Basileus () is a Greek term and title that has signified various types of monarchs throughout history. In the English-speaking world, it is perhaps most widely understood to mean , referring to either a or an . The title was used by sovereigns and other persons of authority in ancient Greece (especially during the Hellenistic period), the Byzantine emperors, and the kings of modern Greece. The name Basileios (Basil), deriving from the term basileus, is a common given name in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Syriac Orthodox Church for the Maphrian.
The feminine forms are basileia (), basilissa (), basillis (), or the archaic basilinna (), meaning or . The related term basileia () has meanings such as 'sovereignty', 'royalty', 'kingdom', 'reign', 'dominion' and 'authority'.
Etymology The etymology of basileus is uncertain. The Mycenaean form was *gʷasileus (Linear B: , qa-si-re-u), denoting some sort of court official or local chieftain. Its hypothetical earlier Proto-Greek form would be *gʷatileus. Some linguists assume that it is a non-Greek word that was adopted by Bronze Age Greeks from a pre-existing linguistic Pre-Greek substrate of the Eastern Mediterranean. Schindler 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 to the and are inscribed with the 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). Here the initial letter q- represents the PIE labiovelar consonant */gʷ/, transformed in later Greek into /b/. Linear B uses the same glyph for /l/ and /r/, now transcribed with a Latin "r" by uniform convention. (Similarly, the Old Persian word vazir also has almost the same meaning as "chieftain".) Linear B only represents syllables of single vowel, or of a consonant-vowel form, therefore any final -s is omitted.
Basileus vs. wanax in Mycenaean times
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 ceases to be mentioned, and the basileis (the plural form) appear the topmost potentates in Greek society. In the works of Homer wanax appears, in the form ánax, mostly in descriptions of Zeus and of very few human monarchs, most notably Agamemnon. Otherwise the term survived almost exclusively as a component in compound personal names (e.g., Anaxagóras, Pleistoánax) and is still in use in Modern Greek in the description of the anáktoron / anáktora ("[place or home] of the ánax"), i.e. of the royal palace. The latter is essentially the same word as wa-na-ka-te-ro, wanákteros, "of the wanax / king" or "belonging to the wanax / king", used in Linear B tablets to refer to various craftsmen serving the king (e.g. the "palace", or royal, spinner, or the ivory worker), and to items belonging or offered to the king (javelin shafts, wheat, spices, precincts etc.).
Most of the Greek leaders in Homer's works are described as basileís, which is rendered conventionally in English as "kings". However, a more accurate translation may be "princes" or "chieftains", which would better represent conditions in Greek society in Homer's time, and also the roles ascribed to Homer's characters. Agamemnon tries to give orders to Achilles among many others, while another basileus serves as his charioteer. His will, however, is not to be obeyed automatically. In Homer the wanax is expected to rule over the other basileis by consensus rather than by coercion, which is why Achilles rebels (the main theme of the Iliad) when he decides that Agamemnon is treating him disrespectfully.
Archaic basileus A study by R. Drews demonstrates that even at the apex of Geometric and Archaic Greek society, basileus did not 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 According to pseudo-Archytas's treatise "On justice and law"as quoted by 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 retain 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 and of Carl Schmitt's theories on dictatorship.
Classical times
In classical times, most Greek states had abolished the royal office in favor of democratic or oligarchic rule. Some exceptions existed, namely the two hereditary Kings of Sparta (who served as joint commanders of the army, and were also called arkhagetai), the Kings of Cyrene, the Kings of Macedon and of the Molossians in Epirus and Kings of Arcadian Orchomenus. The Greeks also used the term to refer to various kings of "barbaric" (i.e. non-Greek) tribes in Thrace and Illyria, as well as to the Achaemenid kings of Persia. The Persian king was also referred to as Megas Basileus/Basileus Megas (Great King) or Basileus Basileōn, a translation of the Persian title xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām ("King of Kings"), or simply "the king". There was also a cult of Zeus Basileus at Lebadeia. Aristotle distinguished the basileus, who acts according to the law, from the tyrant (tyrannos), who had generally seized control.
At Athens, the archon basileus was one of the nine archons, magistrates selected by lot. Of these, the archon eponymos (for whom the year was named), the polemarch (polemos archon = war lord) and the basileus divided the powers of Athens' ancient kings, with the basileus overseeing religious rites and homicide cases. His wife had to ritually marry Dionysus at the Anthesteria festival. Philippides of Paiania was one of the richest Athenians during the age of Lycurgus of Athens, he was honoured archon basileus in 293–292 BCE. Similar vestigial offices termed basileus existed in other Greek city-states. Thus in the Ionian League each member city had a that represented it to the League sanctuary of the Panionion, whereas in the Roman period it was a League office of unclear duties, and was even held by women.
