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' ( , ) was an honorific used by the Ancient Greece to render the Roman Emperor of Augustus. The female form of the title was ' (σεβαστή). It was revived as an honorific in the 11th century Byzantine Empire and came to form the basis of a new system of court titles. From the Komnenian period onwards, the Byzantine hierarchy included the title sebastos and variants derived from it, like , , , and .
The epithet was revived in the mid-11th century – in the feminine form – by Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos () for his mistress Maria Skleraina, to whom he accorded quasi-imperial honours. A number of individuals were qualified as thereafter, such as Constantine Keroularios, or Isaac Komnenos and his brother, the future emperor Alexios I Komnenos ().
Initially, the formed the basis of this new familial aristocracy, with sons of a , a , or a being themselves; due to the proliferation of the title, however, under Manuel I Komnenos () a new class of dignitaries was created for the emperor's nephews and cousins, i.e., the sons of higher dignitaries; and the were relegated to a grade below them, above the . The were further divided in two groups: the simple and the '. The latter were members of various aristocratic families tied to the emperor via marriage to his female relatives ( means "son-in-law" in Greek). The thus formed the upper layer of the class, but should not be confused with the imperial , the actual sons-in-law of the emperor, who were even higher in the hierarchy, ranking above the cousins and nephews and just below the . The forms ' ("venerable by all"), and are also found in seals, inscriptions, and correspondence of the period, but they are merely rhetorical augmentations of the original title , and do not, as was believed by earlier scholars like Gustave Schlumberger, represent distinct and superior ranks. It is notable that among Byzantine , their precedence was not determined by the offices they might bear, but by the degree of their kinship to the emperor.
In Byzantium itself, the title lost its pre-eminence in the late 12th century, and in the following centuries, the was a title reserved for commanders of ethnic units. By the time pseudo-Kodinos wrote his Book of Offices, shortly after the middle of the 14th century, the sebastos occupied one of the lowest rungs in the imperial hierarchy, coming 78th between the and the . His court dress was a white hat with embroideries, a long of "commonly used silk", and a hat covered in red velvet and topped by a small red tassel. He bore no staff of office. Earlier lists of offices, such as the appendix to the Hexabiblos, give slightly different ranks, placing him above the governor () of a fortress and of the , and after the .
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