With effective Byzantine power weighted at the northeast end of this territory, the pope, as the largest landowner and most prestigious figure in Italy, began by default to take on much of the ruling authority that the Byzantines were unable to project in the areas surrounding the city of Rome. While the popes legally remained “Roman subjects”, under Byzantine authority, in practice the Duchy of Rome, an area roughly equivalent to modern-day Latium, became an independent state ruled by the pope.