigated by Serena, and though historians have been reluctant to accept this sentimental theory, no more plausible one exists. Stilicho was at that time quite undistinguished, had no important relatives, and was not a likely candidate for a diplomatic marriage. The poet Claudian (c. 370-c. 404), who is admittedly biased in favor of Stilicho, wrote that his hero surpassed the demigods of antiquity in strength and size; wherever he walked, the crowds moved out of his way. These observations must have some basis in fact and could explain how the young officer attracted the attention of the emperor’s niece.

Naturally, after the marriage promotion was rapid. Stilicho was made “count of the stable,” then chief of the Imperial Guard. He seems to have held independent command in a campaign in Thrace in 392, and from 393 onward he was called magister utriusque militiae, meaning “master of both arms,” that is, of the infantry and the cavalry. While still firmly under the wing of Theodosius, he had become the approximate equivalent of field marshal, a position from which many earlier and later generals aimed at seizing Imperial power. In 394, he marched with Theodosius from the eastern half of the Empire toward Italy, to put down the revolt and usurpation of the general Arbogast and his puppet emperor Eugenius, installed in 388. In early September, 394, the armies of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires clashed at the Battle of the Frigidus River, and after initial failure the easterners won a decisive victory. Both enemy leaders were killed. Theodosius marched toward Rome but died soon after, on January 17, 395. He left Stilicho in charge of both the eastern army and the pardoned survivors of the western army. Remote from the control of Constantinople and related by marriage to the Imperial house, Stilicho was in a position of unusual power.

Life’s Work

One certainty about Stilicho’s life is that he did not use his power to the full. He never made himself emperor, though no one was in any position to stop him. For the rest of his life he claimed that Theodosius had appointed him guardian of both his sons, Arcadius (c. 377-408), the eastern emperor, and Flavius Honorius (384-423), declared emperor of the West by his father in 393. It seems that no one else was present at Theodosius’s deathbed, so naturally people have been skeptical about Stilicho’s mandate. The fact remains that Stilicho always obeyed Imperial orders, even foolish ones, and made no move against his former master’s children (although Honorius, at least, was widely disliked).

Stilicho was left, however, with at least two problems. One was the division now accepted between the two halves of the Empire. This was dangerous and unproductive, as neither side was willing to help the other very much, and there was always danger of civil war—for example, over the border province of Illyricum, the modern Balkans. However, neither half of the Empire could afford civil war, for both were hard-pressed by constant waves of barbarian invasion. In the immediate background of all events of Stilicho’s life was the disaster of Adrianople, August 9, 378, when the Goths, driven on by fear of the Huns and fury at Imperial treachery, had totally destroyed the main Imperial army and killed Emperor Valens (c. 328-378). The barbarians then knew that the Romans were not invincible.

Stilicho had a difficult hand to play. In 395 he led his joint army out of Italy toward Constantinople, again threatened by the Goths under Alaric (c. 370-410). No decisive battle was fought, but the Goths withdrew, and Stilicho—with apparently characteristic selflessness—released the eastern army from his control, returning it to Arcadius. The following year, he led an expedition into the west, along the Rhine River, possibly as a demonstration of force and to “show the flag.” In 397 Alaric once again moved into Greece, and Stilicho launched an amphibious expedition against him. Alaric was beaten, but in some unexplained way—there were accusations of treachery—he managed to make an orderly withdrawal. Stilicho then returned to Italy, only to find that North Africa had broken its allegiance to Rome and cut off the cornsupply on which Rome depended—and had done so under the pretense of authorization from the eastern emperor, whom Stilicho had just rescued. Stilicho dispatched a naval force against North Africa, which rapidly brought the province back under control.

In late 401, Alaric invaded Italy; it was the start of a series of barbarian invasions that led to the sack of Rome in 410. Alaric and Stilicho fought a bloody battle at Pollenza in 402, which both sides claimed as a victory. Alaric withdrew, however, and was decisively beaten at Verona in the summer of the same year. Once again Alaric escaped; Claudian ascribes this to the poor discipline of Stilicho’s auxiliaries. In early 406, a later invasion under one Radagaisus, with a mixed force of barbarians, was defeated outside Florence, with very few Roman casualties (Claudian claims that there were none at all).

