[Footnote 141: [Greek: epi tou notou tes entuchias grammasin aidous autothen apases kai exousias onko sesobemenois].] If the suggestion that the Primiscrinii were considered as in some sense substitutes (Adjutores) for the Cornicularius be correct, we may perhaps account for there being two of them in the days of Lydus by the disappearance of the Princeps. The office of Cornicularius had swallowed up that of Princeps, and accordingly the single Adjutor, who was sufficient at the compilation of the 'Notitia,' had to be multiplied by two. [Sidenote: Commentariensis, or Commentarisius.] (4) The _Commentariensis_. Here we come again to an officer who is mentioned by all our three authorities, though in Cassiodorus he seems to be degraded some steps below his proper rank (but this may only be from an accidental transposition of the order of the letters), and though Lydus again gives us two of the name instead of one. The last-named authority inserts next after the Primiscrinii 'two Commentarisii--so the law calls those who are appointed to attend to the drawing up of indictments[142].' [Footnote 142: [Greek: kommentarisioi duo (houto de tous epi ton hypomnematon graphe tattomenous ho nomos kalei)] (iii. 4). I accept the necessary emendation of the text proposed in the Bonn edition.] The Commentariensis (or Commentarisius, as Lydus calls him[143]) was evidently the chief assistant of the Judge in all matters of criminal jurisdiction[144]. We have a remarkably full, and in the main clear account of his functions in the pages of Lydus (iii. 16-18), from which it appears that he was promoted from the ranks of the _Exceptores_ (shorthand writers), and had six of his former colleagues serving under him as Adjutores[145]. Great was the power, and high the position in the Civil Service, of the Commentariensis. The whole tribe of process-servers, gaolers, lictors[146]--all that we now understand by the police force--waited subserviently on his nod. It rested with him, says Lydus, to establish the authority of the Court of Justice by means of the wholesome fear inspired by iron chains and scourges and the whole apparatus of torture[147]. Nay, not only did the subordinate magistrates execute their sentences by his agency, he had even the honour of being chosen by the Emperor himself to be the minister of vengeance against the persons who had incurred his anger or his suspicion. 'I myself remember,' says Lydus, 'when I was serving as Chartularius in the office of the Commentariensis, under the praefecture of Leontius (a man of the highest legal eminence), and when the wrath of Anastasius was kindled against Apion, a person of the most exalted rank, and one who had assisted in his elevation to the throne[148], at the same time when Kobad, King of Persia, blazed out into fury[149], that then all the confiscations and banishments which were ordered by the enraged Emperor were entrusted to no one else but to the Commentarienses serving under the Praefect.