Stilicho
Rutilius
makes his most ferocious attack in the poem on Stilicho, who arguably
represents a double threat—as a half Vandal, half-Roman, he unites the
barbarian enemy from without with the treacherous enemy from within. In DRS,
Stilicho is the epitome of evil, worse than the proverbially bad emperor
Nero, whose most heinous crime was the assassination of his mother
Agrippina. (See Tacitus Ann. 14.1-12 for a gripping account of
Nero’s incestuous relations with and murder of his mother). Stilicho’s crime was even worse, Rutilius
claims, because he murdered Rome, the mother of all.
Stilicho rose to power as a general under the
emperor Theodosius I, emperor (augustus)
of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire.
Stilicho married the emperor’s niece, Serena, and was a key figure in
Theodosius’ many military and diplomatic successes. It was Theodosius who, in
391, issued an edict banning traditional Roman religious sacrifices and ritual,
a law with huge implications for non-Christian Romans. As James O’Donnell (2009.153) puts it, “The
mandate was imposed by imperial troops, by social fear, and, here and there, by
the partially approved thuggery of Christian zealots...Not since Caracalla, who
conferred full Roman citizenship on all free inhabitants of the empire in the
early third century, had a single emperor done so much to affect so many lives,
irreversibly.”
In
392, the Western emperor Valentinian II died, and the Western military
strongman Arbogast put forward Eugenius as the next Western Emperor. Political tensions were high between the two
regimes (Theodosius, a Christian, seems to have thought that Eugenius was
encouraging a pagan revival in the West, and that Arbogast had engineered the
murder of Valentinian, who was Theodosius’ brother-in-law), and Theodosius did
not acknowledge Eugenius’ position as augustus,
declaring instead that his own son Honorius (aged eight at the time) was the
Western augustus. Theodosius, with
the help of Stilicho, reinforced the Eastern armies, in particular by
recruiting thousands of foreign auxiliary troops, including Visigoths under the
command of Alaric. In 394, the
Theodisian troops, led by Stilicho and Alaric, invaded Italy and defeated
Eugenius and Arbogast at the Battle of the Frigidus River:
To understand why fighting Constantinople
over east Illyricum might have something to do with winning Alaric’s support
against the broader northern threat, we also need to take account of the Gothic
agenda. As Alaric had shown repeatedly since 395, he was perfectly willing to
forge a military alliance with the Roman state, but the price had to be right,
and the perceived deficiencies of the peace of 382 substantially rectified. As
we know, this meant full recognition for their overall leader and a designated
revenue-producing district legitimately earmarked for their support. (This is
what they had got from Eutropius in 397, and they would continue to want it in
the later 400s.) The only problem for Stilicho and Alaric was deciding
precisely where the Goths should be established. In 406, their brief Italian
job aside, they had been occupying Dacia and Macedonia since 397. But east
Illyricum, contrary to established tradition, was currently part of the eastern Empire. Stilicho thus faced a
dilemma. He could move the Goths from the territories they had occupied for the
best part of a decade into lands that he controlled. This would give him the
right to grant them the fully legal settlement they required, but would
necessarily involve huge disruption, both for the Goths, and – perhaps more
importantly from Stilicho’s point of view – for the Roman landowners of any
western territory into which the Goths might move. Alternatively, he could
legitimize their control of the territories they already held, which would
involve browbeating Constantinople into transferring east Illyricum back into
his hands. The latter was his eventual choice, and was, on reflection, the
simplest means of getting the Goths on side. Seen in this light, Stilicho’s
policies look far from crazy (Heather 2005.219-20).
