Stratopedarches

'master of the camp'), sometimes Anglicized as Stratopedarch, was a Greek term used with regard to high-ranking military commanders from the 1st century BC on, becoming a proper office in the 10th-century Byzantine Empire.

[5] The Swiss historian Albert Vogt suggested that the stratopedarchai were military intendants, responsible for army supplies and managing the fortified assembly bases, the mitata.

The title is first attested as a technical term in 967, when Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas (r. 963–969) named the eunuch Peter as stratopedarchēs before sending him with an army to Cilicia.

This arrangement parallels that of the two domestikoi tōn scholōn, a fact that led Nicolas Oikonomides to suggest that the post was created as a substitute of the latter office, which was barred to eunuchs until the 11th century.

[4][7][8] The actual nature of the office is difficult to reconstruct, as it is rarely found in technical sources like the Byzantine military and court manuals, and its usage in the historical accounts is simply as another word for a high commander, in place of 'stratēgos' or 'domestikos tōn scholōn'.

The precise arrangement suggested by Oikonomides is certainly not in evidence in the 11th and 12th centuries, when the term likely signified a commander-in-chief for a field army composed of professional regiments (tagmata), rather than an institutionalized position.

[4] [9] The title megas stratopedarchēs ('grand master of the camp') was instituted c. 1255 by the Emperor Theodore II Laskaris (r. 1254–1258) for his chief minister and confidante, George Mouzalon.