Tatas tes aules

The tatas (Ancient Greek: τατᾶς), more formally the tatas tes aules (Ancient Greek: τατᾶς τῆς αὐλῆς, lit. 'tatas of the court') was a Byzantine court office attested in the 12th–14th centuries, whose exact functions are unclear.^[1]

The title is first attested in the seal of John Komnenos Vatatzes in the 12th century, and over the next two centuries.^[1] Nevertheless, the exact functions it entailed are unclear: according to the 14th-century historian Pachymeres, the tatas was one of the three major court functionaries along with the pinkernes (imperial cup-bearer) and the epi tes trapezes (master of the imperial table), but the 15th-century historian Doukas explains the title as "pedagogue". This led Ernst Stein to suggest that he succeeded the baioulos as imperial preceptor, a hypothesis rejected later by Vitalien Laurent.^[1]

• Kazhdan, Alexander (1991). "Tatas". In Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 2013–2014. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
• Verpeaux, Jean, ed. (1966). Pseudo-Kodinos, Traité des Offices (in French). Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.