Constantine of Gaeta

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Constantine was the first known Hypatus of Gaeta from 839 or thereabouts until he disappears from records abruptly in 866. From the abruptness of his disappearance, he is often supposed to have been deposed violently by his successor Docibilis I.

Docibilis I of Gaeta Hypatus of Gaeta

Docibilis I was the Hypatus of Gaeta from 867 until his death.

He was a son of Anatolius of the Anatoli family. He associated his son Marinus I with him as comes. He was undoubtedly a Byzantine agent, originally holding the castle of Gaeta from his sister Elisabeth's son-in-law Theodosius, the prefect of Naples.

Marinus I was probably a Hypatus of Gaeta in association with his father from 839 or thereabouts until he disappears from records abruptly in 866. From the abruptness of his disappearance, he and his father are often supposed to have been deposed violently by their successor Docibilis I. Marinus witnessed his father's land grants in 839 and later records give him the title comes. It has been suggested that a prefect of the name Kampulus was his son.

Byzantine Empire Roman Empire during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. Both the terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" are historiographical exonyms created after the end of the realm; its citizens continued to refer to their empire simply as the Roman Empire, or Romania (Ῥωμανία), and to themselves as "Romans".

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, appointed a Neapolitan named Basil dux or magister militum. Thereafter a line of dukes, often largely independent and dynastic from the mid-ninth century, ruled until the coming of the Normans, a new menace they could not weather. The thirty-ninth and last duke, Sergius VII, surrendered his city to King Roger II of Sicily in 1137.

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Patricia E. Skinner, FRHistS is a British historian and academic, specialising in Medieval Europe. She is currently Professor of History at Swansea University. She was previously Reader in Medieval History at the University of Winchester and Lecturer in Humanities at the University of Southampton. She has published extensively on the social history of southern Italy and health and medicine. With Emily Cook, she started the project "Effaced from History: Facial Difference and its Impact from Antiquity to the Present Day" to study the history of facial disfigurement.

New title Hypatus of Gaeta
839 – 866
with Marinus I 		Succeeded by
Docibilis I


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