Tandasis is a figure wholly unknown outside the mention in 01-06. The name Τανδάσις does not occur in any other source of antiquity — it is a hapax legomenon of prosopography. The manuscript tradition gives the reading "Τανδάσις"; a small minority of manuscripts reads "Θανδάσις" (with θ-).

The history of attempted identifications. Gataker and Casaubon in the seventeenth century proposed to emend the name to Andron (Ἄνδρωνος) — one of the teachers of geometry mentioned, on their reading, in SHA Marcus. This emendation: (a) changes the manuscript reading without palaeographic ground; (b) transfers Tandasis from the philosophical sequence at 01-06 to a geometrical one — which contradicts the context (οἰκειωθῆναι φιλοσοφίᾳ, διαλόγους ἐν παιδί). The modern editors (Farquharson, Hadot, Hard) keep the manuscript reading "Τανδάσις" and accept that the figure remains unidentified. More in 01-06, the correction to Rogovin's footnote ¹⁰.

On the character of the name. The root "Τανδ-" has no obvious Greek or Latin analogue and may indicate eastern Mediterranean or Anatolian origin for the bearer — which would be entirely consistent with the regular presence in second-century Rome of Hellenised teachers from the eastern provinces. This, however, remains an indirect hypothesis, without confirmatory testimony.

• 01-06 — the sole mention.

• A. S. L. Farquharson, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, Oxford 1944, vol. II, ad 1.6 — recording the manuscript reading and the impossibility of identification.
• A. Birley, Marcus Aurelius: A Biography, rev. ed., Routledge, 2000, ch. 3.
• R. Hard, Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, OWC, Oxford 2011, notes ad 1.6.