prove himself a stout defender of Rome, even as the empire frayed and fell apart at its seams. It that sense, Stilicho was walking proof of the porous boundaries between Romans and barbarians—whose worlds intersected as much as they stood opposed.
“Since man inhabited this globe never has [any other] mortal been granted all earth’s blessings without alloy,” wrote the poet Claudian, who served as Stilicho’s personal propagandist.27 But Stilicho’s assumption of power in the west (which included marrying his daughter Maria to young Emperor Honorius) threw him into conflict with a wide range of enemies from within and beyond the empire—and a resurgent swell of mass migration th
Powers and Thrones
Dan Jones