SCRĪBAE

public notaries or clerks, in the pay of the Roman state. They were chiefly employed in making up the public accounts, copying out laws, and recording the proceedings of the different functionaries of the state. The phrase scriptum facere was used to denote their occupation. Being very numerous, they were divided into companies or cla es ( decuriae ), and were a igned by lot to different magistrates, whence they were named Quaestor i i, Aedilicii, or Praetor i i, from the officers of state to whom they were attached. The appointment to the office of a “ scriba ” seems to have been either made on the nomination of a magistrate, or purchased. Horace, for instance, bought for himself a “patent place as clerk in the treasury” ( scriptum quaestorium comp a rav it ). In Cicero’s time, indeed, it seems that any one might become a scriba or public clerk by purchase, and consequently, as freedmen and their sons were eligible, and constituted a great portion of the public clerks at Rome, the office was not highly esteemed, though frequently held by ingenu i or free-born citizens. Very few instances are recorded of the scribae being raised to the higher dignities of the state. Cn. Flavius, the scribe of Appius Claudius, was raised to the office of curule aedile in gratitude for his making public the various forms of actions, which had previously been the exclusive property of the patricians [ Actio ]; but the returning officer refused to acquiesce in his election till he had given up his books and left his profe ion.