Theodosius
died in 395, leaving one son, Arcadius, in Constantinople as augustus of the East, and Honorius in
Ravenna as augustus of the West. “Neither was of age, neither was up to the
job, but nobody was ready to let them fail” (O’Donnell 2009.154). The diplomat and general Stilicho was
Honorius’ regent. Alaric, the Visgothic
general, broke his treaty with Rome and made various attempts to invade Italy,
and in 402 laid siege to Milan, where Honorius was trapped. Stilicho broke the siege, and defeated
Alaric’s army at the Battle of Pollentia, but Alaric and most of his men
managed to escape, and Stilicho made a truce with Alaric. Stilicho’s enemies at court took it as an act
of treason that Stilicho did not eliminate Alaric after defeating him; Rutilius
blames Stilicho for admitting the Visigoths into the Roman Empire. For some time Stilicho and Alaric were allies
in an attempt to make the province of Illyricum part of the Western empire, but
that alliance collapsed when Stilicho was forced to turn his attention to the
various Germanic tribes putting unrelenting pressure on the frontiers of the
empire. In 406 a wave of Vandals, Alans,
and Suevi crossed the Rhine and went on to devastate the province of Gaul,
Rutilius’ homeland. Meanwhile, the
perceived weakness of Honorius spurred a rebellion by Constantine III in
Britain, which Stilicho’s general Sarus was unable to crush, though Stilicho
did block the rebel troops from coming into Italy. Alaric was threatening to
invade Italy and demanding payment; it was Stilicho who, in 408, persuaded the
reluctant and outraged Senate to pay Alaric off (at a quite reasonable sum);
the idea was that Alaric would ally with the Romans against the rebellious
Constantine III. This arrangement, and
the anger it provoked, weakened Honorius’ trust in Stilicho, though it was most
likely the wiser policy. In May of the
same year, Arcadius, Honorius’ brother, the Eastern Roman emperor, died,
leaving his young son Theodosius II as his heir. Rumor spread that Stilicho wanted to oust the
young Theodosius and replace him with his own son. Stilicho’s political
opponents engineered a military coup against him in August of 408, as a result
of which he was executed with Honorius’ approval. At the time of Stilicho’s
death, Alaric still had not received the payment that the Senate had agreed to,
and it was clear that the agreement would not be honored.
One
dreadful result of the death of Stilicho was a xenophobic backlash in which the
wives and children of foederati
(barbarian allies of the Romans) were slaughtered all over Italy, resulting in
tens of thousands of the allied troops quite understandably deserting Honorius
and joining Alaric. Alaric then laid siege to the city of Rome, trying to
negotiate a peace treaty and the right to settle in Roman territory. Honorius, without an effective general, was
unable to break the siege, and in 410 Alaric and his men sacked the city of
Rome.
Another
accusation leveled by Rutilius against Stilicho is that he betrayed Rome by
burning the Sibylline books (2.41-60). Which
Sibylline books does Rutilius accuse Stilicho of burning, and was the burning
an anti-pagan act? The Sibylline books
contained oracular sayings in Greek verse, and dated back to the last king of
Rome, Tarquinius (Lact. Inst. Div.
1.6). They were consulted by the Roman Senate during times of crisis; they were
considered to contain advice on what religious rituals were necessary to
prevent the destruction of the Roman state, and hence were a pledge of the
durability of Rome. Augustus had them placed in the Temple of Apollo on the
Palatine, where they remained until their destruction. Rutilius is the only source for the
accusation that Stilicho had them burned. However, it is not clear that the ancient
Roman Sibylline books were relevant, or even extant when Rutilius was
writing. There were also Sibylline
oracles circulating from the second century compiled by Jewish and Christian
sources. Cameron speculates, following Demougeot 1952, that Stilicho must have
been responding to a current Sibylline prophecy unfavorable to himself; many
were circulating in the late fourth and early fifth century, and given the
pressure of the Germanic invasions and internal political strife, many were
apocalyptic predictions of the fall of Rome:
Stilicho presumably seized and destroyed
all such defeatist prophetic texts he could lay his hands on. He was following
good precedent. No less a person than Augustus, in his capacity as pontifex
maximus, burned thousands of lines of Sibylline Oracles deemed ‘unsuitable,’
retaining for future consultation only what he had personally authorized (among
other things presumably weeding out all prophecies of doom). If the Sibylline
books that Stilicho burned included what remained of the books rescued from the
temple of Apollo, that would explain why pagans were angry. But given the fact
that so many unofficial Sibyllines were thought to have prophesied the birth of
Christ, many Christians must also have been disturbed.
Cameron 2010.216-17.
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