A man named Erastus paid to pave a square in Corinth. A letter written from Corinth greets a man named Erastus who held civic office. These two records come from the same city in the same century.
Romans 16 is a list of greetings — twenty-six individuals named in the final chapter of Paul’s most systematic theological letter. Most are otherwise unknown. One is not.
Romans 16:23 reads: “Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer (oikonomos — G3623), and our brother Quartus, greet you.”
The letter was written from Corinth, almost certainly during Paul’s extended stay there in approximately 57-58 CE. The man Paul calls oikonomos tes poleos — manager of the city — was, by Paul’s own description, a civic official of some standing.
The pavement inscription
In 1929, excavations by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens uncovered a limestone paving block near the theater at ancient Corinth. The block bears a Latin inscription, dated on stylistic and archaeological grounds to the 1st century CE. It reads:
ERASTVS PRO AEDILIT[ATE] S[UA] P[ECUNIA] STRAVIT
“Erastus, in return for his aedileship, laid the pavement at his own expense.”
The block is still visible in situ at the Corinth archaeological site. The inscription is published in the Corinth excavation series (Vol. VIII.3, no. 232) and has been analyzed extensively by archaeologists including John Harvey Kent (Corinth VIII.3, 1966) and New Testament historian Bruce Winter (Seek the Welfare of the City, 1994).
Matching the offices
The title Paul uses — oikonomos (G3623) — is a Greek administrative term that can encompass several roles: a household steward, a financial officer, or a civic treasurer. In Roman colonial cities like Corinth, the nearest Latin equivalent for a financial officer serving under the duoviri (the chief magistrates) would be quaestor or, for lower-tier public works responsibility, aedile. An aedile was responsible for public buildings, streets, markets, and games — exactly the kind of official who would commission public paving.
The inscription’s aedilis and Paul’s oikonomos are not identical titles. Scholars including John Meggitt (Paul, Poverty and Survival, 1998) have noted that oikonomos could denote a slave or freedman administrator rather than a Roman magistrate. Against this, David Gill (Tyndale Bulletin, 1989) and others have argued that the combination of name, city, century, and civic context makes coincidence improbable. An oikonomos tes poleos in a Roman colony most naturally maps to a recognized civic financial role.
What the name tells us
“Erastus” is not a common Latin name in the Greek East. In the database of inscriptions from Roman Corinth catalogued by Kent, it appears only once. The name does appear several times in the New Testament: in addition to Romans 16:23, Paul mentions an Erastus in 2 Timothy 4:20 (“Erastus remained at Corinth”) and Acts 19:22 identifies an Erastus as one of Paul’s co-workers sent ahead into Macedonia. Whether all three references are to the same individual is debated, but the Corinthian connection is consistent across all three texts.
The inscription establishes that a man named Erastus held public office in Corinth in the 1st century CE and was wealthy enough to fund civic infrastructure voluntarily. It does not prove he is Paul’s Erastus. It establishes that the person Paul describes — a man of that name, holding civic office in Corinth — fits the social and historical profile of the city precisely.
The data point
Paul’s letters are sometimes treated as theological documents divorced from historical specificity. Romans 16 resists that reading. It is a list of real people with real jobs in real cities — a tentmaker’s network of contacts spanning Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome. The Erastus Inscription cannot confirm that Paul knew this particular man, but it confirms that the city, the century, the name, and the civic role all cohere. The letter and the pavement were produced in the same urban world.