The atriklines ( Greek: ἀτρικλίνης, plural atriklinai) was a Byzantine court official responsible for organizing feasts and banquets in the imperial palace. [1] [2] Along with maintaining order at imperial banquets, [3] he was tasked with ensuring that guests were received in the correct order of precedence according to their court rank and office. [1] [2] The atriklines performed and fulfilled his duties by utilizing a list known as a kletorologion (κλητορολόγιον) containing the officials, dignitaries, and ministers who possessed the right to be entertained in the palace. [1] The roster itself would undergo alterations in order to account for the establishment of new offices, the elimination of old offices, and changes made to the guest order of precedence. [4] A prominent atriklines was a certain Philotheos, who in 899 held the imperial title of protospatharios and authored the only surviving example of a kletorologion. [1] [2] The office cannot be traced later than the 11th century. [5]
The term atriklines is of Latin origin, from triclinium (dining hall), but it was often distorted into artoklines or artiklines (ἀρτικλίνης) through the influence of Greek artos (bread). [5]
References
Sources
- Bury, John Bagnell (1911). The Imperial Administrative System of the Ninth Century - With a Revised Text of the Kletorologion of Philotheos. London: Oxford University Press.
- Kazhdan, Alexander (1991). "Atriklines". In Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
- Neville, Leonora Alice (2004). Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950-1100. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52-183865-8.
- Tougher, Shaun (2008). The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-20-386620-7.