Toparches

Toparches (Greek:τοπάρχης, "place-ruler"), anglicized as toparch, is a Greek term for a governor or ruler of a district, which in Byzantine times came to be applied to independent or semi-independent rulers in the periphery of the Byzantine world.

The term appears in Hellenistic times, and remained in use under the Roman Empire in the Greek East, for the governor of a district. Such districts were then called "toparchies" (sing. toparchy, from Greek τοπαρχία, toparchia). In the 6th century, in the Novellae Constitutiones of Emperor Justinian I, the term was used to encompass all local magistrates, both civilian and military.