The
symponos () was, along with the
logothetes tou praitoriou, one of the two senior subalterns to the Eparch of Constantinople, the chief administrator of the capital of the
Byzantine Empire.
[; .] His main responsibility was the supervision of the city's
guilds on the Eparch's behalf.
[.][: "In the ninth century, the ministry was divided into two departments, one under a symponos or assessor, who supervised the urban guilds, the other under the logothetes tou praitoriou, who may (like the earlier primiscrinius) have been concerned with the administration of justice."] Earlier scholars suggested that each guild had its own
symponos, but this hypothesis has been rejected since.
[.][.] John B. Bury identified him as the successor of the
adsessor attested in the late 4th century
Notitia Dignitatum, but the earliest surviving seal of a
symponos dates to the 6th or 7th centuries. The office is last attested in 1023.
According to the Taktikon Uspensky, the
symponos and the
logothetes tou praitoriou preceded, rank-wise, the
chartoularios of the
Byzantine themes and domesticates, but were beneath the rank of
spatharios.
[.]
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