So, Caesar was never Caesar, even during his salad days?
Under Julius Caesar it was the Republic. He was never an emperor.
The first emperor was Augustus, his (posthumously) adopted son.
He was an early prefab project; they delivered him in sections. 
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One point the HRE inherited from Rome, and which was accepted by its friends and foes alike amazingly late into its history, was the unity and indivisibility of imperium. There was only one Empire (ignore those Greeks). Your nation might be outside the Empire and even fight wars against it, but your monarch did not aspire to be a competing Emperor; if anything, he wanted to replace the incumbent as the one and only Emperor.
Going along with this was the idea that each ‘nation’ (roughly but not precisely equivalent to the modern ethnic nationality) had a single king. Your local sovereignty might have varying degrees of autonomy or even independence from your nation’s king, but your ruler was not entitled to claim kingship in consequence. Hence the two highest secular titles in the Empire after the Emperor himself were the German King (from Middle English times nearly always rendered in English that way, as opposed to ‘King of Germany’ or ‘King of the Germans’, and nearly always held by the Emperor or his son-and-heir) and King of Bohemia. When those two titles coalesced as Habsburg possessions, it precipitated a scramble among German states to acquire kingships outside the Empire; the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg in consequence caused themselves to be chosen Kings of Poland and Prussia respectively, while the Duke of Oldenburg became heir by marriage of the King of Denmark.
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One point not always honored but common enough to note, and a prime example of the genius of Cyrus at governance, is the idea that an empire is not just a very large kingdom, but rather a multinational state in which the conquered peoples lived, not as subjugated slave races as in the past, but as nations paying taxes to the Shahanshah and under the authority of his satrap, but within that framework under their own traditional law and customs, a loyal constituent part of his realm.
The HRE at its best aspired to this; the utter preponderance of Germans and their factionalism in the later Empire militated against its ever being really effective there.
Technically Rome was always a Republic, Octavian was the first historically recognized Emperor but Romans did not refer to individuals as being “Emperor.”
The Holy Roman Emperor was not just a historical term to denote a complicated office, it was a real title with a real coronation ceremony and everything. It was akin to the concept of Roman Emperor in that both were not strictly hereditary, but many Emperors (both Roman and Holy Roman) were able to establish family dynasties nonetheless.
The Roman office is more akin to the concept of “paramount leader of China” in the modern world. Hu Jintao is the current leader of China, when he took over that it was a gradual process in which Jiang Zemin ceded one important office to Hu every year for 3-4 years until the principal offices in China which make you the “guy” were all held by Hu, at which point he was “the guy.”
The Roman Emperors were men who held several important offices that made them absolute monarchs, essentially, and the more orderly transitions in Rome happened much like the Zemin-Jintao succession, in which the old Emperor would slowly give his titles to his chosen heir so that the heir would be able to solidify his power base prior to the old Emperor’s death.
I only mention it because I recently read a good book on Prussia in this time, but technically the Brandenburg Elector crowned himself King in Prussia.
It was a complicated situation, but it basically came down to a combination of appeasing both Poland and the Emperor. The Emperor was loathe to create a King “of Prussia” that would be regarded as a Kingly title inside the Empire. The “King in Prussia” title would allow the Elector of Brandenburg to essentially retain their same status inside the Empire while gaining additional status in Europe at large.
The Emperor probably would not have acknowledged the creation of a “King in Prussia” if they hadn’t been fighting a war at the time, and the Elector of Brandenburg leveraged the War of the Austrian Succession to earn themselves this title.
Further, Prussia was historically a Polish Duchy that was in fief to the King of Poland. For at least a few hundred years the Hohenzollerns had held this title and were technically in fief to the King of Poland in matters relating to their lands in Prussia (while remaining in fief to the Emperor inside the HRE.) In practice the Hohenzollerns were not good vassals in Poland and essentially ignored the Polish King throughout their time as lords of Prussia. Eventually in the 1600s they were able to legally gain sovereignty from the King of Poland for their Prussian possessions. However a remaining problem was that while the Hohenzollerns controlled a large portion of “Prussia” some of “Prussia” remained part of Poland and was outside of Hohenzollern hands. It was thought that if the Hohenzollerns crowned themselves “King of Prussia” the Polish would interpret this as an attempt on their part to assert lordship over the parts of Prussia that were still in Polish hands.
(Incidentally some 80 years later when Frederick the Great actually took those parts of Poland in a partition agreement with Russia he had his title changed from King in Prussia to King of Prussia.)
