Α strator (Greek: στράτωρ) was a position in the Roman and Byzantine militaries roughly equivalent to a groom. The word is derived from Latin sternere ("to strew", i.e. hay, straw). The strator (in Greek narrative sources often replaced with the Greek equivalent of hippokomos) was typically a soldier, sometimes even a centurion, who was chosen from the ranks to act as a groom for a senior officer or civil official. His tasks included attending to and even procuring horses, and the supervision of the stable. In the Roman Empire, the stratores of the imperial court formed a distinct corps, the schola stratorum, headed by the Count of the Stable (comes stabuli), and later, in the middle Byzantine period, the protostrator (πρωτοστράτωρ, "first strator"). In the provincial administration, senio