Stilicho

Presumed representation of Stilichos (right) with his wife Serena and son Eucherius.

Flavius ​​Stilicho (* around 362, † August 22, 408 in Ravenna ) was a Roman army master ( magister utriusque militiae ) and politician.

Life

Ascent

Stilicho was born in the Imperium Romanum as the son of a Romanized Vandal and a Roman woman. His father had already served in the Roman army under Valens and had Roman citizenship ; So, regardless of his father's origins, Stilicho was much more Roman than Teutonic. He joined the Roman army as a very young man and quickly made a career in various functions in the (Eastern) Roman civil service under Emperor Theodosius I (379 to 395), including as commander of the life guards ( comes domesticorum ). In 383 he took part in a Roman embassy to the court of the Persian great king Shapur III. part. Because of his good service, Stilicho received the title of comes , rose to magister militum within two years and apparently fought successfully against Bastarn and rebellious Visigoth mercenaries. In 384 he was allowed to marry Serena , the niece and foster daughter of the emperor Theodosius, with whom he had three children, Eucherius , Maria and Thermantia .

When the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian II died in 392 under mysterious circumstances (probably suicide) and Theodosius delayed the appointment of a successor for months, the magister militum per Gallias Arbogast finally had the court official Eugenius proclaimed Augustus of the West by the army . Theodosius was not ready to recognize the emperor from outside the dynasty, but led an army to meet him in 394, which also included a large contingent of Visigoth foederati (under Alaric ?), Which Arbogast and Eugenius defeated in September 394 in the Battle of Frigidus . The elite of the Western Roman army was destroyed, as were many Visigoth mercenaries. Stilicho was one of Theodosius's commanders during the battle.

After the battle of Frigidus, the two parts of the empire were effectively in one hand for the last time. Theodosius had previously appointed the 10-year-old Honorius Augustus of the Roman West and now installed his young but proven magister militum Stilicho as the supreme master of the defeated army of the western empire. His choice fell on Stilicho because, firstly, he was related to him by marriage and, secondly, had no connections whatsoever with the Frankish leadership of the western army. Honorius was brought to the imperial court in Milan , where his father intended to reside from then on. When Theodosius died unexpectedly days after the arrival of his son, the new administration had not yet been established. Stilicho had to act quickly and take the reign even without the consent of the now senior Augustus and emperor of the Roman east Arcadius and his powerful praefectus praetorio Rufinus in order to stabilize his position of power and perhaps also to prevent the army from putting up its own candidate. With regard to the Eastern Empire, he relied on Theodosius' alleged last will, which had entrusted both emperors to him. However, it is controversial and unlikely that Theodosius really entrusted Stilicho with the guardianship of both sons, as Stilicho's court poet Claudian first claimed in January 396. In any case, Stilicho's name is not mentioned in the funeral oration in which Bishop Ambrose called on the army to be loyal to the child emperor. It is very likely that Stilicho's claim to be the guardian of the adult senior Augustus in Constantinople was a mere fiction that was intended to establish a priority for the western imperial court in the entire empire.

Regent of the Western Empire

After Theodosius' death in January 395, Stilicho claimed the position of guardian and imperial administrator for his then almost eleven-year-old son Honorius, to whom the western half of the empire fell after the actual division of the empire. Theodosius' daughter Galla Placidia was also under his care. From the beginning his reign was shaped by two factors: On the one hand the rivalry between the two imperial courts in West and East, on the other hand the military threat from the rebellious foederati under Alaric and invading barbaric associations. Stilicho, who claimed an illegitimate position, also had to try to stabilize his position.

