nment of Arcadius, but the negotiations came to nothing.
It appears that Gildo demanded that Lybia should be consigned to his
rule, and he certainly took possession of it. It also appears that
embassies on the subject passed between Italy and Constantinople, and
that Symmachus the orator was one of the ambassadors. But it is certain
that Arcadius did not in any way assist Gildo, and the comparatively
slight and moderate references which the hostile Claudius makes to the
hesitating attitude of New Rome indicate that the government of
Alexandrius did not behave very badly after all.

We need not go into the details of the Gildonic war, through which
Stilicho won well-deserved laurels, although he did not take the field
himself. What made the revolt of the Count of Africa of such great
moment was the fact that the African provinces were the granary of Old
Rome, as Egypt was the granary of New Rome. By stopping the supplies of
corn, Gildo might hope to starve out Italy. The prompt action and
efficient management of Stilicho, however, prevented any catastrophe;
for ships from Gaul and from Spain, laden with corn, appeared in the
Tiber, and Rome was supplied during the winter months. Early in 398 a
fleet sailed against the tyrant, whose hideous cruelties and oppressions
were worthy of his Moorish blood; and it is a curious fact that this
fleet was under the command of Mascezel, Gildo's brother, who was now
playing the same part toward Gildo that Gildo had played toward his
brother Firmus. The undisciplined nomadic army of the rebel was
scattered without labor at Ardalio, and Africa was delivered from the
Moor's reign of ruin and terror, to which Roman rule, with all its
fiscal sternness, was peace and prosperity.

This subjugation of the man whom the senate of Old Rome had pronounced a
public enemy redounded far and wide to the glory of the man whom the
senate of New Rome had proclaimed a public enemy. And in the mean time
Stilicho's position had become still more splendid and secure by the
marriage of his daughter Maria with the emperor Honorius (398), for
which an epithalamium was written by Claudian, who, as we might expect,
celebrates the father-in-law as expressly as the bridal pair. The
Gildonic war also supplied, we need hardly remark, a grateful material
for his favorite theme; and the year 400, to which Stilicho gave his
name of consul, inspired an enthusiastic effusion.

It may seem strange that now, almost at the