and who told them that with a few soldiers like themselves he could easily overcome the Greeks, whereupon they promised to return with their countrymen and assist him. Another story of the same year tells of a body of forty valiant Normans, also on their way home from the Holy Sepulchre, who found a Saracen army besieging Salerno and, securing arms and horses from the natives, defeated and drove off the infidel host. Besought by the inhabitants to stay, they replied that they had acted only for the love of God, but consented to carry home lemons, almonds, rich vestments, and other products of the south as a means of attracting other Normans to make their homes in this land of milk and honey. Legend doubtless has its part in these tales,—the good Orderic makes the twenty thousand Saracens in front of Salerno flee before a hundred Normans!—but the general account of the occasion of the Norman expeditions seems correct. Possibly a Lombard emissary accompanied the pilgrims home to help in the recruiting; certainly in 1017 the Normans are back in force and ready for business. There was, however, nothing sensational or decisive in the early exploits of the Normans on Italian soil. The results of the first campaigns with Meles in northern Apulia were lost in a serious defeat at Canne, and for many years the Normans, few in number but brave and skilful, sought their individual advantage in the service of the various parties in the game of Italian politics, passing from one
