lexiarchs

Noun

lexiarch (plural lexiarchs or lexiarchoi)

1. (historical) In ancient Athens: someone whose role it was to ensure that only citizens entered the ecclesia ("the public legislative assembly of the Athenians").
   • Meantime a number of the Scythian archers, under the command of a lexiarch, had stretched a rope around the Agora in such a manner, that only the street leading to the hill of Pnyx was left free—an old custom, whose sole object was to remind the Athenians, who liked to linger gossipping in the...1881, Robert Hamerling, translated by Mary J[ane] Safford, Aspasia: A Romance of Art and Love in Ancient Hellas, volume 1, New York, N.Y.: William S. Gottsberger, page 78