Anthimus or Anthemus was the

Duke of Naples The Dukes of Naples were the military commanders of the ''ducatus Neapolitanus'', a Byzantine outpost in Italy, one of the few remaining after the conquest of the Lombards. In 661, Emperor Constans II, highly interested in south Italian affairs (h ...

for from 801 until around 818, when the patrician of

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

re-established

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

control over the ''ducatus''. Anthimus was, for most of his reign, independent of any higher authority, but he was losing control over his own subject cities,

Gaeta Gaeta (; lat, Cāiēta; Southern Laziale: ''Gaieta'') is a city in the province of Latina, in Lazio, Southern Italy. Set on a promontory stretching towards the Gulf of Gaeta, it is from Rome and from Naples. The town has played a consp ...

and

Amalfi Amalfi (, , ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Salerno, in the region of Campania, Italy, on the Gulf of Salerno. It lies at the mouth of a deep ravine, at the foot of Monte Cerreto (1,315 metres, 4,314 feet), surrounded by dramatic c ...

. Early in his reign, the patrician of Sicily requested his aid in fending off the

Saracen upright 1.5, Late 15th-century German woodcut depicting Saracens Saracen ( ) was a term used in the early centuries, both in Greek and Latin writings, to refer to the people who lived in and near what was designated by the Romans as Arabia Pe ...

pirates then ravaging the Sicilian coasts. Anthimus maintained his neutrality and refused. In 812, the Greek admiral sent to combat these corsairs requested aid from all the inhabitants of the Tyrrhenian coast, including those of Gaeta and Amalfi, who accepted, while Naples refused still. Thus, Naples subjects had declared their independence from her even as Naples was extracting itself from Byzantine suzerainty.

Sources

*Gay, Jules. ''L'Italie méridionale et l'empire Byzantin: Livre I''. Burt Franklin: New York, 1904. {{DEFAULTSORT:Anthimus of Naples 9th-century dukes of Naples