What is "papias"

The papias was a eunuch official in the Byzantine court, responsible for the security and maintenance of the buildings of the imperial palaces in Constantinople. He commanded an extensive staff and performed in important role in palace ceremonies. In the Palaiologan period, the honorary title of megas papias ("grand papias") was created and awarded to senior aristocrats.

Papias is a Neotropical genus of grass skippers in the family Hesperiidae.

Papias (fl. 1040s–1060s) was a Latin lexicographer from Italy. Although he is often referred to as Papias the Lombard, little is known of his life, including whether he actually came from Lombardy. The Oxford History of English Lexicography considers him the first modern lexicographer for his monolingual dictionary (Latin-Latin), Elementarium Doctrinae Rudimentum, written over a period of ten years in the 1040s. The Elementarium has been called "the first fully recognizable dictionary" and is a landmark in the development of dictionaries as distinct from mere collections of glosses. Papias arranges entries alphabetically based on the first three letters of the word, and is the first lexicographer to name the authors or texts he uses as sources. Although most entries are not etymological, Papias laid the groundwork for derivational lexicography, which became firmly established only a century later.

Papias seems to have been a cleric with theological interests, possibly living in Pavia. The name "Papias" means "the guide," and may be a pseudonym or pen name. Bruno of Würzburg saw an early draft of the Elementarium before he died in 1045, but an unambiguous reference in the chronicle of Albericus Trium Fontium establishes that it was published by 1053.

Papias may refer to:

• Papias (admiral), Roman admiral in the 1st century BCE
• Papias of Hierapolis, 2nd-century AD Christian author
• Papias (lexicographer), author of Elementarium Doctrinae Erudimentum (1040s)
• Papias (butterfly)
• Papias (Byzantine office), office for eunuchs in the imperial palace administration

Papias was a Roman admiral in the 1st century BC. During the Roman civil wars he participated in Sicilian revolt under the command of Sextus Pompeius.

Appian mentions Papias several times in his work The Civil Wars (Emphylia, Ἐμφύλια), when he describes the fight over Sicily. In the summer of 36 BC Papias attacked the fleet of Lepidus transporting his invasion army from Africa to Lilybaeum ( Marsala) in the southwest of Sicily. Though he managed to inflict heavy losses on the fleet of Lepidus, he ultimately failed to prevent his army from landing. Later on August 11 of the same year he led the fleet of Sextus Pompeius into the battle of Mylae against Agrippa. During course of the battle Papias' own ship was sunk, but he managed to swim to another ship of his fleet being nearby and continued the battle. However Pompeius, who observed the battle from the shore, ordered a withdrawal after he recognized that the battle seemed to tilt in Agrippa's favour and that he had reinforcements arriving as well. Papias managed an orderly retreat of the fleet into the shoals, where the larger and heavier ships of Agrippa's fleet didn't dare to follow them. Later Papias' ships slipped away and sailed eastward.