Matters soon worsened: The Rhine froze, Gaul was invaded by hordes of German barbarians (Vandals, Burgundians, Swabians, and Alans), the army of Britain elected the usurper Constantine as emperor and launched a cross-Channel invasion, Alaric reinvaded, and, in 408, Arcadius died, leaving the eastern Empire insecure and leaderless. Stilicho could hardly have known which way to turn. What he did, in fact, was to leave Gaul to itself; he persuaded the bitterly resentful Roman senate to buy off Alaric with four thousand pounds of gold and dispatch him against Constantine. Stilicho then prepared to leave for Constantinople to take charge of Arcadius’s seven-year-old heir, Theodosius II (401-450). These measures were too pragmatic for the Roman people to accept; thus, Stilicho was accused of treachery. Honorius launched a massacre of his supporters: His Hunnish bodyguard was murdered, and Stilicho was arrested at Ravenna. It is clear that even then Stilicho could have fought and probably cracked Honorius’s stronghold on power. Instead, he obeyed orders and surrendered to execution.

Significance

Flavius Stilicho has long proved a puzzle to historians. It is very tempting to see him as the noble upholder of an impractical and decadent Imperial ruling class that rewarded his support and obedience only by murder. There is a kind of justice, in this view, in the sack of Rome by Alaric’s Goths two years later. The Roman senate and emperor did not realize how much they had relied on Stilicho until they had killed him. In favor of this view is the unswerving loyalty that Stilicho displayed, almost to the point of quixotism.

There are odd features in Stilicho’s career. He hardly ever won a major battle, except against the unimportant Radagaisus. Alaric always seemed to slip away from him. Did Stilicho, in fact, retain a kind of alliance with the Gothic king, who had been his ally at the Frigidus River in 394? Or should Stilicho be seen as essentially a warlord, whose trade was war and whose capital was soldiers? Could it be that Stilicho would not risk casualties and did not particularly want a major victory, which would only bring peace? It has also been noted that rivals of Stilicho—such as the commander of the North African expedition in 408 or Arcadius’s main adviser in 395—were inclined to meet with strange accidents or be openly murdered. Stilicho was also very quick to marry his daughters to Honorius and seems to have planned to marry his son into the Imperial family also. As a “half barbarian,” he could not be emperor, but his design may have been to have a grandson as ruler over a reunited empire. In this way, he was quite capable of ruthlessness.

The questions are insoluble, but Stilicho may not have had as much choice as modern historians tend to suppose. Accusations of military ineptitude rest on the assumption that Roman armies were competent and reliable. After Adrianople, this may not have been the case. Stilicho had continuous trouble in recruiting good Roman troops, and the barbarians he used instead were often badly disciplined and unreliable. He may, in fact, have done as well as anyone could expect. Possibly his underlying weakness was something as elementary as a desperate shortage of real Roman drill sergeants.

Bibliography

Bury, John B. A History of the Later Roman Empire. London: Macmillan, 1889. Rev. ed. A History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (A.D. 395 to A.D. 565). London: Macmillan, 1923. This volume may be considered the nineteenth century alternative to Gibbon, cited below. It is strong on dates and events and determinedly personal in interpretation. Lacks the twentieth century awareness of social forces demonstrated, for example, by Jones, below.

Cameron, Alan D. E. Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1970. This work attempts to distinguish truth from flattery in the work of Stilicho’s greatest propagandist. Perhaps by inevitable reaction from its subject, this book takes a severely negative view of Stilicho.

Claudian. Claudian. Translated by Maurice Platnauer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972-1976. This edition of Claudian’s poems makes it possible for students to see both what data can be extracted from the poems on Stilicho and how carefully data are at times concealed. The information Claudian does not mean to give is more revealing than his surface intention.

Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 6 vols. Reprint. New York: Modern Library, 1995. This set of volumes is only one of innumerable reprints of Gibbon’s classic work, first published from 1776 to 1788. In spite of their age, chapters 29 and 30 are well worth reading for their style and recondite learning. Gibbon succeeded at an early stage in catching the ambiguous quality of Stilicho’s achievement.

Isbell, Harold, trans. The Last Poets of Imperial Rome. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1971. Among other poems, this volume offers Claudian’s Raptus Proserpiae (c. 397 c.e.) and the Epithalamium (398 c.e.) for the marriage of Honorius and Stilicho’s daughter Maria. The former poem is valuable as a reminder that there was still an important pagan faction among the Roman aristocracy.

Jones, A. H. M. The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey. 3 vols. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. These volumes provide essential data for considering the complicated social, administrative, and military structures within which Stilicho functioned.

O’Flynn, John M. Generalissimos of the Western Roman Empire. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1983. The three chapters of this work devoted to Stilicho give an able summary of what is known and attempt to answer some of the riddles of his career in terms of the power structures of the time. There is some interest in the comparison with Stilicho’s successors, who appear to have shed some of his inhibitions and solved some of his problems.

Randers-Pehrson, Justine D. Barbarians and Romans. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. This work is organized geographically; the chapters on Milan, Rome, and Ravenna all have relevance to Stilicho’s career. Includes good illustrations: for example, a photograph of the monument celebrating the victory at Pollenza, with Stilicho’s name carefully removed.