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Basileus () is a Greek term and title that has signified various types of monarchs throughout history. In the English language-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 Vassilios (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 (βασίλεια), basilissa (βασίλισσα), basillis (βασιλίς), or the archaic basilinna (βασιλίννα), meaning or . The related term basileia (βασιλεία) has meanings such as 'sovereignty', 'royalty', 'kingdom', 'reign', 'dominion' and 'authority'.
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.
At Classical 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 Empire 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 ancient Carthage 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.
By the 4th century however, basileus was applied in official usage exclusively to the two rulers considered equals to the Roman Emperor: the 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 πιστὸς ἐν Χριστῷ βασιλεύς, "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 Christians 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.
The situation began to change when the Western European states began to challenge the Empire's political supremacy and its right to the universal imperial title. The catalytic event was the coronation of Charlemagne as imperator Romanorum ("Emperor of the Romans") by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800, at St. Peter's in Rome. The matter was complicated by the fact that the Eastern Empire was then managed by Irene (r. 797–802), who had gained control after the death of her husband, the Emperor Leo IV (r. 775–780), as regent for their nine-year-old son, Constantine VI (r. 780–797). After Constantine's coming of age, Irene eventually decided to rule in her own name. In the conflict that ensued, Irene was victorious, and Constantine was blinded and imprisoned, to die soon afterward. The revulsion generated by this incident of filicide cum regicide was compounded by the traditional (and especially Salic Law) aversion to the idea of a female monarch. Although it is often claimed that, as monarch, Irene called herself in the male form basileus, in fact she normally used the title basilissa.
The Pope would seize this opportunity to cite the imperial throne being held by a woman as vacant and establish his position as able to divinely appoint rulers. Leading up to this, Charlemagne and his Frankish predecessors had increasingly become the Papacy's source of protection while the Byzantine's position in Italy had weakened significantly. In 800 CE, Charlemagne, now a king of multiple territories, was proclaimed "Emperor of the Romans" by the Pope. Charlemagne's claim to the imperial title of the Romans began a prolonged diplomatic controversy which was resolved only in 812 when the Byzantines agreed to recognize him as " basileus", while continuing to refuse any connection with the Roman Empire. In an effort to emphasize their own Roman legitimacy, the Byzantine rulers thereafter began to use the fuller form basileus Rhomaíōn (βασιλεύς Ῥωμαίων, "emperor of the Romans") instead of the simple " basileus", a practice that continued in official usage until the end of the Empire.
During the 12th century, Byzantine emperors of the Angelos dynasty, in their correspondence with the Pope and foreign rulers, styled themselves as "in Christ the God faithful, Emperor, crowned by God, Anax, powerful, exalted, Augustus and Autocrat of the Romans" () . Variations of this title are found in letters of the Angelid emperors to Pope Innocentius III; these are nearly direct translations of the Greek title into Latin, such as: in Christo Deo fidelis imperator divinitus coronatus sublimis potens excelsus semper augustus moderator Romanorum. In his correspondence with the Holy Roman Emperor, Isaakios II added to his title the Latin phrase haeres coronae Constantini magni ('heir to the crown of Constantine the great'), in order to distinguish and prioritize the 'New' Rome of the east over the 'Old' Rome of the west.
By the Palaiologan period, the full style of the Emperor was finalized in the phrase, "in Christ the God faithful, Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans" (), as exemplified in documents such as Constantine XI's chrysobull to the city of Dubrovnik issued in 1451, two years before the Ottoman Empire conquest of the Byzantine Empire in the Siege of Constantinople.
The later German emperors were also conceded the title " basileus of the Franks". The Byzantine title in turn produced further diplomatic incidents in the 10th century, when Western potentates addressed the emperors as "emperors of the Greeks". A similar diplomatic controversy (this time accompanied by war) ensued from the imperial aspirations of Simeon I of Bulgaria in the early 10th century. Aspiring to conquer Constantinople, Simeon claimed the title " basileus of the Bulgarians and of the Romans", but was only recognized as " basileus of the Bulgarians" by the Byzantines. From the 12th century however, the title was increasingly, although again not officially, used for powerful foreign sovereigns, such as the kings of France or Sicily, the tsars of the restored Bulgarian Empire, the Latin Empire and the emperors of Trebizond. In time, the title was also applied to major non-Christian rulers, such as Tamerlane or Mehmed II. Finally, in 1354, Stefan Dušan, king of Medieval Serbia, assumed the imperial title, based on his Bulgarian mother's Theodora Smilets of Bulgaria royal line, self-styling himself in Greek as basileus and autokratōr of the Romans and Serbs which was, however, not recognized by the Byzantines.
Regarding Jesus, the term basileus acquired a new Christian theological meaning out of the further concept of basileus as a chief religious officer during the Hellenistic period. Jesus is titled both Basileus Basileōn (Βασιλεὺς βασιλέων = King of Kings, Revelation 17:14, 19:16, a previous Near Eastern phrase for rulers of empires, and Basileus tōn basileuontōn (Βασιλεὺς τῶν βασιλευόντων = literally King of those being kings, 1 Timothy 6:15) in the New Testament. Other titles involving basileus include Basileus tōn Ouranōn, translated as King of Heaven, and Basileus tōn Ioudaiōn, i.e. King of the Jews (see INRI). In Byzantine art, standard depictions of Jesus included Basileus tēs Doxēs (King of Glory), a phrase derived from Psalms 24:10, and Kyrios tēs Doxēs (Lord of Glory), from 1 Corinthians 2:8.
The Great Powers furthermore ordained that his title was to be "Βασιλεὺς τῆς Ἑλλάδος" Vasilefs tes Elládos, meaning "King of Greece", instead of "Βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἑλλήνων" Vasilefs ton Ellénon, i.e. "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 ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Second, that the kingship did not depend on the will of the Greek people, a fact further underlined by Otto's addition of the formula "ἐλέῳ Θεοῦ" eléo Theou, i.e. "By the Grace (Mercy) of God". For 10 years, until the 3 September 1843 Revolution, Otto ruled as an absolute monarch, and his autocratic rule, which continued even after he was 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 began with King George I. Both to assert national independence from the will of the Great Powers, and 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 1924 and 1973.
The two Greek kings who had 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.
New Testament
While the terms used for the Tiberius are Kaisar Augustos (Decree from Caesar Augustus, Dogma para Kaisaros Augoustou, Luke 2:1) or just Kaisar (see Render unto Caesar...), and Pontius Pilate is termed Hegemon (Matthew 27:2), Herod is referred to as basileus (in his coins also Basileōs Herodou, "of King Herod", and by Josephus).
Modern Greece
During the post-Byzantine period, the term basileus, owing to 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 power agreed that the new Greek state should become a monarchy, and chose the Wittelsbach Prince Otto of Bavaria as its first king.
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