Ian Hughes specializes in Late Roman history and is the author of _Belisarius, the Last Roman General_ (2009); _Stilicho, the Vandal who Saved Rome_ (2010); _Aetius: Attila's Nemesis_ (2012); _Imperial Brothers: Valentinian, Valens and the Disaster at Adrianople_ (2013); _Patricians and Emperors_ (2015) and _Gaiseric, the Vandal Who Destroyed Rome_ (2017). A former teacher whose hobbies include football, wargaming and restoring electric guitars, Ian lives near Barnsley in South Yorkshire.

A military history of the campaigns of Stilicho, the army general who became one of the most powerful men in the Western Roman Empire.
Flavius Stilicho lived in one of the most turbulent periods in European history. The Western Empire was finally giving way under pressure from external threats, especially from Germanic tribes crossing the Rhine and Danube, as well as from seemingly ever-present internal revolts and rebellions.
Ian Hughes explains how a Vandal (actually, Stilicho had a Vandal father and Roman mother) came to be given almost total control of the Western Empire and describes his attempts to save both the Western Empire and Rome itself from the attacks of Alaric the Goth and other barbarian invaders.
Stilicho is one of the major figures in the history of the Late Roman Empire, and his actions following the death of the emperor Theodosius the Great in 395 may have helped to divide the Western and Eastern halves of the Roman Empire on a permanent basis. Yet he is also the individual who helped maintain the integrity of the West before the rebellion of Constantine III in Britain, and the crossing of the Rhine by a major force of Vandals, Sueves, and Alans-both in A.D. 406-set the scene for both his downfall and execution in 408, and the later disintegration of the West. Despite his role in this fascinating and crucial period of history, there is no other full-length biography of him in print.