A ''protostates'' ( el, πρωτοστάτης, "the one who stands first/in front"), in

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cu ...

, was the man in front of an ''

epistates An ( gr, ἐπιστάτης, plural ἐπιστάται, ) in ancient Greece was any sort of superintendent or overseer. In the Hellenistic kingdoms generally, an is always connected with a subject district (a regional assembly), where the , as ...

'' (the one who stands behind). The

Greek phalanx Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

was made up of alternate ranks of ''protostates'' and ''epistates''. Thus, in a file of eight men, the ''protostates'' were the men in positions 1, 3, 5 and 7, while the epistates occupied positions 2, 4, 6 and 8. Asclepiodotus, Tactica, 2.3 The term remained in use into the

Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

. The foremost ''protostates'' of a file ('' lochos'') was called a ''

lochagos ''Lochagos'' (; abbreviated as Λγος) is used in the Greek language to mean "Captain". More precisely, it means "leader of a '' lochos''". The equivalent term in the Hellenic Army Armour & Cavalry is el, ιλάρχος, ilarchos, "leader of an ...

'' (λοχαγός).

References

Greek words and phrases Ancient Greek military terminology {{AncientGreek-lang-stub