Sebastos

Sebastos (Greek: σεβαστός "venerable one", pl. σεβαστοί, sebastoi) was an honorific used by the ancient Greeks to render the Roman imperial title of Augustus. The female form of the title was sebastē (σεβαστή). From the late 11th century on, during the Komnenian period, it and variants derived from it, like sebastokrator, protosebastos, panhypersebastos, and sebastohypertatos, formed the basis of a new system of for the Byzantine Empire.

The term appears in the Hellenistic East as an honorific for the Roman emperors from the 1st century onwards, being a translation of the Latin Augustus. For example, the Temple of the Sebastoi in Ephesus is dedicated to the Flavian dynasty. This association also was carried over to the naming of cities in honor of the Roman emperors, such as , Sebasteia and Sebastopolis.

The epithet was revived in the mid-11th century—in the feminine form sebaste—by Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos (reigned 1042–1055) for his mistress Maria Skleraina, to whom he accorded quasi-imperial honours. A number of individuals were qualified as sebastoi thereafter, such as Constantine Keroularios, or Isaac Komnenos and his brother, the future emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118).

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