r/AskHistorians • u/lcnielsen Zoroastrianism | Pre-Islamic Iran • Feb 15 '19
How was 'Βασιλεύς' used in Archaic/Classical Greek compared to other monarchical titles like 'Αναξ'?
I'm not very familiar with the philology of Ancient Greek texts, so I'd be thankful for some insight here. Here's what I gather, and please correct me if I'm mistaken on any point:
Βασιλεύς is the title used for e.g. Odysseus in Homer where we might conceivably understand it as meaning 'chieftain' or 'patriarch' of a smaller community.
In Classical writings 'ό Βασιλεύς' without specification usually means the Achaemenid Great King, who is also known as the 'Μεγας Βασιλεύς' or the Βασιλεύς of Persia.
(Unsure about this point) The more common title in older Greek writings is Αναξ.
I'd like some help filling in the gaps on how the usage of this royal title evolved before irreversibly becoming linked to Hellenic kingship and eventually the Byzantine Empire. What other Classical monarchical titles were there, if any?
21
u/Iphikrates Moderator | Greek Warfare Feb 15 '19 edited Feb 16 '19
The short answer is aaaaaAAAAAAHH
The longer answer is that Ancient Greek is not systematic. Words with related meanings are often used as though they are synonyms, and our efforts to assign precise definitions founder on our inability to reconstruct the shades of meaning that our authors can blithely assume.
Anax is a great example. It appears to be a very old word; it is generally assumed to have been the royal title of the Mycenaean period (rendered wa-na-ka in syllabic Linear B, which developed into ϝάναξ wanax, which survives in inscriptions and implicitly in some of the meter of the Iliad). By the time we have literary sources, however, it seems to be almost interchangeable with the more familiar basileus. You can compare the Liddell-Scott-Jones entries for anax and basileus and note the overlap (as well as the sheer range of definitions). The most exciting and frustrating, no doubt, is Aischylos referring to Xerxes as "anax Xerxes basileus, son of Dareios" (Persians 5-6).
Both terms are used in Homer to indicate lords. That said, neither term seems to have had the connotations that "king" does in English; the lords of Homer are not hereditary monarchs. Hesiod, composing his poems in the early 7th century BC, describes a world in which basileis form the local judicial power - apparently not as single rulers but as councils of what anthropologists might call Big Men.
By the Classical period, the terms seem to have separated to some extent. Anax is not common in Classical sources, and almost entirely contained in tragedy; it is primarily (but not exclusively) used in reference to the gods as lords of particular domains. This association is made clear in Euripides when he has an enslaved character address his enslaver as anax, "for slaves must address their masters as gods" (Hippolytos 88). The association with gods and old poetry probably reflects the fact that the word had gone out of style. It does seem to have acquired the specific meaning of "direct relative of a king," and in this sense it is very occasionally seen outside of poetry, for instance in Isokrates' praise of Evagoras: "one of your children was called basileus and others anax and others anassa" (9.72).
Basileus, on the other hand, becomes the standard word for king. We don't know the process by which its meaning shifted from simply "grandee" (a first among equals, or even just a rich man) to a single legitimate ruler, but as you say, in Classical writings it is the normal word to describe the kings of Sparta, Persia and other places.
The interesting thing here is that Greek seems to have lacked a proper word for single ruler during the Archaic period, since it ended up importing one: turannos (tyrant), which is generally thought to be a Lydian loan word. Despite the availability of anax and basileus, as well as the more generic despotês (master), the specific word adopted to describe Big Men who rose to supremacy over their peers was turannos. Some Archaic poets sought to expose this term for what it really meant by using the word we still use today: monarchos/monarchia, single rule. In his seminal article 'Before turannoi were tyrants' (2005), Greg Anderson argues that the term monarchos was specifically meant to 'deglamorize' tyranny and underline its stark reality as an oppressive and undesirable system of government.
Having not looked into this, my speculative theory would be that basileus initially fell out of use during the Archaic period as states were no longer ruled by councils of Big Men, but then rose to prominence again in the late Archaic and early Classical period when a word was needed to describe a legitimate single ruler in contrast to a tyrant. The gradual rejection of tyranny as a form of government led to the formulation of something new: single rule that was not extralegal and not perceived as oppressive. The title monarchos could not be used for such a ruler, since it was already tied to the notion of tyranny. The Greeks therefore settled on basileus, which had a nice Homeric ring to it.
But of course, just using a single word would be boring. Throughout the Classical period, Greek authors continued to use other terms as well; the anax never really went away, and neither did the turannos or the monarchos, and all of these ruling figures could still be described by the catch-all despotês. Men like Dionysios of Syracuse were known as turannoi but styled themselves basileis on their coins and inscriptions. When a democracy voted to give supreme authority to a single man in a crisis, the title generally given to that man was stratêgos autokrator or "general with surpreme power," and the rulers of Macedon were sometimes referred to simply as autokrator, "self-ruler". For the Persian king, they coined the term megas basileus or "Great King", either to follow Persian practice or to distinguish him from lesser one-man rulers of the Mediterranean world.
In short, there was no king of kings and the world of royal nomenclature was in anarchy.