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Historical person
Stilicho was a Roman general of Vandal origin who became the dominant military figure in the western empire under Honorius. He fought Goths and internal rivals before being executed in 408, a blow to western Roman stability.
In Adam Lofthouse’s Barbarian and the Throne, Videricus, heir to the Greuthungi, is surviving by theft when he encounters Stilicho, a rising Roman officer. In Douglas Jackson’s The Barbarian, their route crosses the pirate-threatened Mare Germanicum and Saxonia as they seek General Stilicho, the one Roman commander Marcus believes may still offer protection and a coherent defence of the western empire.
In non-fiction, Stilicho is discussed in Nick Holmes’s The Fall of Rome and Adrian Goldsworthy’s The Fall of the West. In Nick Holmes’s The Fall of Rome, the narrative follows Valens, Theodosius I, Stilicho, Honorius and Alaric through divided courts, military rivalries and repeated failures of negotiation.
Series
The Marcus Flavius Victor sequence is set during the early fifth-century collapse of Roman authority in the West. Marcus, a veteran cavalry commander shaped by decades on Britain’s northern frontier, first undertakes a final and increasingly suspicious inspection of Hadrian’s Wall. He then leads a small company out…
All books in this series
Shadow of Rome is set in the late Roman Empire and follows soldiers, frontier commanders and barbarian recruits through Britain, Gaul, Constantinople and the imperial civil wars of the late fourth century. The series begins with the Great Conspiracy in Roman Britain and moves towards the struggles of…
All books in this series
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
