As long as there was an Exarch at Ravenna the Catapan in the South was subordinate to his authority. After the disappearance of the Exarchate the Catapan remained the supreme Imperial authority for all Italy. Under the Catapan were inferior governors of districts called Turmarchs.[1]
The development of the cities of the Empire in Lower Italy was much the same as the later development of Italian cities in the North, nominally subject to the Western Empire. Just as Florence, Genoa, Pisa, and so on, became really self-governing republics; as in many cases this self-government of the cities ended in the hereditary rule of princes, although all the time they were supposed to belong to the Emperor's domains, so was it in the South. Here, too, the Greek cities soon governed themselves, giving only a nominal obedience to the Catapan and paying tribute, not very regularly, to Constantinople.
The chief Greek city in Italy was Naples. Under Constans II (641-668) Naples became a Duchy of the Empire (661). From that time it ruled itself. Its governor was the Duke of Naples, "Magister militum."[2] He had a council of "Nobiliores." So it became an aristocratic republic, not unlike Venice. At first the dukes were nominated by the Exarch; then a hereditary line began. The Duke of Naples with his council ruled a fairly large stretch of country behind
- ↑ Τουρμᾶρχαι. Τόρμα, τοῦρμα (turma) means a region.
- ↑ Στρατηγός
in 1042. Popular etymology confused "Catapanus" with "Capitaneus," "Capitano." So the district in Apulia, between the rivers Ofanto and Fortore (where Monte Gargano is), reconquered by the Empire in the eleventh century (above, p. 57), was, and still is, called "Capitanata," after this title. See Card. Leo of Ostia († c. 1115), "Chron. s. monast. Casinensis," L. ii, cap. 50; "Rer. It. Scrip.," iv. 371, and Muratori's note, ibid. The province Basilicata is a parallel case. There was a Byzantine official called the Βασιλικός, or rather, this title seems to cover several offices. In the Conc. Nic. II (787) at the beginning of its second Actio, they send for a person called first Βασιλικός ἄνθρωπορ, then Βασιλικός μανδάτωρ (=mandator; Mansi, xii, col. 1051, D-E). St Neilos the Younger († 1004) has dealings in Calabria with Eupraxios, who is ὁ Βασιλικός ("Vita S. Nili," viii; P.G. cxx, 96, A-B). Basilicata, covering most of the old Lucania, takes its name from this title. "Basilicata" occurs first in documents of 1134, where Roger II of Sicily writes of "Iustitiarii nostri Basilicatæ." In 1161 William I mentions "Philippus de Gussone regius Iustitiarius Basilicatæ" (Homunculus, op. cit., p. 46). See Homunculus (pseudonym of Racioppi), "Storia della denominazione di Basilicata" (Rome, 1874), and Giacomo Racioppi, "Storia dei popoli della Lucania e della Basilicata" (Rome, 1889), vol. ii, cap. ii, pp. 13-26.