By contrast, the authoritarian rulers were never termed basileus in classical Greece, but archon (ruler) or tyrannos (tyrant); although Pheidon of Argos is described by Aristotle as a basileus who made himself into a tyrannos.
Many Greek authors, reconciling Carthaginian supremacy in the western Mediterranean with eastern stereotypes of absolutist non-Hellenic government, termed the Punic chief magistrate, the sufet, as basileus in their native language. In fact, this office conformed to largely republican frameworks, being approximately equivalent in mandate to the Roman consul. This conflation appears notably in Aristotle's otherwise positive description of the Carthaginian Constitution in the Politics, as well as in the writings of Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, and Diogenes Laertius. Roman and early Christian writings sourced from Greek fostered further mischaracterizations, with the sufet mislabeled as the Latin rex.
Alexander the Great
Basileus and Megas Basileus/Basileus Megas were exclusively used by Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic successors in Ptolemaic Egypt, Asia (e.g. the Seleucid Empire, the Attalid kingdom and Pontus) and Macedon. The feminine counterpart is basilissa (queen), meaning both a queen regnant (such as Cleopatra) and a queen consort. It is at this time that the term basileus acquired a fully royal connotation, in stark contrast with the much less sophisticated earlier perceptions of kingship within Greece.
Romans and Byzantines
Under Roman rule, the term basileus came to be used, in the Hellenistic tradition, to designate the Roman Emperor in the ordinary and literary speech of the Greek-speaking Eastern Mediterranean. Although the early Roman Emperors were careful to retain the façade of the republican institutions and to not formally adopt monarchical titles, the use of basileus amply illustrates that contemporaries clearly perceived that the Roman Empire was a monarchy in all but name. Nevertheless, despite its widespread use, due to its "royal" associations the title basileus remained unofficial for the Emperor, and was restricted in official documents to client kings in the East. Instead, in official context the imperial titles Caesar Augustus, translated or transliterated into Greek as Kaisar Sebastos or Kaisar Augoustos, and Imperator, translated as Autokratōr, were used.
By the 4th century however, basileus was applied in official usage exclusively to the two rulers considered equals to the Roman Emperor: the Sassanid Persian shahanshah ("king of kings"), and to a lesser degree the King of Axum, whose importance was rather peripheral in the Byzantine worldview. Consequently, the title acquired the connotation of "emperor", and when barbarian kingdoms emerged on the ruins of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, their rulers were referred to in Greek not as basileus but as rēx or rēgas, the hellenized forms of the Latin title rex, king.
The first documented use of basileus Rhomaíōn in official context comes from the Persians: in a letter sent to Emperor Maurice (r. 582–602) by Chosroes II, Maurice is addressed in Greek as basileus Rhomaíōn instead of the habitual Middle Persian appellation kēsar-i Hrōm ("Caesar of the Romans"), while the Persian ruler refers to himself correspondingly as Persōn basileus, thereby dropping his own claim to the Greek equivalent of his formal title, basileus basileōn ("king of kings"). The title appears to have slowly crept into imperial titulature after that, and Emperor Heraclius is attested as using it alongside the long-established Autokratōr Kaisar in a letter to Kavadh II in 628. Finally, in a law promulgated on 21 March 629, the Latin titles were omitted altogether, and the simple formula , "faithful in Christ Emperor" was used instead. The adoption of the new imperial formula has been traditionally interpreted by scholars such as Ernst Stein and George Ostrogorsky as indicative of the almost complete Hellenization of the Empire by that time. In imperial coinage, however, Latin forms continued to be used. Only in the reign of Leo III the Isaurian (r. 717–741) did the title basileus appear in silver coins, and on gold coinage only under Constantine VI (r. 780–797). "BASILEUS" was initially stamped on Byzantine coins in Latin script, and only gradually were some Latin characters replaced with Greek ones, resulting in mixed forms such as "BASIΛEVS".
Until the 9th century, the Byzantines reserved the term basileus among Christian rulers exclusively for their own emperor in Constantinople. This usage was initially accepted by the "barbarian" kings of Western Europe themselves: Despite having neglected the fiction of Roman suzerainty from the 6th century onward, they refrained from adopting imperial titles.