Vestiarion

The vestiarion (, from , "wardrobe"), sometimes with the adjectives basilikon ( "imperial") or mega ( "great"), was one of the major fiscal departments of the Byzantine bureaucracy. In English, it is often known as the department of the Public Wardrobe. Originating from the late Roman palace office of the sacrum vestiarium, it became an independent department in the 7th century under a chartoularios. By the late Byzantine period, it had become the state's sole treasury department. The public vestiarion must not be confused with the Byzantine emperor's private wardrobe, the oikeiakon vestiarion, which was headed by the prōtovestiarios.

==History and functions== The bureau of the sacrum vestiarium (Latin for "sacred wardrobe") is first attested as one of the scrinia under the comes sacrarum largitionum in the 5th century, and was then headed by a primicerius. In the 7th century, as the old Roman departments were broken up, the sacrum vestiarium and the bureaus of the scrinium argenti and scrinium a milarensibus, which supervised the mints, were combined to form the department of the vestiarion, under the chartoularios tou vestiariou (). This official is variously known in the sources also as vestiarios (βεστιάριος) and [epi tou] vestiariou (). The office of vestiariou, attested in the late 13th and 14th centuries by George Pachymeres and Pseudo-Kodinos, however, was apparently a distinct and independent office, which function as the paymaster of the naval ships and apparently corresponds to that of "prefect of the army" () attested in the 6th century as army paymasters.