Alexander the Great was antiquity\'s greatest commander

[Robert Vermaat]

Only one thought: perhaps you can change Stilicho with Arminius? The former won a few battles and thus played for time but the latter expelled the Romans from the new founded province Germania, must have been a very good general and perhaps changed history a lot more than other persons mentioned in the list. Whether this was a good thing is quite debatable but that's another story.

Yes and no. Arminius indeed defeated the Romans while he had much less to work with. But then again, he had the advantage of complete surprise, and his later battles went bad. The Romans had taken an enormous hit, but they were never driven from Germania. They surely re-adjusted their strategic goals, but they remained on the east bank of the Rhine for centuries, and later took bloody revenge for their defeat.

Stilicho, on the other hand, never could show such a resounding victory, but then again his resources were limited and so was his political support.

With both, we must ask the ‘what-if’ question: the answers then would show that Arminius was unlikely to have made changes to world history, and Stilicho most likely would. The Roman Empire was far too strong for Arminius and only much later finally abandoned the idea of conquest of larger Germania. Had Stilicho lived, Alaric would not have sacked Rome, and maybe the Gothic army would even have gone over to Stilicho. We might even have seen Stilicho’s son on the throne instead of Valentinian III!

Personally I rank Stilicho higher than Belisarius, who won great victories but later in life also knew many defeats.