Vandal General Stilicho and His Family
This diptych (“folding tablet”) made of ivory around 400 shows Stilicho, the top general in the Roman army in Europe and close adviser to the western Roman emperor, with his wife, Serena, and their son Eucherius. Stilicho’s life reveals the mixing of cultures in the later Roman Empire: his father was from the Vandal tribe in Germany, and his mother was Roman; he himself rose to prominence in Roman imperial government and society. Serena was the adoptive daughter of the emperor, and Stilicho and Serena’s daughter Maria married the emperor’s son. Stilicho is shown dressed in the richly decorated clothing appropriate for a member of the Roman elite, and he wears a metal clasp to fasten his robe, a symbol of his father’s ethnicity. The images on his shield of the two emperors then ruling the divided Roman Empire proclaim his loyalty even as they point to the political and geographic fragmentation of the time. (Basilica di San Giovanni Battista, Monza, Italy / Bridgeman Images.)