Apokaukos

The Apokaukos family is attested in Byzantine service from the tenth to the fifteenth century. Its earliest known member was Basil Apokaukos, strategos of the Peloponnese around 990. Its greatest figure, Alexios Apokaukos, rose from a humble Bithynian background through the fiscal bureaucracy to become imperial chamberlain in 1321 and commander of the navy under Andronikos III in 1341.

Once the protégé of John Kantakouzenos, Alexios joined the regency faction when the civil war began in 1341 and became urban prefect of Constantinople. In June 1345 he was lynched by political prisoners while inspecting a new prison, and the family's influence collapsed with the regency's cause.

George Apokaukos was still recorded as archon at Constantinople in 1403. After the city fell to the Ottomans in 1453 Demetrios Kyritzes Apokaukos entered the service of Sultan Mehmed II.