STILICHO, FLAVIUS (?-4o8), Roman general and states man, was the son of a Vandal who had served as an officer in the army of the emperor Valens (364-378). He himself entered the imperial army at an early age and speedily attained high pro motion. He had already become master of the horse when in 383 he was sent by Theodosius (379-395) at the head of an embassy to the Persian king, Sapor III. His mission was very successful, and soon after his return he was made count of the domestics and received in marriage Serena, the emperor's niece and adopted daughter. In 385 he was appointed master of the soldiery in Thrace, and shortly afterwards directed energetic campaigns in Britain against Picts, Scots and Saxons, and along the Rhine against other barbarians. Stilicho and Serena were named guard ians of the youthful Honorius when the latter was created joint emperor in 394. Rivalry had already existed between Stilicho and Rufinus, the praetorian praefect of the East. Consequently in 395, after a successful campaign against the Germans on the Rhine, Stilicho marched east, with the design of displacing Ru finus; and by connivance with the barbarians he procured the assassination of Rufinus at the close of the year, and thereby became virtual master of the empire. In 396 he fought in Greece against the Visigoths, but an arrangement was effected whereby their chieftain Alaric was appointed master of the soldiery in Illyricum (397). In 398 he quelled Gildo's revolt in Africa and married his daughter Maria to Honorius. Two years later he was
consul. He thwarted the efforts of Alaric and Radagaisus to seize lands in Italy by his victories on the Danube at Pollentia and Verona in 401-3.
In a second campaign against Radagaisus, who led a large force of various Germanic peoples into Italy in 405, he surrounded the barbarian chieftain on the rocks of Fiesole and starved him into surrender. Early in 408 he married his second daughter Ther mantia to Honorius. It was rumoured about this time that Stilicho was plotting with Alaric and with Germans in Gaul and taking other treasonable steps in order to make his own son Eucherius emperor. The facts are doubtful. It is certain, how ever, that he was suspected by Honorius and abandoned by his own troops, and that he fled to Ravenna, and, having been induced by false promises to quit the church in which he had taken sanctuary, was executed on Aug. 23, 408.
The principal sources for the life of Stilicho are the histories of Zosimus and of Orosius and the flattering verses of Claudian. See T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vols. i. and ii. (Oxford, 188o) ; E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by J. B. Bury, vol. iii. (1902) ; P. Villari, The Barbarian Invasions of Italy, translated by L. Villari, vol. i. (New York, 19o2) ; S. Dill, Roman Society in the last century of the Western Empire (1899) ; Mommsen in Hermes xxviii.; and K. Birtin, Spiitramische Charakterbilder (Leip zig, 1919).