County of Sicily with Robert Guiscard. In fact, the seat of Roger I's government was the Calabrian town of Mileto. According to the historians Agostino Inveges and Matteo Camera Roger I started to use the title ""Great Count of Sicily and Calabria"" since 1096. After the death of Roger I the major change was the transfer of the capital: Palermo became the capital in 1112, when Roger II was invested with the County, after the regency of the mother Adelaide del Vasto. With this change, Sicily come to be governed by the central government, while the Calabrian territories became a provincial administrative unit.
Sicily was the first part of Italy to be taken by general Belisarius, who was commissioned by Eastern Emperor Justinian I as part of an ambitious attempt to restore the whole Roman Empire, thereby uniting the Eastern and the Western halves. Sicily was used as a base for the Byzantines to conquer the rest of Italy, with Naples, Rome, Milan, and the Ostrogoth capital Ravenna falling within five years. However, new Ostrogoth king Totila drove down the Italian peninsula, plundering and conquering Sicily in 550. Totila, in turn, was defeated and killed in the Battle of Taginae by Byzantine general Narses