It is, as you note, complicated. Octavian wasn’t called an Emperor but mostly because that’s an English word. Octavian was an Imperator.
Imperator was an existing term in Roman law (Octavian loved to take historical titles and expand them to cover his powers rather than invent new titles). It literally means somebody who gives orders and it was the title for somebody who had a military command. The difference was Octavian was Imperator without a specific Legion under his command - he had the authority to give orders to anyone.
Octavian also had the title Pater Patriae, which means “Father of the Country”. That sounds like just a friendly honorific until you consider the power that Roman law gave a father over his dependents. A Roman father was considered the absolute ruler over his extended family. And so by extension, Octavian was considered to have the equivalent absolute power over all of Rome.
Octavian’s main title was Princips, which means First Citizen. The idea was that Octavian was the first among his peers - ahead of them in the lead but still one of them.
Octavian to my knowledge was always referred to as “Princeps” on his wishes. The title Imperator is indeed where the English word “Emperor” comes from, but it isn’t the same as our concept of the word Emperor. A few Emperors later “Imperator” be came the common term, but it wasn’t universal. In personal conversation it might still be common to use the term “Princeps” and in the Greek speaking parts of the Roman Empire Greek speakers regularly just referred to the Emperor as “King” (in Greek, obviously), as the Greek speaking world had no reason to care or respect the Republican trappings. They were forced into Rome’s embrace more or less and it was only in Rome proper it was politically important to keep the fiction of the Republic alive, the Republic meant nothing to the Greek speaking part of the Empire.
The big difference between the title “Imperator” and our word Emperor is Emperor in English almost exclusively is used to refer to a real political office/title. It was simply an honorific in Rome, it was the most commonly used honorific in reference to the Emperors (although some Emperors like Octavian did not use it personally, and some later Emperors were called Dominus or even reverted back to using Princeps in emulation of the first Emperor.)
The fundamental difference between Roman Emperors and say, Russian Tsars or Holy Roman Emperors is those were real titles that when crowned, gave you power as a consequences of the power of the office. In Rome, almost all the different words used to refer to Emperors were just honorifics, there was not a legal title as such that carried with it power. All real power was in the person himself, when the previous ruler died if you had enough personal political power that you got the armies to side with you, then you had all the powers of your predecessor. If you had political opponents you could usually crush them with force, but sometimes they could outmaneuver you in “palace coups.”
If you only had enough personal power to get partial support of the armies, then you might have to fight some other general to be undisputed ruler, and if you lost you would usually end up dead.
It really is kind of similar to modern day dictatorships. All of the modern day dictators have tons of titles for themselves. However unlike a Medieval monarch, those titles and offices do not have true power, the power is “in the man.”
The Eastern Roman Empire actually eventually adopted a true monarchy system with hereditary succession and their leaders adopted the Greek word for King as their title. However while they would call themselves "Βασιλεύς " (Basileus) which was the old Greek word for King, what happened when the “Byzantine Emperor” (a totally modern term) assumed that title is everyone would call them "Βασιλεύς " and other Kings were referred to as “Regas”, because the “Byzantine Emperor” saw himself as being above normal Kings.
To also contradict something said upthread, it is not true that the Western Europeans only saw the HRE as a “true Empire” and the Holy Roman Emperor as the “only true Emperor.” While the Eastern Roman Empire was often called the “Greek Empire” by contemporaries, it was genuinely acknowledged as a true Empire with a true Emperor as its ruler, not as an illegitimate descendant of the Roman Empire. Further, up until about 1100 at least the Eastern Roman Empire was militarily and economically superior to any power of Western Europe, and in fact was a major bulwark against Muslim expansion even after it started to decline, so it isn’t accurate to say the rest of the Christian world didn’t respect them as Emperors, they did.
My understanding is that Imperator was a real title with specific powers. As I said it originated as a military title. Say the barbarians were raiding into Gaul. The Roman Senate would appoint somebody to be the Imperator to deal with the problem. He now had the legal authority to go to Gaul and give orders to the local troops and provincial officials.
A big shift came under Diocletian. He was the one who changed Rome from a Principate to a Dominate. The Princips, as previously noted, was the First Citizen. The title implied there was some degree of equality. The Dominate did not indicate any equality. Dominus was the title that slaves used for their master.
Has anyone mentioned that it was:
- Not holy.
- Not Roman.
- Not an empire.
?
