in Antiquity, an appellation given by the emperors of the East to certain officers sent into Italy, in quality of vicars, or rather prefects, to defend that part of Italy which yet remained under their obedience, particularly the city of Ravenna, against the Lombards, who had made themselves masters of nearly all the rest of the country.

The residence of the exarch was at Ravenna, which city, together with that of Rome, was all that remained to the emperors. The first exarch was the patrician Boetius, famous for his treatise De Consolatione Philosophiae, who was appointed in 568 by the younger Justin. The exarchs subsisted about 185 years, and ended with Eutychius, under whose exarchate the city of Ravenna was taken by the Lombard king Astulphus, or Astolphus.

The emperor Frederick created Heraclius, archbishop of Lyons, a descendant of the illustrious house of Montboissier, exarch of the whole kingdom of Burgundy; a dignity till that time unknown except in Italy, particularly in the city of Ravenna.

Homer, Philo, and other ancient authors, give the name *exarchus* to the choragus or master of the singers in the ancient choruses; the word *αρχος* or *αρχων* signifying equally to begin and to commend. EXARCH of a Diocese was, anciently, the same with primate. This dignity was inferior to the patriarchal, yet greater than the metropolitan.