Everything about Basileus totally explained
» "Basilissa" redirects here. For the saint of this name, see Julian and Basilissa.
Basileus (
Greek Βασιλεύς, plural
Βασιλεῖς,
basileis), signifies "
sovereign" or "
king". It is perhaps best known in
English as a title used by
Byzantine emperors, but also has a longer history of use for persons of authority in
ancient Greece, as well as for the kings of modern
Greece.
Etymology
The etymology of
basileus is unclear. The
Mycenaean form was
gwasileus (𐀣𐀯𐀩𐀄,
qa-si-re-u), denoting some sort of court official or local chieftain, but not an actual king. Most linguists assume that it's a non-Greek word that was adopted by
Bronze Age Greeks from a preexisting linguistic
substrate of the Eastern
Mediterranean. Schindler (1976) argues for an inner-Greek innovation of the
-eus inflection type from
Indo-European material rather than a "Mediterranean" loan.
Ancient Greece
Original senses encountered on clay tablets
The first written instance of this word is found on the baked clay tablets discovered in excavations of
Mycenaean palaces originally destroyed by fire. The tablets are dated from the
15th century BC to the
11th century BC. They were inscribed with the
Linear B script, which was deciphered by
Michael Ventris in
1952 and corresponds to a very early form of Greek.
The word
basileus is written as
qa-si-re-u and its original meaning was "
chieftain" (in one particular tablet the chieftain of the guild of
bronzesmiths is referred to as
qa-si-re-u). The word can be contrasted with
wanax, another word used more specifically for "
king" and usually meaning "High King" or "overlord". With the collapse of Mycenaean society, the position of
wanax disappeared, and the
basileis were left as the topmost officials in Greek society. In the works of
Homer wanax appears, in the form
anax, mostly in descriptions of
Zeus (as king of the
gods) and of very few human monarchs, most notably
Agamemnon. Otherwise the term survived almost exclusively in personal names (for example, Anaxagoras, Pleistoanax) and in modern greek is still in use in the description of the royal palace for example
anactora meaning "The mansion of anax". Most of the Greek leaders in Homer's works are described as
basileis, which is conventionally rendered in English as "kings". However, a more accurate translation may be "princes" or "chieftains", which would better reflect conditions in Greek society in Homer's time, and also the roles ascribed to Homer's characters. Agamemnon tries to order around
Achilles among many others, while another
basileus serves as his charioteer.
A study by Drews (1983) has demonstrated that even at the apex of Geometric and Archaic Greek society,
basileus doesn't automatically translate to "king". In a number of places authority was exercised by a college of
basileis drawn from a particular clan or group, and the office had term limits. However,
basileus could also be applied to the hereditary leaders of "tribal" states, like those of the
Arcadians and the
Messenians, in which cases the term approximated the meaning of "king".
Pseudo-Archytas' definition of the Basileus as "sovereign" and "living law"
According to pseudo-
Archytas's treaty "On justice and law", quoted by
Giorgio Agamben in
State of Exception (2005),
Basileus is more adequately translated into "
Sovereign" than into "king". The reason for this is that it designates more the
person of king than the
office of king: the power of
magistrates (
arkhontes, "
archons") derives from their social functions or offices, whereas the sovereign derives his power from himself. Sovereigns have
auctoritas, whereas magistrates detain
imperium. Pseudo-Archytas aimed at creating a theory of sovereignty completely enfranchised from
laws, being itself the only source of
legitimacy. He goes so far as qualifying the
Basileus as
nomos empsykhos, or "living law", which is the origin, according to Agamben, of the modern
Führerprinzip and of
Carl Schmitt's theories on
dictatorship.
Use of Basileus in Classical Times
In
classical times, almost all states had abolished the hereditary royal office in favor of
democratic or
oligarchic rule: Some exceptions exist: namely the two hereditary
Kings of Sparta (who served as joint commanders of the army, and were also called
arkhagetai), the
Kings of Macedon and of the Molossians in
Epirus, various kings of "
barbaric" (for example non-Greek) tribes in
Thrace and
Illyria, as well as the
Achaemenid kings of
Persia. The Persian king was also referred to as
Megas Basileus (Great King) or
Basileus Basileōn, a translation of the Persian title
Šāhanšāh ("
King of Kings"), or simply "
the king". There was also a cult of
Zeus Basileus at
Lebadeia.
Aristotle distinguished the
basileus, constrained by law, from the unlimited
tyrant.
At
Athens, the
Archon Basileus was one of the ten archons, magistrates selected by lot. Of these ten, the
archon eponymos, the
polemarch and the
basileus divided the powers of Athens' ancient kings, with the
basileus overseeing religious rites and homicide cases. His wife had to marry
Dionysus at the
Anthesteria. Similar vestigial offices called
basileus existed in other Greek city-states.
By contrast, the authoritarian rulers were never called
Basileus in classical Greece, but
archon or
tyrant; although
Pheidon of Argos is described by Aristotle as a
basileus who made himself a tyrant.
Alexander the Great
Basileus and
Megas Basileus were exclusively used by
Alexander the Great and his
Hellenistic successors in
Ptolemaic Egypt,
Asia and
Macedon. The female counterpart is
basilissa (Queen), meaning both a
Queen regnant (such as
Cleopatra VII of Egypt) and a
Queen consort. It is precisely at this time that the term
basileus acquired a fully royal connotation, in stark contrast with the much less sophisticated and authoritarian earlier perceptions of kingship within Greece.
