—
six days ago, as I write this
—
that has exploded in the courtly Roman world like a thunderbolt.
As I am your son, I know you will forgive me, despite your interest and impatience, for playing the orator and deferring my announcement of the content of this proclamation until later. It is more important, I believe, that you first understand the background to the antipathy between the two Flavians.
The two are diametrically opposed in almost every aspect of their personalities, and there are some who argue that Flavius Rufinus is the better man. l am not an adherent to that belief, nor could I be, even were I to know Stilicho only by repute. Where Stilicho will grasp a new or alien concept almost before it is uttered, and be prepared to act upon it, Rufinus will labour hard and long to define and assimilate it. That exercise completed, however, Rufinus will act every bit as firmly and decisively as Stilicho... he will merely have allowed more time to elapse. Both men are natural leaders of immense ability, and each is idolized by the troops he commands; but where Stilicho is shrewd, deliberate, logical and painstaking in his dealings with everyone, regardless of rank, Rufinus is emotional, precipitate, illogical and impulsive. All other differences fall into insignificance, however, beside the fact that Flavius Stilicho possesses a deep and abiding sense of justice, and an innate humaneness
—
attributes that simply do not exist in Flavius Rufinus.
It was this last, major difference that caused the open rift between the two, and although the details of the spark that caused the conflagration vary widely according to the source, there is enough of commonality among the stories to make eminent and acceptable sense.
Flavius Stilicho, as you know, is a Vandal by birth, his father a captain of Vandal mercenaries and his mother a Roman lady of impeccable ancestry. Flavius Rufinus is a Gaul, from the ancient territory known as Cisalpine Gaul. Stilicho absorbed his military knowledge from his father, originally, and began his career, for a very brief time, as a military tribune. Rufinus joined the Praetorians as a boy, while Stilicho was still a baby, and worked his way inexorably upward until he became the Praetorian prefect of Illyricum, on the northern Adriatic. The outstanding abilities of both men brought them early to the attention of Theodosius... in the case of Rufinus, long before Theodosius became Emperor.
The story goes that word reached Rufinus, about a year ago, that one garrison of mercenaries, ostensibly within his territorial jurisdiction, had mutinied and was holding the town it garrisoned, in open revolt against the Empire. The same story came to the attention of Flavius Stilicho more than a month later, but Stilicho's version
—
which I read
—
contained significant differences to the version reported by Rufinus. In the dispatch sent to Stilicho, by the personal hand of the district paymaster (this happened, by the way, on the Illyrican borderlands, an area plagued by infestations of bandits) he was informed that a local garrison, seconded from one of Stilicho's own legions, had been on duty without pay for almost two years. On three separate occasions, paymaster's trains, each one more heavily guarded than the one before, had been waylaid and destroyed before they could reach the garrison. The mercenaries had finally announced to the local authorities that, until they were paid in full, they would do no more soldiering, perform no military duties and permit no trade goods to leave the region. Stilicho reacted quickly, ordering the paymaster, no matter what the cost, to set this situation to rights and pay the garrison. Alas, he was too late.
The garrison, mercenaries as I have said, were Vandals, and the significance was not lost on Flavius Rufinus. He besieged the town, took possession of it and promptly slaughtered the entire garrison and populace, after which he razed the town, as an example, he said, to all potential mutineers and those who would abet them. Apparently unable to let pass the opportunity to humiliate his rival, he himself brought the word to Constantinople several months ago.
I was present in the audience chamber with Stilicho when Rufinus reported his actions to the Emperor, and it was the first word any of us had heard on the subject. Father, you could not imagine Stilicho's fury. I would never have believed him capable of such headlong, damn-the-consequences intensity of feeling, and I thought I knew him well. He had to be physically restrained from attacking Rufinus, in the presence of the Emperor himself! And even thus restrained, facing Theodosius's temper and his long-standing championship of Flavius Rufinus, and knowing his life to be hanging in the balance, Stilicho told Rufinus he was unfit to live and call himself a soldier, warning him moreover that when Rufinus died, it would be at Flavius Stilicho's hands, no matter who or what the instrument might be.
Of course, as you may imagine, the Emperor excoriated Stilicho, but a blind man could have seen that Theodosius enjoyed the confrontation! He sternly warned them both to keep themselves apart, under pain of his displeasure, and terminated the audience with no more than a mild censure of Rufinus for the atrocities that had enraged Stilicho.
Then, six days ago, His Imperial Astuteness made his proclamation. Theodosius had been unwell for months, though this was concealed from all but a few, and he was no longer a young man. But he was able, and he was cunning. He announced his partial abdication in favour of his twin sons, Honorius and Arcadius. The boys are mere infants, of course, far too young to rule. However, for the ultimate good of the Empire, Theodosius decreed that each twin would, upon his death, rule one half of the Empire, Honorius the western half, from Rome, and Arcadius the eastern half, from Constantinople. In their minority, the boys would be served, and the halves of Empire governed, by two Regents: Flavius Stilicho with Honorius in Rome, and Flavius Rufinus with Arcadius in Constantinople! In the meantime, until Stilicho and Rufinus could settle into the business of governing, Theodosius would continue to supervise the Empire at large.
What a mind, Father! At one step, Theodosius had preserved his sons' succession and doubled the Empire's chances of survival in the face of aggression, even though the doom-sayers immediately began bewailing the destruction of the Empire as men have known it. Neither Stilicho nor Rufinus will flag in their protection of their charges, and each will watch the other very closely. The Empire is in strong, but mutually inimical hands. Of course, Theodosius had no intention of dying so quickly. But die he has, and we must live now with the aftermath of his plotting.
I wish I could receive letters from you in return, but I must either ask you not to write or charge you to say nothing in your letters that might be construed by anyone as being treasonous or contumacious. The security I enjoy in my writings is now outgoing only. Anything coming to me must undergo close scrutiny by the enemies of Stilicho and his Western Empire.
Farewell. I will write again soon.
Picus
X
Astounded by this latest news from Picus, we girded ourselves and prepared for mighty things to happen. But nothing did. Life in our isolated Colony went on with its own placid rhythm, and I continued to work patiently and painstakingly with my own fledgling army. Then, in the following summer of 394, Picus's words came home to us with a new urgency.
Word came from Ullic's kingdom that pirates were landing in force along the south side of the estuary to the north of us, and we received three separate delegations from towns and villages to the south and west, beseeching our help in defending their lands from the Saxon and Frankish raiders who were descending on the coasts like swarms of flies. We also had it on good authority, from Bishop Alaric and his priests, that Saxon raiding parties had been wintering for the past two years on coastal lands to the south-east, not even bothering to sail home, and thereby catching advantage of the spring months to raid and plunder, thanks to the scarcity of military garrisons in that region. Things were going rapidly to Hades, and we were emerging as the only pocket of organized resistance in the whole south-west of Britain.