the struggle. [Sidenote: The first coming of the Normans, 1017.] The fame of the Normans as soldiers was already known in the south of Italy, and chance now threw Meles in the way of some Norman warrior-pilgrims, whom devotion to the Archangel had taken to the sanctuary of St. Michael, in Monte Gargano, in imitation of which a Neustrian bishop had some generations before set up the famous monastery of St. Michael in Peril of the Sea. Meles proposed to the pilgrim leader, Ralph de Toeny, that he should join with him against the Greeks. Pope Benedict VIII. encouraged the enterprise, and the adventurous Normans greedily welcomed the opportunity. In 1017, Meles and his northern allies won a victory over the Greeks at Civitate in the Capitanata. ‘This victory,’ sang the Norman rhyming chronicler, William of Apulia, ‘mightily increased the courage of the Normans. They saw that the Greeks were cowards, and that, instead of meeting the enemy face to face, they only knew how to take refuge in flight.’ [Sidenote: Meles and Ralph of Toeny.] Other Normans flocked from their distant home on the report of rich booty and fair lands to be won on easy terms in Apulia. But they despised their enemy too much, and in 1019 a battle fought on the historic field of Cannæ annihilated the little Norman band. Meles and Ralph hastened over the Alps, in the hopes of interesting Henry II. in their cause. Even the death of Meles was not fatal to the fortune of his allies. Some survivors from Cannæ took service with the princes of Capua and Salerno, and the abbot of Monte Casino. They were mere mercenaries, and willingly sold their swords to the highest bidder. When Henry II. made his transient appearance in southern Italy in 1022 [see page 50], he found his chief obstacle in the new Greek fortress of Troja, obstinately defended by some valiant Normans in the pay of their old foe the Catapan.