The Senate deeply resents peace with Alaric, who has become the friend and ally of his late opponent, Stilicho; in 407, when Alaric marches into Noricum and demands a large payment for his expensive efforts in Stilicho's interests, the senate, prefers war.
One senator famously declaims Non est ista pax, sed pactio servitutis ("This is not peace, but a pact of servitude").
Nevertheless, under strong pressure from Stilicho, the Roman Senate consents to promise its payment of four thousand pounds of gold.
Stilicho sends Sarus, a Gothic general over the Alps to face the usurper Constantine III, but he loses and barely escapes, having to leave his baggage to the bandits who now infest the Alpine passes.
By 407, the estrangement between the eastern and western courts has become so bitter that it threatens civil war.
Stilicho has never abandoned his plans to annex Illyricum and puts them into operation in 407.
He closes the ports of Italy to all Eastern ships, instructs Alaric to hold Epirus for Honorius, and himself prepares to cross the Adriatic, but a false report reaches him that Alaric is dead, and he now hears of the revolt of Constantine in Britain.
Once more, he must abandon his plans.
Theodosius had in 384 arranged for the marriage of his grandniece Serena to Stilicho when he was a rising military officer, ensuing his loyalty to the House of Theodosius in the years ahead.
A resident at the court of her cousin, Honorius, she had selected a bride for the court poet, Claudian, and takes care of Honorius' half-sister, her cousin Galla Placidia.
She and Stilicho have a son, Eucherius, and two daughters, Maria and Thermantia.
Maria had married the emperor Honorius, her maternal first cousin, once removed, in 398.
Following her death in 407, her sister Aemilia Materna Thermantia marries Honorius.
Zosimus records how Serena, a Christian, took a necklace from a statue of Rhea Silvia and placed it on her own neck.
An old woman, the last of the Vestal Virgins, appeared, who rebuked Serena and called down punishment upon her for her act of impiety.
Serena was then subject to dreadful dreams predicting her own untimely death.
