Stilicho – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 29 Part 2
While the east was in the hands of the scoundrel Rufinus, in the west a very different man came to prominence. This was Stilicho. Stilicho’s father was a Vandal, but his mother was a Roman and he lived his entire life in the empire and in service to it. Neither he nor his contemporaries seem to have regarded his German heritage as remotely important so I suggest we don’t either. He was married to the niece of Theodosius, but this was the result of his rise to power rather than the cause of it. He owed his position to his ability not his birth.
