Town clerk (Hastings' Dictionary)

An ofticial whose powers and functions varied at difl'erent periods and in dillerent countries of the Greek world. Here we speak only of the gramnuiteus in the Grajco- Asiatic cities under the early Roman em- pire. The titles ' clerk of the city ' (yp. Trjs T^Xtus), ' clerk of the senate ' (7/). t^s /iouX^s), ' clerk of the people ' {yp. toC ornxov), ' clerk of senate and people, or of senate and ekklesia ' [yp.

/SouX^s koI <K/cX7)o-ias), and even 'clerk of senate and people and gerousia,' are all found in inscriptions of those cities. Sometimes there seems to be a difl'erence between some of these titles ; but in other cases it seems probable or certain that the ' clerk of the city,' the 'clerk of the senate and the people,' and the ' clerk of the people,' were various designations of one very important official.

The gramiTiateus was responsible for the form of the decrees, which were submitted to the popular assembly, i.e. the Demos assembled in ekhhsin. These decrees under the empire were first ai>proved by the senate, and afterwards sent to be approved by tlie people in the ekklesia. The powers of the people were limited to accepting or rejecting the decrees sent down from the senate.

They could not amend, and gradually their approval became a mere form, which followed as a matter of course, inasmuch as the Roman imperial system dis- couraged and limited the powers of the popular assembly. After the decrees were passed, the gram- mateus sealed them with the public seal (o-qiiixila acppayU) in the presence of witnesses (oorYiiaTo- yp6.(poi). In many places he even proposed the decrees in the popular assembly, and acted as chairman.

In Ephesus (Ac 19"), at an excited and uproarioua gathering of the people in the theatre (a common place for regularly summoned meetings of the popular assembly), the clerk speaks as one both possessing authority and under personal responai- TKACHONITIS TRACHOXITIS SOI bility for the popular action.

Tlie Roman ailinin- istration regarded irre^ilar and unruly pi)i)ular assemblies as a serious and even capital otlence, because they tended to slrenjjthen among the people the consciousness of their power and the desire to exercise it; and the clerk was e\'i<lently afraid lest he should be personally held to account for the irregular meeting. This picture, as indicated in Acta, is entirely in keeping with the position of the (jruittntateun as indicated in the inscriptions.

In Lphcsus that otlicial is occasionally styled 'jTramHirtNnw of Che Epliesions' ; and often an event is dated by the clerk of the fear. Money bequeathed to the people was under his charj;e. He often was responsible for the execution of works oniered by the people. The inscriptions of neighbouring cities whose constitution is most likely to have closely resembled the Ephesian, enable us to odd many other details. The position of clerk is spoken of as the clima.

x of a career of public 8er\ ice to the State of TralleS (uJtx T6?J.itf apx^ »' Kwrw/pyiat ypvu^ /dxtriCratrti Trf e>j«K i»(^a*f, CIO 2931). He olong with the ttratftjoi (to whom the real conduct of business came to be trusted more and more in the Greek cities of Asia) drafted the decrees ; and this implies that he had a seat as assessor on the board of slrate^oi, and perhaps even presided there iyiii^ rTfi^nrjrit «A< nu yp. T#w iifuu).

The clerk contrasts the confused assembly in the theatre with the (fn/ios iKuXtiala, i.e. the people legally and properly .-u-i-sembled in the exercise of its powers. Sutrli meetings were either ordinary on hxcd days (ci/u^oi in an Ephesian inscription), or extr.

iorJinary, specially summoned at an un- usual time (tailed aOyKX-qroi at Athens) ; but the latter class of meetings required special authoriza- tion from the Koiiian governor of the province, and certainly were rarely permitted by the jealousy of Roman policy. The term fwo/ios iKK\rj(ria has not hitherto been found at Ephesus, but occurs at Ter- messos (see Lanckoronski, Stddte Pamphyl. ii. p. 33). Literature. — Hicks, Greek Inacr. of the Brit. Mugeitm, iii. p.

82; Liebcnam, Stddfetjertcaltuwj imrom. Kaiserreiche, p.'J&sl.; L<ivy in lievue dcjj Etudes Grecuwev, ISO.'), p. 216ff. ; Ramsay in Expotitor, Feb. 1896, p. 13711., and in Cities and llish. oj Phnjgia, i. 66 ; Svoboda, Griech. Volksbrschliitise, p. 206 f. \V. M. RAM.SAY.