Stilicho Defends the Western Empire
Stilicho became the effective ruler of the western Roman Empire on Theodosius I's death in January 395 and held it together for thirteen years. He was half Vandal — his father had commanded cavalry in Roman service — and had risen as a soldier and a diplomat, negotiating with Persia and marrying Theodosius's niece Serena. The dying emperor left him guardian of his eleven-year-old son Honorius, and Stilicho claimed guardianship of the seventeen-year-old Arcadius in the east as well, which the eastern court never accepted. The empire had been divided permanently at that moment, and the two halves spent the following years working against each other. His problem was arithmetic. The field armies could not defend the Rhine, the Danube and Italy at once, and every crisis had to be met by stripping another frontier. He fought Alaric's Visigoths repeatedly — at Pollentia in 402 and Verona in 403 — and beat him without destroying him, and was accused of sparing him deliberately. He destroyed Radagaisus's invasion of Italy at Fiesole in 406, reportedly 200,000 strong. To do it he withdrew troops from the Rhine, and on the last night of 406 the Vandals, Alans and Sueves crossed the frozen river and were never expelled. Britain was abandoned by its garrison the following year. He was accused of plotting to put his own son on the eastern throne, and Honorius had him executed at Ravenna in August 408. Alaric sacked Rome two years later. He is the last commander who might have held the west, and the case against him is that he could never bring himself to finish a war he might later need.
- Year: 395 CE
- Category: Political
