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 classes (_decuriae_), and were assigned by lot to
different magistrates, whence they were named Quaestorii, Aedilicii,
or Praetorii, 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 comparavit_). 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
ingenui 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 profession.