PRYTANIS (pl. prytaneis) was the title of certain officials in Greek states. They appear to have succeeded the kings at the time when the monarchical form of government was abolished throughout Greece. At Rhodes they continued to be the chief magistrates as late as the 1st century b.c., but in other states their functions dwindled. Though they were not priests, they had the charge of certain public sacrifices. Their headquarters were in the “prytaneum” or town-hall, the central point of a Greek state, where a fire was kept perpetually burning on the public hearth. When a colony was founded the fire in the prytaneum of the new city was kindled from the fire in the prytaneum of the mother-city, and if this colonial fire ever happened to be extinguished it was rekindled from the same source. At Athens in classical times the prytaneis were those fifty members of the council of five hundred who presided at the council meetings as well as at the popular assemblies. They consisted of the fifty members who represented one of the ten tribes on the council. The office was held for a tenth of a year and passed in rotation to the representatives of each of the ten tribes. During their term of office the prytaneis were maintained at the public expense in the tholos or rotunda (not, as is sometimes stated, in the prytaneum). As the highest mark of honour, distinguished citizens and their descendants were sometimes maintained for life in the prytaneum. Here, too, ambassadors were entertained. There was further a court of justice at Athens called the “court in the prytaneum”; it tried murderers who were not to be found, and also lifeless instruments which had been the cause of death,—an institution probably existing from a very remote antiquity.