STEWART, DUGALD
Scottish philosopher, b. 22 Nov. 1752 at Edinburgh, d. there 11 June 1828. He taught at the universities of his native city and of Glasgow.
S. enjoyed at his time fame and influence superior to the mediocrity of his thought. Reid (v.), he may be considered the principal representative of the Scottish school (v.). In his most important works (*Elements of the philosophy of human mind*, 3 vols., Edinburgh 1792–1827; *Outlines of the moral philosophy*, ibid. 1793; *Philosophical essays*, ibid. 1810; *Dissertations on the progress* ...
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Son of a Vandal who had served with great honour under Emperor Valens, Stilicho entered the military and did not fail to distinguish himself, obtaining commands and political missions of great importance. In particular, during an embassy to the Great King of Persia, he demonstrated skill and firmness, succeeding in upholding Roman interests without involving the Empire in war. For these merits he finally received supreme command of the army («magister utriusque militiae») and in marriage the hand of Serena, niece of Emperor Theodosius.
He accompanied the Emperor to Italy in the victorious campaign against the usurper Eugenius. Thus, at the death of Theodosius (395), the guardianship of his young sons Arcadius, aged 17, and Honorius, aged 11—whom he had already had recognised as Augusti—fell to Stilicho. Since Stilicho resided in the West with Honorius, it was not difficult for jealous courtiers to persuade Arcadius, regent in Constantinople, to assume an independent stance towards his guardian. The discord manifested itself immediately when masses of Goths, long admitted within the Empire’s borders and employed in war, returning from the expedition to Italy, lingered to sack the regions of Illyricum. Stilicho led his troops to Thessalonica, but at Constantinople it was desired that the prefecture of Illyricum should not depend on the West, and Flavius Rufinus, praetorian prefect in Constantinople, obtained from Arcadius an order for Stilicho to return to Italy. Stilicho wished to avoid civil war and obeyed. Moreover, he had no lack of serious concerns in the West as well: the rebellion of the Moor Gildo, *comes* of the diocese of Africa, grave because it cut off the supply of grain to Rome, already deprived of the Egyptian tribute transferred to Constantinople. By employing African forces commanded by Gildo’s brother, the usurper was defeated and killed. The merits Stilicho had earned, celebrated in a poem by Claudian, were acknowledged by a closer bond of kinship with the imperial family through the marriage of the fourteen-year-old Honorius to Stilicho’s daughter Maria. Stilicho was thus arbiter of the Empire, and his work in civil government was wise and beneficial. Less fortunate was another intervention by Stilicho in the East, this time to combat the Gothic leader Alaric, who was savagely sacking Greece; this increased suspicions and hostility towards Stilicho to the point that the court of Constantinople offered Alaric the rank of *magister militum* for Illyricum, shifting the Gothic threat to Italy, which appeared more desirable than the repeatedly sacked Greece. When the Goths took Aquileia and threatened Milan, from which Honorius fled, Stilicho, having gathered troops from Gaul and Britain, succeeded in defeating Alaric at Pollentia and Verona (AD 402) and in winning another victory at Faesulae over other barbarian hordes that had penetrated Italy under the leadership of a Radagaisus (AD 405). Yet it seemed that neither victory was fully exploited, and the suspicion arose that Stilicho was aiming to prepare the succession to the throne for his own son Eucherius, betrothed to Honorius’s sister Galla Placidia.
There can be no doubt of Stilicho’s loyalty to the house of his great emperor Theodosius. He gave a final proof of this when, after conflicts arose among the Roman troops, instead of accepting the offers of his soldiers ready to follow him anywhere, he chose to present himself alone before Emperor Honorius at Ravenna. Received with hostility, lured by deceit from a church where he had taken refuge, Stilicho was condemned to death as a traitor (April 408). Two years later the Goths of Alaric freely traversed Italy and sacked Rome.