Scriba (ancient Rome)
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In
magistrates who were paid from the state treasury.[2] The word scriba might also refer to a man who was a private secretary, but should be distinguished from a copyist (who might be called a "scribe" in English) or bookseller (librarius).[3]
In Rome the scribae worked out of the equestrian order.[4]
Among the scribe's duties was the recording of sworn oaths on public tablets.[5] As a magistrate's attendant, he might also assist in religious rituals; for instance, since the exact wording of a prescribed prayer was considered vital to its success, a scribe might prompt the presiding magistrate by reading it out as recorded on official tablets.[6]
By the end of the 4th century BC, the office evidently afforded several advantages, including a knowledge of
plebeian to hold the office,[7] his victory, made possible by the growing number of freedmen and those of libertine descent among the urban population, prompted the censors of 304 BC to adopt voter registration policies that curtailed the political power of the lower orders.[8]
equestrian status.[9]
The scriba
new-year festivities that had been banned as promoting unrest and political subversion. Cloelius also led the people in riots when Clodius was murdered a few years later, taking his body to the senate house and turning it into the popular leader's funeral pyre.[10]
The Augustan poet Horace introduced himself in his first published book as the son of a freedman and as a civil servant, specifically a scriba quaestorius, or clerk to the quaestors who were in charge of the public treasury.[11]
Further reading
- E. Badian, "The scribae of the Roman Republic," Klio 7 (1989) 582–603.
References
- ^ The Latin word scriba, like poeta ("poet") and nauta ("sailor"), is a first declension noun of masculine gender.
- ^ The others are the lictores, "lictors"; viatores, "messengers" or "summoners," that is, agents on official errands; and praecones, "announcers" or "heralds." See Marietta Horster, "Living on Religion: Professionals and Personnel," in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 334; Daniel Peretz, "The Roman Interpreter and His Diplomatic and Military Roles," Historia 55 (2006), p. 452.
- ^ Peter White, "Bookshops in the Literary Culture of Rome," in Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 269, note 4.
- ^ David Armstrong, Horace (Yale University Press, 1989), p. 18.
- ^ Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (University of California Press, 2000), p. 96.
- ^ Valerius Maximus 4.1.10; Eric M. Orlin, Temples, Religions, and Politics in the Roman Republic (Brill, 1997), p. 37; on the use of prompters in general, see Matthias Klinghardt, "Prayer Formularies for Public Recitation: Their Use and Function in Ancient Religion," Numen 46 (1999) 1–52.
- T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (American Philological Association, 1951, 1986), vol. 1, pp. 166–168.
- ^ Gary Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First Punic War (University of California Press, 2005), p. 319.
- ^ Forsythe, Critical History, p. 319.
- ^ Geoffrey S. Sumi, "Power and Ritual: The Crowd at Clodius' Funeral," Historia 46 (1997), pp. 84–85; Cynthia Damon, "Sex. Cloelius, Scriba," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 94 (1992) 227–244, limited preview online.
- ^ Emily Gowers, "The Restless Companion: Horace, Satires 1 and 2," in The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 48.