The first Normans arrived in southern Italy round about the year 1000. The exact circumstances of their coming remain obscure, even controversial, for the principal accounts of their first contacts with the region were written long after the events in question. Some modern historians have even gone so far as to argue that what we have preserved about these events is no more than legend. However, the most plausible reconstruction suggests that there is indeed some truth behind the story in the History of Amatus of Montecassino, linking the arrival of the Normans with a Muslim attack on Salerno c. 999, and that some of their compatriots had already settled in southern Italy, probably as mercenary soldiers, before a group of, perhaps entirely other, Normans became involved in a major revolt against the Byzantine authorities in Apulia in 1017–18. After the defeat of that insurrection, groups of Normans were employed by a number of local princes and powers, notably Abbot Atenulf of Montecassino, who stationed his new troops at Pignetaro, a township some 6 km south of the abbey, to protect its property against the attacks of the counts of Aquino. This task, we are told, ‘they performed valiantly enough and faithfully as long as the abbot himself was alive’. Perhaps as early as 1019, a further body of Normans settled in the vicinity of Ariano, to the east of Benevento, from where they were recruited by the Byzantine governor, Basil Boiannes, to defend the frontiers of Apulia.