395–398: Military victories and tensions with Constantinople

After taking over de facto power in the western empire, Stilicho demonstratively secured the Roman Rhine border and dismissed the predominantly Visigothic warriors who were currently in Lower Mossia without adequately rewarding them. There, however, the warriors, who felt cheated of their wages for participating in the victory over Eugenius, mutinied under their leader Alaric, whom they might proclaim to be their rex , and turned against their former allies and employers. Stilicho felt compelled to use his two armies against the revolting Visigoths in Moesia and Macedonia . The Eastern Roman court around Arcadius and Rufinus, however, was not willing to recognize Stilicho as regent of the east; It was therefore seen as a threat when Stilicho marched into the eastern half of Illyricum , which belonged to the eastern half, in the battle against Alaric's Goths, who besieged Constantinople, in the fall of 395 , and demanded the return of the eastern army and Stilicho's departure from Illyria. Stilicho finally had to give in and surrender the Eastern Roman legions, the best units of his army. Alaric took advantage of this power vacuum and devastated Greece . Rufinus was murdered in Constantinople , presumably on behalf of Stilicho, by Gainas , the leader of the sacked Eastern Roman troops. According to Claudian, who wrote a humiliating poem against Rufinus and recited at the western court, the murder was a reaction by the troops to Rufinus himself having called barbarians into the country. At the court in Constantinople, Eutropius took over his power and influence.

After the withdrawal of the Eastern Roman troops, the Western Roman army, which, as mentioned, had paid a high blood toll in the civil war in 394, lacked men. The late Roman recruitment mechanisms were not able to quickly fill large gaps. Stilicho therefore had to rely more on foreign foederati to improve the effectiveness of his army. In the following year he led an expedition against rebel tribes on the Rhine. With the Romans befriended warrior groups ( gentes ), such as the already largely Christianized Marcomanni , he concluded alliance treaties ( foedera ) and recruited soldiers among them to secure the border, which was threatened from all sides. In 397 he carried out a second campaign against the rebellious Visigoths in Illyria, but let them intentionally (?) Escape to the territory of the Eastern Empire, which raised doubts as to whether he was really interested in supporting the Eastern Empire. Arcadius and Eutropius responded to the threat posed by Stilicho by (re) admitting Alaric to the (east) Roman military hierarchy as magister militum of Illyria. At the same time they declared Stilicho an enemy of the state ( hostis publicus ), and Eutropius persuaded the Roman governor Gildo in Africa to apostate, presumably in order to induce the urban Roman population, who depend on North African grain, to revolt against Stilicho. Stilicho was able to suppress the uprising in 398. The Roman Senator Symmachus played an important role in the subsequent successful mediation with the Eastern Empire .

398–401: Calm Before the Storm

After Stilicho had successfully repulsed an attack by the Picts on Roman Britain in 398/99 , the following three years were quite peaceful. During this time the government of Honorius under Stilicho passed several laws that are recorded in the Codex Theodosianus . In order to reintegrate the Roman Senate aristocracy into the state, especially financially, he tied to the traditions of the republic and thus increased the reputation of the city of Rome , which had not been an imperial residence since 312. He restricted the corruption and the power of court officials. Fortresses on the Danube-Iller-Rhein-Limes were re-fortified. In addition, the practice of pagan cults, which had already been banned by Honorius' predecessors, was tolerated in Rome. Allegedly Stilicho even had the Victoria Altar , which Gratian had removed from the curia in 382 , erected again. In contrast, in several provinces paganism and Christian groups deviating from the Roman Church such as the Donatists were persecuted. The army was also reformed. The initiative for these laws and their enforcement seem to go back to Stilicho, who was the only representative of the imperial will.

For the year 400 Stilicho was appointed consul ordinarius in Rome and had thus reached the height of his reputation. His opponent in the eastern empire, Eutropius, had been overthrown by Gainas in 399, which led to an interim rapprochement between the western empire and Constantinople. However, Gainas ultimately failed in his attempt to achieve a similarly dominant position in the eastern court as Stilicho in the west, and died at the end of 400.

Stilicho, meanwhile, strove to make himself invulnerable by marrying into the imperial family. As early as 398, Stilicho married his underage daughter Maria to Emperor Honorius. Later, in 405, in the year of Stilicho's second consulate, Eucherius was to be betrothed to Galla Placidia.