Romans and Byzantines
Under
Roman rule, the term
basileus, as a generic designation for a sovereign monarch, came to be used (at first informally) to designate the
Roman Emperor. The usage had become standard by the reign of
Constantine the Great. Starting in the reign of
Herakleios,
basileus, preceded in its full form by the words
pistos en Christō tō Theō ("in Christ the God faithful"), generally replaced other imperial titles in the official documents, as official usage of
Latin in
coinage and state documents was almost completely replaced by Greek. The full style of the Emperor was finalized in the phrase "X, in Christ the God faithful Basileus Emperor of the Romans" (
Greek: "Χ, πιστός εν Χριστώ τω Θεώ Βασιλεύς Αυτοκράτωρ Ρωμαίων", "
Χ, pistos en Christō tō Theō Basileus Autokratōr Rōmaiōn",
Latin: "X, fideus in Deo Christo Basileus Imperator Romanorum").
This use of the word is the result of a gradual development — when the
Romans had originally conquered the Mediterranean, the imperial title
Caesar Augustus was initially translated as
Kaisar Sebastos or
Kaisar Augoustos.
Imperator, another standard imperial title (and the origin of our "
emperor"), was translated as
Autokratōr. Interestingly, "BASILEUS" was initially stamped on Byzantine coins (in lieu of the standard Latin abbreviations "C.IMP." for "Caesar Imperator") in
Latin script. Then, Latin characters began to be gradually replaced by Greek ones and only somewhat later was the Byzantine Greek script (for example "BACIΛEVS" or "BACIΛEYS") used throughout.
The
Byzantines reserved the term
basileus among
Christian rulers exclusively for the emperor in
Constantinople, and referred to
Western European kings as
rēx or
rēgas, the Hellenized forms of the Latin word
rex ("king"). The title of
basileus became an issue of great diplomatic controversy when
Charlemagne was crowned as "
Emperor of the Romans" by
Pope Leo III on
December 25,
800 AD, at
St. Peter's in
Rome. The matter was complicated by the fact that the Eastern Empire was then ruled by the Empress
Irene, who had ascended the throne of
Constantinople after the death of her husband, the emperor
Leo IV, as
Regent to their 9-year-old son,
Constantine VI. Following Constantine's coming of age, the
Empress Dowager eventually decided to topple him and rule in her own name. In the conflict that ensued, Irene was victorious and Constantine was blinded and imprisoned, to die soon after. The revulsion generated by this incident of virtual
filicide cum regicide was compounded by the innate
Frankish aversion to the concept of a ruling female
sovereign.
Charlemagne, in an effort to advance his own dynastic affairs, proposed marriage to the aging Empress, but Irene, who now styled herself "Basileus" (in the
masculine, rather than "Basilissa", in the feminine, or simply "Augusta", the proper style of an Empress Consort) rejected Charlemagne's marriage proposal, and refused to recognize Charlemagne's imperial title. Eventually a compromise of sorts was reached, whereby Charlemagne was recognized by the Byzantine court as "
basileus of the
Franks", but not "of the Romans". A similar diplomatic scuffle (this time accompanied by war) ensued from the imperial aspirations of
Simeon I of Bulgaria a century later. Similarly to Charlemagne, Simeon was similarly recognized as "
basileus of the
Bulgarians" but not "of the Romans". As a result of these concessions the Byzantines increasingly replaced the simple usage of
basileus with the fuller forms
Basileus tōn Rōmaiōn and
Basileus kai Autokratōr tōn Rōmaiōn to further emphasize their exclusive claim on the "true" Roman imperial legacy.
Modern Greece
During the post-Byzantine period, the term
basileus, under the renewed influence of Classical writers on the language, reverted to its earlier meaning of "king". This transformation had already begun in informal usage in the works of some classicizing Byzantine authors. In the
Convention of London in
1832, the
Great Powers (
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,
July Monarchy France and
Russia) agreed that the new Greek state should become a
monarchy, and chose Prince
Otto of Wittelsbach as its first king.
The Great Powers furthermore ordained that his title was to be
Βασιλεύς της Ελλάδος, meaning "King of Greece", instead of
Βασιλεύς των Ελλήνων, for example "King of the Greeks". This title had two implications: first, that Otto was the king only of the small Kingdom of
Greece, and not of all
Greeks, whose majority still remained under the rule of the
Ottoman Empire. Second, that the kingship didn't depend on the will of the Greek people. Indeed, Otto ruled for 10 years as an absolute monarch, and his autocratic rule, which continued even after being forced to grant a constitution, made him very unpopular. After being ousted in
1862, the new Danish dynasty of the House of
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg took over with
King George I. In a demonstrative move, as to assert both national independence from the will of the Powers, and as to emphasize the constitutional responsibilities of the monarch towards the people, his title was modified to "King of the Hellenes", which remained the official royal title until the abolition of the Greek monarchy in
1974.
It is interesting to note that the two Greek kings who bore the name of Constantine, a name of great sentimental and symbolic significance, especially in the irredentist context of the
Megali Idea, were often, although never officially, numbered in direct succession to the last Byzantine Emperor,
Constantine XI, as
Constantine XII and
Constantine XIII respectively.
See also: Byzantine Empire,
PersiaFurther Information
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