Aristarchs

[source] The aristarch of each district is selected by the provincial Archon with the assent of the Hegemony (usually the province’s Alastor Strategos and Archimandrite). It will be the noble best able to keep order, which will usually though not always be the richest house.

Role of the Aristarch
[source] Formally, an aristarch is appointed to work with the Alastors and Ecclesiasts in their district to hold courts, punish crimes, enforce laws, and do whatever else is necessary to maintain order. The amount of power this actually entails varies tremendously across the Hegemony.

There are aristarchs who serve as nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Hegemonic institutions in their area; there are aristarchs who play these relatively ignorant, frequently rotated outsiders like harps; and there are not a few aristarchs who are at daggers drawn with their Ecclesiast and/or Alastor captain, but manage to stay in the office because they keep the peace, keep up a respectable veneer of cooperation, and have the right allies to make the case in the provincial capital that no one else would keep things running as smoothly in that district.