the catepan to improve the city's defence, or otherwise surrender it to the Normans. Avartuteles played for time, sending another embassy to Constantinople. He obtained the arrival of a fleet with grain in Bari. When the grain ran out, a group of citizens again asked the catepan to beg the emperor to send an army as soon as possible. Romanos IV, whose generals had been repeatedly defeated by the Normans, and with few free troops to dispatch, sent twenty ships under the command of a Gocelin, a Norman rebel who had taken shelter in Constantinople. Stephen Pateran, appointed as new catepan of Italy, came with him. However, the Normans intercepted the Byzantine ships off Bari and scattered them. The Norman sailors identified Gocelin's ship and, despite the loss of 150 men, finally captured it; Stephen was instead able to reach Bari. He soon recognized that the defence had become impossible; a local noble, Argyritzos, was sent to negotiate with the Normans. The latter offered acceptable conditions, and Bari surrendered on April 1071. Aftermath Stephen Pateran was initially imprisoned, but was later allowed to return to Constantinople with other Byzantine survivors. With the fall of Bari, the Byzantine presence in southern Italy ended after 536 years. Emperor Manuel I Komnenos tried to reconquer southern Italy in 1156-1158, but the attempt turned into a failure. According to William of Apulia, Robert Guiscard "entrusted the city" to Argyritzos. The earliest document of Norman rule, however, shows a certain Lizius, probably a Norman, as viscount and a patrikios named Maurelianus, probably a native Bariot, as catepan. References Sources 1068 in Europe 1069 in Europe 1070 in Europe 1071 in Europe 1060s in the Byzantine Empire 1070s in the Byzantine Empire Bari Bari Bari Catepanate of Italy Bari History of Bari Bari Medieval Apulia Bari