Shortly after the beginning of his principality (832), Sicardo, Siconolfo's brother, sent him away, fearing his ambitions, and sent him into exile in Taranto.

In 837-8 AD, the Saracens attacked the Lombard coast of Puglia and in 846 they occupied Taranto, of which they made a strong base and center of raids on the whole Lombard Calabria.

After the death of Sicardo and the accession to the throne of the treasurer Radelchi, the "Chronicon Salernitanum" testifies to the episode of the liberation of the future Prince Siconolfo, a prisoner in Taranto in the 40s of the 9th century. On that occasion, citizens of Salerno and Amalfi (Landolfo di Capua and Orso di Acerenza) wandered among the crowds of the local Taranto market and the neighboring streets, pretending to be terracotta pot merchants: evidently the circumstance that saw in Taranto traders from the Campania coast intent on selling their wares was part of normalcy.

The pantomime was so credible that it was able to deceive, for an entire evening, the jailers of Siconolfo, and therefore free the one who will soon be elected head of the newborn principality of Salerno. He would have hidden for a certain period with his brother-in-law Orso, count of Conza, and only later would he return to Salerno.