401–406: Destabilization of empire and society

Why the Visigoth foederati under Alaric 401 left Illyria and moved to Italy is not entirely clear. Janßen rejects the thesis that the government in Constantinople incited them to do so with good reason. Rather, they had robbed Eutropius' overthrow of their advocate in Constantinople, which is why they were forced to renew the mutiny. In addition , according to Janßen , Gainas , who himself was of Gothic origin, aroused the reluctance of the Orthodox Constantinople against the foederati with his demonstrative Arianism . After his fall in 400, they would have felt threatened.

In any case, Stilicho felt compelled to withdraw large numbers of troops from the borders in Gaul and Britain in order to oppose Alaric in Italy. He then successfully fended off the incursion into northern Italy on Easter Monday 402 in the battle of Pollentia , even if Alaric was able to escape with his cavalry. Stilicho pursued the fugitives and defeated them again in the battle of Verona in the height of summer of the same year , but let Alaric escape again. He and his men temporarily resettled in Illyria, whose ownership was still disputed between the western and eastern empires, which gave him room to maneuver. The western Roman court, meanwhile, moved from Milan to the safer Ravenna at the end of 402 . The fact that Stilicho let the Visigoths withdraw to Noricum unmolested aroused suspicion, especially in the Eastern Empire.

In Italy, the invasion of the Goths had led to a new dispute between Christians and pagans, which was particularly attached to a prophecy of the Sibylline books , according to which the enemy would only advance to a certain place. The pagans now saw the fulfillment of this prophecy in Stilicho's victory over the Goths, which filled the Christians with concern about an increase in pagan practices. In 404, the dispute over the very rich and very pious Senator's daughter Melania shook the relationship between Christians and pagans in Rome. The still very young woman with no legal capacity and her husband, who was also only a minor, wanted to take the biblical commandment ( Mt 19:21  LUT ) seriously; they sold the huge family property and released the slaves. Because her relatives tried to prevent her by legal means, Melania turned to Stilicho's wife Serena. This, a pious Christian, asked the emperor to intervene on behalf of Melania. In fact, Honorius issued a decree in Stilicho's absence that lifted the legal guardianship of the underage couple and allowed the property to be given to the church. This deepened a split between the Christian imperial court and the still partially pagan Senate, which undermined the compromises reached by Stilicho in previous years. As a result, only Christians were appointed to court positions. For Stilicho, Honorius' unauthorized action meant that his reign was no longer undisputed.

Honorius and Serena also acted contrary to Stilicho's intentions in terms of foreign policy. In 404 they took a position against Arcadius and his wife Eudoxia for the disgraced Archbishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom , which led to the renewed deterioration of the relationship between western and eastern currents. In this context the unresolved situation in Illyria came up again, because probably in the same year Hunnic troops invaded Thrace under Uldin , the grandfather (?) Of Attila . Stilicho feared that he would not receive any support from the eastern empire to secure the endangered border region, and also demanded the eastern part of the disputed area for the western empire. It was probably mainly about the fact that this region played a very important role as a recruiting area for troops; Stilicho apparently wanted to strengthen the defense force against the Alans and other tribes by including this area in the western empire . Possibly in order to achieve this goal, he sought the military support of the Visigoths and concluded a treaty with Alaric in 405 in which he awarded him support and the rank of magister militum of Illyria. He also signed a contract with Uldin. In order to legitimize the annexation of the east of Illyria, he not only pointed to its alleged neglect by the Eastern Empire, but also promoted the ecclesiastical political dispute over Chrysostom, which escalated after Eudoxia's death on October 6, 404.

Before a solution could be found in the Balkans, in 405/406 an essentially Gothic tribal association, which other groups had also joined, suddenly invaded northern Italy under the Ostrogoth Radagaisus . While the army of invaders split up in search of booty, Stilicho gathered and recruited his troops by again withdrawing strong units from Gaul. In August 406, with the help of Hunnic cavalry, he succeeded in destroying the Goths in the battle of Faesulae . 12,000 of the defeated warriors were incorporated into the Roman army, the remainder sold into slavery , which caused the price of slaves to drop significantly in the short term. For this victory Honorius celebrated the penultimate triumph ever held in Rome .

