nciently denoted a copyist or scribe, who transcribed fair, and at length, what the notaries had taken down in notes or minutes. The word is compounded of \(\alpha\lambda\lambda\lambda\sigma\), beauty, and \(\gamma\eta\gamma\eta\gamma\eta\), I write. The minutes of acts, &c. were always taken in a kind of cipher or shorthand, such as the notes of Tyro in Gruter, by which means the notaries, as the Latins called them, or the \(\sigma\alpha\mu\alpha\gamma\gamma\alpha\gamma\) and \(\tau\alpha\gamma\gamma\alpha\gamma\alpha\gamma\), as the Greeks named them, were enabled to keep pace with a speaker or person who dictated. These notes, being understood by few, were copied over fair, and at length, by persons who had a good hand, and who were called calligraphi, a name frequently met with in the ancient writers.