[Meaning] auditorship/s. The term is applied to those who oversee sales in the cities.[1]
Also [sc. attested is the related concrete noun] "market-supervisors" [agoranomoi]: the officials who manage the sales in the marketplace [sc. in Athens].[2]
Aristophanes in Acharnians [writes]: "as market-supervisors of the market I appoint the three who were chosen by lot, the thongs from Leprous."[3] That is, straps, whips. For in olden days the auditors of the marketplace used to beat people with whips. And "leprous" [leprou/s] some explain as [sc. wordplay] from the verb lepein, that is, "to beat"; others from Lepreon a small town of the Peloponnese which Callimachus also mentions in the Hymns: "citadel of Kaukones, which is called Lepreion."[4] Others still [sc. derive it] from mangy cattle, since the hides of mangy cattle are tough. Still others because the Megarians, with whom he[5] is making a treaty, have mangy bodies. But better to say that [sc. there is] a place called Leproi outside the [Athenian] town-center where the tanners' shops were. There is also a mention of this in Birds: "why then do you settle [in] Helian Lepreon."[6]
Also [sc. attested is the the verb] "I supervise markets" [a)goranomw=]; [used] with a genitive.