Similar to the victory over Alaric four years earlier, this victory was also interpreted religiously. As then, pagan senators asked to see the Sibylline books, but Stilicho refused them now that the emperor had so clearly sided with the Christians. Instead, he had them burned as hostile to Christianity. To finance the wars, he had statues of gods and the last remaining temple treasures melted down. This earned him the hatred of many Roman senators. To the Christians, however, Stilicho appeared to be a tool of divine assistance for the emperor.

Decline and fall

Stilicho was unable to prevent the invasion of several large Germanic warrior groups on the exposed Roman Rhine border on New Year's Eve 406/407, which took place a few months later . To hold Gaul , he had to withdraw troops from other regions, but this was hardly possible. In late 406 or early 407 the legions in Britain raised the counter-emperor Constantine (III) . This crossed the English Channel and established himself in Gaul, where he was joined by remaining Roman troops, who felt abandoned by Stilicho. He succeeded in defeating Germanic invaders and reorganizing the Rhine border, but he was denied official recognition as co-emperor by Honorius. Instead, the emperor sent Stilicho, who had just prepared for the invasion of Illyria and was already attacking Alaric, to Gaul. But he and his general Sarus did not succeed in the autumn of 407 in preventing Constantine from attacking Hispania , which had been loyal to Honorius until then, through his general Gerontius. In view of the emergency, the civil war against Ostrom was broken off and reconciled with Arcadius.

Between 404 and 407 Stilicho's eldest daughter Maria, who was married to Honorius, died childless. Serena pushed for a new marriage between the emperor and the younger daughter Thermantia, probably also to refute the rumors that Honorius had become impotent thanks to a poison administered by his in-laws. Above all, however, Stilicho was undoubtedly concerned with securing his own position through the connection with the imperial family. The fact that Stilicho tried to postpone the wedding despite the emperor's wish may indicate the intention to elevate his son Eucherius to the throne. This is countered by the fact that Stilicho had not helped his son to any higher offices and also did not promote his marriage to Galla Placidia, although both had long since reached marriageable age.

In the spring of 408, the federated Visigoth warriors rose again, feeling abandoned after the attack on the east of Stilicho had stopped. However, Alaric refrained from openly breaking the treaty by advancing into Italian territory, but sent a messenger to Stilicho to extort the lack of pay that had been promised to him for the incursion into Epirus , which belonged to the Eastern Empire . In this situation Stilicho convinced the Senate (allegedly under threat of violence) to provide Alaric with the appropriate funds to use the Gothic warriors against Constantine (III.) Instead of Arcadius.

No sooner had Stilicho clarified this question - bypassing Honorius and Serena - when the message of Arcadius' death arrived. The stability of the empire, which had been difficult to maintain, was again in danger. Honorius, now the longest-serving emperor responsible for his colleague, initially wanted to travel to Constantinople himself to supervise the successor to his nephew, Theodosius II , who was only seven years old , and to take over his guardianship. Stilicho, on the other hand, pointed out that the emperor was needed in view of the dangerous situation in the West, and was initially able to assert himself: In August 408, Stilicho went to the troops in Ticinum to prepare himself for the trip to Constantinople. Alaric was commissioned by him to support the campaign against the counter-emperor Constantine (III.) In Gaul. On August 13, 408, Honorius also arrived in Ticinum, supposedly to encourage the troops for the campaign against Constantine (III). It came to a mutiny , probably inspired by rumors spread by Olympius about a coup d'état allegedly planned by Stilicho, in which almost all the high officials present from Stilicho's environment perished. Stilicho received no support from the Western Roman imperial court, either because Honorius believed the rumors that Stilicho suspected of making pacts with the Visigoth Alaric and thus of high treason , or because he himself had spread them. It was allegedly feared at court that Stilicho was seeking the imperial crown of the Eastern Empire for his son, Eucherius, who was betrothed to the imperial daughter and sister Galla Placidia. The background to the event was apparently the fact that the western court, which had endured Stilicho's dominance for 13 years, believed that they no longer needed the mighty army master now that Honorius himself was senior Augustus in the entire empire: Stilicho's claim, guardian to be also the emperor of the east had become worthless with the death of Arcadius.

