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a mere puppet like Valentinian suffice. He needed a colleague on whom he could rely, but his sons were too young and may already have begun to display the pervasive weakness that would characterize their later reigns. We cannot know what Theodosius would have decided, for he had only three months to live. Still a young man by the standards of the Roman elite, he died of congestive heart failure on 17 January 395. The young augustus Honorius was at his side in Milan, and the regency devolved immediately upon Stilicho. In the East, where Arcadius theoretically reigned, power was in the hands of Stilicho’s bitter enemy, the praetorian prefect Rufinus. Stilicho, however, had at his command the field armies of both eastern and western empires, and their partial demobilization triggered the crisis that would soon envelop much of the empire.

Stilicho himself is a sympathetic figure, but one badly compromised by hostile accounts both ancient and modern. He had the misfortune to command the western empire in the face of severe external threats and do so for an emperor incapable of inspiring confidence even as a puppet and figurehead. No one could have countered every challenge that Stilicho faced, and his enemies sought explanations for his periodic failures: latching on to the fact of his Vandal descent on one side, they argued that Stilicho demonstrated the inevitable treachery of the barbarian. Modern scholars have followed suit, imagining that ‘Germanic’ blood gave Stilicho more in common with barbarian enemies than with the empire he served, a foolish canard whose time should long since have passed. As we can see both in his actions and in the testimony of Claudian, he was only ever a Roman commander, of proven competence on the battlefield, and the most trusted of Theodosius’ military subordinates. More than that, he was by marriage a member of the imperial family, the spouse of Theodosius’ niece and adopted daughter Serena, whose son Eucherius was acknowledged by Theodosius as his grandson. Even before Theodosius’ death, Stilicho had been made the legitimate guardian of Honorius, and by marrying Stilicho’s daughter Maria, the young emperor became his son-in-law in 398. In other words, Stilicho’s many years of conflict with the eastern court should not be understood in terms of his Vandal blood, or more general barbarian ambitions to dominate Roman interests, but rather as the political intrigue that attends any royal minority and which, in the present instance, broke out the moment Theodosius was dead.

Alaric’s Revolt

In 395, Stilicho sent some of the auxiliary units that had served at the Frigidus back to the East. At the head of one of these units was Alaric, who had presumably been brought into the ranks of the imperial army shortly after the Balkan rebellion of 391.[215] In 395, we are told by Zosimus, Alaric grew angry at not having been given a proper command, instead remaining in charge of just those barbarians he had led on the campaign against Eugenius.[216] This anger is quite plausible. Particularly given that barbarian auxiliaries had borne the brunt of the fighting at the Frigidus, Alaric may well have felt he deserved a promotion for having won Theodosius his victory. Regardless, while en route through the Balkans, Alaric rose in revolt. At first, he was joined only by the troops he already commanded, but his following soon burgeoned. We should probably envisage Alaric’s followers growing in the same way as did those of Fritigern between 376 and 378, an initial core being joined by a varied group of the dissatisfied and dispossessed who saw in the rebellion a chance to better their condition. In the Balkans of the early 390s, the Gothic settlers of 382 and their descendants may have had especially good reasons for dissatisfaction and may therefore have supplied the largest number of new recruits as Alaric’s following grew, but we lack evidence to that effect. Certainly nothing supports the common assumption that Alaric gathered behind him all the Goths of the 382 treaty, or even a majority of them.