In the Eastern churches the only vestment that has any true analogy with the dalmatic or liturgical upper tunic is the sakkos, the tunic worn by deacons and subdeacons over their everyday clothes being the equivalent of the Western alb.
Its origin is almost certainly the richly embroidered dalmatic that formed part of the consular insignia, which under the name of sakkos became a robe of state special to the emperors.
In 1589 it was introduced into Russia, when the tsar Theodore erected the Russian patriarchate and bestowed on the new patriarch the right to wear the mitre, sakkos and mandyas, all borrowed from the Greek rite.
The Greeks and Greek Melchite metropolitans now wear the sakkos instead of the phelonion; and in the Russian, Ruthenian, Bulgarian and Italo-Greek churches this vestment has superseded the phelonion in the case of all bishops (see Dalmatic and Vestments).
Thu magnificent so-called dalmatic of Charlemagne, preserved at Rome (see Embroidery), is really a Greek sakkos.