LOST ROMAN HEROES

Having inherited a bankrupt Western Empire, with no treasury, no army, no popular support, and no civitas, Majorian sets about achieving the impossible, knitting the West back together again.  Never before has a Western Emperor started in such dire straits, with such ambitious objectives, and with such exceptional talents.  We cannot help but wish him the very best (as we shed a tear for him, and Rome)...

Majorian was a young Italian commander who served with distinction under Aetius as the great general tried to piece the West back together again.  When Aetius is assassinated, Majorian survives the bloodbath, and the murder of three emperors in rapid succession, leaving him on the cusp of the worst job in the world.

Aetius maneuvers himself to the top of the power structure in the West, only to be brought low by Galla Placidia and loyal Bonfatius.  After suffering his first and only real defeat, there is no one left to oppose him, but rather than seeking the throne for himself, he dedicates himself to piecing Rome back together, taking on his greatest nemesis, Attila himself!  

This is the man that even contemporaries referred to as THE LAST ROMAN.  Only son of General Gaudentius, born in Durostorum, a frontier fortress on the Danube, Aetius, he wound up in the West after his father fought under Emperor Theodosius at the Frigidus.  From there he found himself on a fast track that would send him as a hostage to Alaric and the Goths, and from there to Uldin and the Huns where he would grow up amongst Rome's most fearsome enemies.  When he was released by the Huns in his early 30's and returned to Ravenna, there was no man that had the knowledge of those enemies like Aetius, something that the Empress, Galla Placidia, knew all too well, as did his enemies at court...

Granddaughter of bear-loving Emperor Valentinian I, granddaughter of last-of-the-mohicans Count Theodosius, and daughter of Emperor Theodosius who salvaged the Empire after Adrianople, Galla Placidia had the bluest blue running through her veins.  One might be tempted to think, that after having been born in this most privileged of positions, she had an easy life?  Yet that could not be farther from the truth.  Orphaned at the age of 3, besieged in Rome at 16, and kidnapped by the Goths at 17, life threw every conceivable challenge at Galla Placidia and she survived them all, surfing the tumultuous waves of chaos that buffeted the Western Roman Empire in its final days.  Our first female heroine candidate earned every last little ounce of the legend surrounding her life.  

Just one year after the Emperor Theodosius died in 395AD, Stilicho, his son in law and the man he trusted to carry the Empire forward, is struggling with an impossible situation.  The frontiers are overrun by an unholy coaltion of barbarian tribes, pushed inexorably towards Rome by the approaching Hun menace.  Meanwhile, Alaric and his Goths, the most powerful military force in the Empire, rampage through the Roman homeland, demanding military honors and a place to settle his people.  Over the course of the next decade, Stilicho would accomplish miracles with paltry resources, protecting Italy, while meeting, and defeating a host of enemies that breached the Roman frontier, but none more fearsome than Alaric, who Stilicho defeated in battle time and again.  Yet after each defeat, Alaric always seemed to slip away, seeding the rumors that would plague Stilicho the rest of his life.  Anti-barbarian sentiment builds.  And though half-Vandal Stilicho was born Roman, and devoted his life to serving and protecting the Empire, a plot is hatched to murder the defender of the Western Empire.  Once Stilicho is eliminated, there is nothing capable of holding Alaric, King of the Goths in check, and no one capable of protecting the City of Rome, birthplace of empire.   

Meet Stilicho, the half Vandal, half Roman soldier who joins Emperor Theodosius' bodyguard in his late teens, catches the eye of the emperor's niece, marries into the imperial family, and rises to the highest military ranks in the Empire!  A devoutly loyal and honest man, Stilicho makes a plethora of enemies along the way, but never loses sight of his loyalties, to Emperor and nation.  Amongst those enemies are Rufinus the Prefect, Eutropius the Eunuch, and a young Goth warlord who would be king someday, Alaric.  This is the origin story of two of the most consequential, and mysterious men in the final chapters of the West.

Born in Trier in 339AD, Ambrose was the privileged son of the praetorian prefect of Gaul.  As a young man, he entered the Roman civil service and rose quickly to the role of governor in north Italy during the reign of Emperor Valentinian.  Though he was not a Christian and did not seek the honor, Ambrose was elected Bishop of Mediolanum in 374AD, making him one of the most important leaders of the church at a time that the Christian church was infiltrating every facet of the imperial government.  He would go on to become the friend, and nemesis, of multiple Roman emperors and usurpers, leaving an indelible stamp on the Church and the State.  

Theodosius, son of the legendary Count Theodosius, was thrust into one of the most desperate situations in Rome's history, in the wake of the utter bloodbath at Adrianople in 378AD.  Inheriting the mantle of the East, with no army to call upon, and with the Goths rampaging in the Roman heartland, for some reason, Theodosius answered the call, in somehow, he would find a way to put the pieces together again.

Count Theodosius, born in Hispania to a military family, he rose through the ranks and accomplished remarkable things lost in the mists of time.  When he emerges into the spotlight he is the Emperor Valentinian's fixer, who recovers Britannia, settles the Rhine, and recovers Africa for the Empire without breaking a sweat, with humility and grace.  But no good deed ever goes unpunished, and so it is with Theodosius, but that cannot prevent him from founding one of Rome's great dynasties.