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'''Great king''', and the equivalent in many languages, refers to historical titles of certain [[monarch]]s, suggesting an elevated status among the host of kings and [[prince]]s. |
'''Great king''', and the equivalent in many languages, refers to historical titles of certain [[monarch]]s, suggesting an elevated status among the host of kings and [[prince]]s. |
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==History== |
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The title is most usually associated with the ''[[shahanshah]]'' (shah of shahs, i.e. king of kings, indeed translated from Greek as ''[[basileus]] tōn basileōn'', later adopted by the Byzantine emperors) of [[Persia]] under the [[Achaemenid dynasty]] whose vast empire in Asia lasted for 200 years up to the year 330 BC, which was later adopted by successors of the [[Achaemenid Empire]] whose monarchial names were also succeeded by "the great". In comparison, "[[high king]]" was used by ancient rulers in Great Britain and Ireland, as well as Greece. |
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In the 2nd millennium BC Near East, there was a tradition of reciprocally using such addresses between powers, as a way of diplomatically recognizing each other as an equal. Only the kings of countries who were not subject to any other king and powerful enough to draw the respect from their adversaries were allowed to use the title of "great king". Those were the kings of [[Ancient Egypt|Egypt]], [[Yamhad]], [[Hittite Empire|Hatti]], [[Babylonia]], [[Mitanni]] (until its demise in the 14th century), [[Assyria]] (only after the demise of Mitanni), and for a brief time the [[Mycenae|Myceneans]]. Great kings referred to each other as brothers and often established close relationships by means of marriages and frequent gift exchanges.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last1=Cohen |editor-first1=Raymond |editor-last2=Westbrook |editor-first2=Raymond |title=Amarna Diplomacy |publisher=Johns Hopkins |year=1999 |isbn=0801861993}}</ref> Letters exchanged between these rulers, several of which have been recovered especially in [[Amarna letters|Amarna]] and [[Hittites|Hittite]] archives, provide details of this diplomacy.<ref>See {{cite book |first=Bryce |last=Trevor |year=1992 |title=Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East |publisher=Routledge |isbn=041525857X}}; for [[Amarna letters]] see {{cite book |first=Moran |last=William L. |year=1992 |title=The Amarna Letters |publisher=Johns Hopkins |isbn=0801842514 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/amarnaletters0000unse }}</ref> |
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The case of ''[[maharaja]]'' ("great ''raja''", great king and prince, in [[Sanskrit]] and [[Hindi]]) on the Indian subcontinent, originally reserved for the regional hegemon such as the [[Gupta Empire|Gupta]], is an example of how such a lofty style can get caught in a cycle of devaluation by "title inflation" as ever more, mostly less powerful rulers adopt the style. This is often followed by the emergence of one or more new, more exclusive and prestigious styles, as, in this case, ''[[maharajadhiraja]]'' (king of great kings"). The Turkic-Mongol title ''[[Khan (title)|khan]]'' also came to be "augmented" to tiles like [[Khagan|''khagan'']], ''chagan'' or ''hakan'', meaning "khan of khans", i.e. equivalent to king of kings. |
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The aforementioned Indian style ''maharajadhiraja'' is also an example of an alternative semantic title for similar "higher" royal styles such as ''[[King of Kings]]''. Alternatively, a more idiomatic style may develop into an equally prestigious tradition of titles, because of the shining example of the original – thus, various styles of [[emperor]]s trace back to the Roman ''[[imperator]]'' (strictly speaking a republican military honorific), or the family surname [[Caesar (title)|Caesar]] (turned into an imperial title since [[Diocletian]]'s [[tetrarchy]]). |
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As the conventional use of ''king'' and its equivalents to render various other monarchical styles illustrates, there are many roughly equivalent styles, each of which may spawn a "great ''X''" variant, either unique or becoming a rank in a corresponding tradition; in this context, "grand" is equivalent to "great" and sometimes interchangeable if convention does not firmly prescribe one of the two. Examples include [[grand duke]] and German ''[[Grosswojwod]]''. |
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==Examples== |
==Examples== |
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Great king, and the equivalent in many languages, refers to historical titles of certain monarchs, suggesting an elevated status among the host of kings and princes.
Your gay I hope you waste all your money
Examples
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- Antiochus III the Great, Hellenistic Greek king and the sixth ruler of the Seleucid Empire, bore the title Basileus Megas
- In medieval Serbia, Stefan the First-Crowned, likely Stefan Uroš I, Stefan Dečanski and Stefan Dušan had the title of "great king" (Велики краљ, Veliki kralj)[1]
See also
References
- ^ Svetislav Mandić (1986). Velika gospoda sve srpske zemlje i drugi prosopografski prilozi. Srpska književna zadruga. p. 60. ISBN 9788637900122.
Велики краљ