Alexander the Great was antiquity\'s greatest commander

[geala]

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.

I agree with what you said about Stilicho. But I did not want to be too impudent and add another Germanic commander to tier2 or remove a non-Germanic so I chose Stilicho to be replaced.

Overall I feel Arminius affected history more than some others. Arminius took his chance and beat the Romans the only way possible at that given time. Of course surprise was his weapon (he was a villainous rebel indeed) but that was the cutest thing he could have done.

Personally I thing the events of 15/16 AD were at least as important as 9 AD. Arminius must have formed a quite formidable germanic force to fight the invaders. These later battles were (perhaps) roman victories but strange victories indeed. Eight legions had to move away after that victories and a part of the huge force was in imminent danger to suffer the same fate as Varus legions 7 years before. You know the recent discussion wether the Kalkriese findings belonged to Caecinas desperate march instead to Varus battle (don't want to start a Kalkriese discussion).

The big province Germania was lost after the events and only a small part (but maybe the most interesting) of it remained in the hand of the Romans to form the 2 or later 3 new provinces.

For me it is questionable wether the formation of the bigger Germanic groups which were so dangerous from the late 2nd century on would have been possible without Arminius victory. If, maybe, could be...it is a fruitless discussion more or less but it's very funny indeed.