Well, that went well. Let’s make another post and another plot shall we …
Basically the same but with a few more bits and pieces.
And, just to see what happens with a little bit of text …
The Romans considered the office of emperor to be distinct to that of a king. The first emperor, Augustus, resolutely refused recognition as a monarch.[1] Although Augustus could claim that his power was authentically Republican, his successor, Tiberius, could not convincingly make the same claim.[2] Nonetheless, for the first three hundred years of Roman Emperors, from Augustus until Diocletian, a great effort was made to emphasize that the Emperors were the leaders of a Republic.
From Diocletian onwards, emperors ruled in an openly monarchic style[3] and did not preserve the nominal principle of a republic, but the contrast with “kings” was maintained: although the imperial succession was generally hereditary, it was only hereditary if there was a suitable candidate acceptable to the army and the bureaucracy,[4] so the principle of automatic inheritance was not adopted. Elements of the Republican institutional framework (senate, consuls, and magistrates) were preserved until the very end of the Western Empire.
The Eastern (Byzantine) emperors ultimately adopted the title of “Basileus” (βασιλεύς), which had meant king in Greek, but became a title reserved solely for the Roman emperor and the ruler of the Sasanian Empire. Other kings were then referred to as rēgas.