Stilicho and Eucherius withdrew to Ravenna and sought asylum in a church. But soldiers who were to arrest him on Honorius' orders, followed him and his son. While Eucherius managed to escape for the time being, Stilicho was put forward the death sentence by Heraclianus on August 22, 408 and immediately carried out. As a result, there were wild riots against Stilicho's followers, which dragged on until the beginning of 409 and to which many Germanic mercenaries and their families living in Italy fell victim. Eucherius was also killed. The sources give little information about the background to this act. Zosimos depicts the courtier Olympius as the driving force and profiteer of both the massacre and the slander of Stilicho. It is indeed probable that Olympius played an important role. Besides Stilicho's murderer Heraclianus, other officers and court officials will also have been involved. Stilicho's follower Flavius ​​Constantius later avenged the army master by first beating Olympius to death in 410 and then killing Heraclianus in 413.

Serena, who was in Rome at the time of her husband's murder, was sentenced to death by the Roman Senate for high treason during the siege of the city by the Visigoths in late 408 as one of the last victims. The slaughter of the Germanic foederati meant that many of them defected to the Visigoths. The foedus , which they had closed with Stilicho, was declared null and void, with the result that Alaric did not march against Constantine (III), but instead invaded Italy, which was militarily weakened after Stilicho's death, and finally plundered Rome in 410 .

evaluation

Stilicho's judgment by contemporaries is ambivalent. The senator Symmachus and the court poet Claudian praised Stilicho during his lifetime as the one who saved and restored the declining Roman civilization. However, both presumably did not experience Stilicho's decline after 404. After his fall, however, the Roman historians and writers mostly followed the rumors of his alleged betrayal. Now the Germanic origin of his father was emphasized in order to denigrate Stilicho as a barbarian. Since he used to surround himself with a predominantly Gothic bodyguard, the accusation that he used the Visigoths to secure his position of power and had only concluded treaties with Alaric for this purpose was widespread. The contemporary Orosius , a Christian priest, also assumed that Stilicho wanted to make his son emperor, but also considered him to be a persecutor of Christians. Even pagan historians judged Stilicho very negatively after his fall. Rutilius Namatianus , an official close to Symmachus at the imperial court, described him in 416 as the actual Western Roman ruler, but referred to the burning of the Sibylline books as a traitor to the Roman people and their (pagan) traditions.

Sozomenos , who lived a generation later, devoted only a short section of his church history to him, in which he accused him of high treason with Alaric. Zosimos , the most detailed source, accused Stilicho (and Rufinus) in his New History , written almost a hundred years later, on the one hand to have enriched himself at the expense of the inhabitants and to have ruled over the heads of the young emperors. On the other hand, he paid tribute to Stilicho's achievements and attributed him to selfless work for the benefit of the empire. He did not share the view that Stilicho intended a coup d'état.

While Stilicho was often viewed negatively at the time, the prevailing opinion today is that he was a loyal servant of the emperor and empire. Other researchers consider the question of whether the army master was now a “barbarian” or a “servant of Rome” to be wrong anyway and see Stilicho simply as a power-hungry military who tried to make his ultimately precarious and illegitimate position through success and to secure a link to the dynasty. His death represented a bitter loss for the Western Roman Empire from a military point of view. Stilicho had politically upgraded the office of army master to such an extent that from then on the western Roman army master at the imperial court in Ravenna played a central role and thus the respective occupation of this post was decisive was the imperial policy. For two years the court tried to prevent another general from filling the void that Stilicho had left, but in 410, faced with severe military setbacks, they inevitably returned to the hands of a powerful military leader: Stilicho's former follower Flavius ​​Constantius rose within a short time to the actual ruler of the West and finally even forced his emperor to rise.

