Basileus
Basileus (Ancient Greek: βασιλεύς)[a] is a Greek term and title that has signified various types of monarchs in history. In the English-speaking world it is perhaps most widely understood to mean 'monarch', referring to either a 'king' or an 'emperor' and also by bishops of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches. The title was used by sovereigns and other persons of authority in ancient Greece, the Byzantine emperors, and the kings of modern Greece.
"Basilissa" redirects here. For other uses, see Basilissa (disambiguation).Romanization
Etymology[edit]
The etymology of basileus is uncertain. The Mycenaean form was *gʷasileus (Linear B: 𐀣𐀯𐀩𐀄, qa-si-re-u), denoting some sort of court official or local chieftain, but not an actual king. Its hypothetical earlier Proto-Greek form would be *gʷatileus.[2] 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.[3] Schindler[4] argues for an inner-Greek innovation of the -eus inflection type from Indo-European material rather than a Mediterranean loan.[4]
Ancient Greece[edit]
Original senses encountered on clay tablets[edit]
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 BCE to the 11th century BCE and are 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). 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.
New Testament and Jesus[edit]
While the terms used for the Roman emperor 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).
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),[14] a phrase derived from Psalms 24:10, and Kyrios tēs Doxēs (Lord of Glory), from 1 Corinthians 2:8.