City Steward

◆ At Romans 16:23 the apostle Paul, writing from Corinth, sends greetings from some of his co-workers; for instance, “Erastus the city steward greets you.” Erastus apparently was in charge of the financial affairs of the city. During excavations in Corinth in 1929 Professor T. L. Shear discovered a pavement or paving block with this inscription: “ERASTVS PRO: AED: S: P: STRAVIT” (“Erastus, procurator and aedile, laid this pavement at his own expense”). Whether the Erastus mentioned in this inscription is the same one as Paul mentions is uncertain, but the pavement is believed to have existed in the first century A.D.—Biblical Archaeology, G. Ernest Wright, p. 262.