literature

• Henning Börm : Westrom. From Honorius to Justinian . 2nd edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2018, p. 43 ff.
• Thomas S. Burns: Barbarians within the gates of Rome. A study of Roman military policy and the barbarians, ca. 375-425 AD Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN et al. 1994, ISBN 0-253-31288-4 .
• John B. Bury : History of the Later Roman Empire. From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian. Volume 1. Dover, New York NY 1958, (reprinted from 1923 edition).
• Alan Cameron : Claudian. Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1970.
• Ian Hughes: Stilicho. The Vandal who saved Rome. Pen & Sword Military, Barnsley 2010, ISBN 978-1-8441-5969-7 , (popular science).
• Tido Janßen: Stilicho. The Western Roman Empire from the death of Theodosius to the assassination of Stilichos (395–408). Tectum-Verlag, Marburg 2004, ISBN 3-8288-8631-0 (also: Münster, Universität, Dissertation, 1999).
• Otto Seeck : Stilicho . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III A, 2, Stuttgart 1929, Col. 2523 f.

Web links

Commons : Stilicho  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Stilicho  - sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Stilicho in the catalog of the German National Library
• Claudian's works (English / Latin with Lacus Curtius)

Remarks

1. ^ According to Rainer Warland : A portrait of Stilichos? The Monza Diptych. In: Claus Hattler (Red.): The Kingdom of the Vandals. Heirs to the empire in North Africa. von Zabern, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-8053-4083-0 , p. 98, it is questionable whether the diptych really represents Stilicho and his family.
2. ↑ Janßen: Stilicho. 2004, pp. 29-33.
3. ↑ See Ambrosius, de obitu Theodosii 5
4. ^ Henning Börm: Westrom. From Honorius to Justinian. 2013, pp. 39–45.
5. ↑ For example Zosimos 5, 7, 4-6
6. ↑ Janßen: Stilicho. 2004, p. 57.
7. ↑ Janßen: Stilicho. 2004, p. 68.
8. ↑ Janßen: Stilicho. 2004, p. 78.
9. ↑ Claudian , Eutropium , 1, 392-393; de consulatu Stilichonis , 1, 250-255; de bello Gothico , 436-438
10. ↑ Otto Seeck : History of the fall of the ancient world . Volume 5, p. 329
11. ↑ Janßen: Stilicho. 2004, pp. 107-124, 154.
12. ↑ Janßen: Stilicho. 2004, p. 130.
13. ↑ Janßen: Stilicho. 2004, p. 161.
14. ^ So Janßen: Stilicho. 2004, p. 174.
15. ↑ Orosius , Historiarum adversum paganos VII. 37, 13-15
16. ^ Rutilius Namatianus: De redito suo 2, 41
17. ^ Paulinus von Nola , Carmen 21
18. ↑ Janßen, Stilicho , p. 223
19. ^ So Henning Börm: Westrom. From Honorius to Justinian. 2013, pp. 49–51.
20. ↑ Zosimos 5:32 ff .; Chronica minora, volume 1, p. 300
21. ↑ Janßen: Stilicho. 2004, pp. 241-251.
22. ↑ Claudian: de bello Gothico 38-51
23. ↑ Orosius VII. 38, 1 + 3
24. ^ Sozomenos, Historia Ecclesiastica VIII, 25
25. ^ Zosimos, New History 5.1
26. ↑ Susanne Erbelding, Katarina Horst: The empire does not strike back - the division of the empire and the partial empires in west and east. In: Claus Hattler (Red.): The Kingdom of the Vandals. Heirs to the empire in North Africa. von Zabern, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-8053-4083-0 , pp. 89-93.
27. ^ Henning Börm: Westrom. From Honorius to Justinian. 2013, p. 46
28. ^ Henning Börm: Westrom. From Honorius to Justinian. 2013, pp. 61–63.