No, I don’t believe that is the case. Everything I’ve seen has just indicated that Imperator was an honorific when used by the Roman Emperors.
The Senate might appoint a dictator in times of crisis, but generally a barbarian horde would be handled by the consuls during the Republican period.
Now, that being said there were people called “imperators” prior to the period of the Empire. In Roman society there was a concept of “Imperium” which basically is a vaguely defined thing meaning “political power to order certain things.” A magistrate was seen to have “imperium” over his magistracy, but not outside of it.
Consuls had imperium, for example, but consuls served in duos and their imperium overlapped (so they could directly contradict one another.) Further, most magistracies had multiple magistrates, so one magistrate could overrule another in decision making (and then be overruled again by the original magistrate.) Obviously this meant that the powers that be in Rome didn’t have clear cut “resolution” processes (for example in our system of government if I’m a judge and issue a ruling that is overruled from a higher court I can’t just overrule it again, and only a higher court can overrule my judgment, peer judges at the same level as me do not have the right to review my decisions. Or if you look at Presidential vetos, the President can veto something and there is a process for handling that.) What this essentially forced is Roman leaders would have to settle things in some way based on personal negotiations since their actual legal powers didn’t always have the option of direct resolution available. Rome was a rough society in the Republican era, and very cutthroat. Sometimes things would be resolved because on magistrate had more street toughs working for him than the other, or because one magistrate had more friends in the Senate etc. I’m sure most of the time horse trading and such was involved.
But the concept of imperium had different meanings. All magistrates were seen to have “imperium” in their jurisdiction, but the term “Imperator” had a special meaning originally indicating a magistrate who had “imperium over men in the field of battle” essentially meaning a magistrate who also had the right to lead men on the battlefield. Such a magistrate would have the title of “imperator.” However it wasn’t synonymous with the concept of “dictators” who were given power over basically the entire military apparatus to fight a campaign. There might at any given Republican battlefield been many “magistrates with imperium” who would be considered “imperators.”
That was in the relatively early republican era, though.
My understanding is by the Punic Wars and later imperator strictly was an honorific title given to generals after they had won a battle, by their troops. So a successful general would be called an imperator, but you did not have to be an imperator to be a general and not all generals were imperators.
Basically imagine a situation in which we were in this army, and we referred to our leader as “General” because that was his official role. But then we win a bunch of big battles and we start calling him “Commander” which is just a generic term in English for anyone who commands, but imagine in this context it means “exalted leader who kicks ass.” That’s basically what imperator meant when given to generals in the mid and late Republican periods, it was a more “exalted” reference to a military commander.
It’s very difficult to actually understand the form of Roman government, because when Ocatvian took over instead of just crowning himself Emperor he created all these titles and offices, some honorific and some with built-in powers, and then all of his predecessors used them in various different ways. Some titles would only be used as an honorific of the Emperor, some titles would also be honorifics for other leaders, though. Some titles that started off as titles of the Emperor evolved into titles the Emperor would give out to designate his official heir.
Imperator is strange because you started calling someone that when they became the leader of the Roman Empire. Further, an army might proclaim its leader “imperator” indicating “we’re ready to back you in a bid to overthrow the Emperor” (and many Emperors lost their throne this way.) At the same time, the actual Emperor could be imperator “multiple times”, for example if a Roman Emperor won three great battles your name would have the “IMP III” title in writing.
From what I’ve seen the only offices I’m aware of with real “legal” power that the Emperors always held was Pontifex Maximus and Princeps Senatus, the official head of the Roman religion and the official office of head of the Senate, respectively. The Roman Emperors were also generally Consuls as well, which was an office with legal power. Interestingly they would be co-consul along with other men as well, and those men technically inside of Rome itself had the power to veto consular actions of the Emperor as they were co-consul. However in addition to his legal offices the Emperor also had the “Tribunitia potestas” which essentially meant he had the power of a tribune, but he had the highest tribune power. Tribunes traditionally were plebeians who had the power to veto things, and the office existed to give the plebeians more say in government. The Emperor held this power without being a plebeian and as he had the “highest” tribunician power he could order anyone arrested or veto any decision by anyone, including his co-consuls.
Outside of Rome the Emperor had a different set of powers which were not even legally subject to his co-consuls veto (and of course inside Rome the Emperor being vetoed by his fellow consul was a legal fiction.)
No, I don’t think this was the case. I believe Imperator remained a working title into Octavian’s era. The honorary title given to a military leader who’d won a major victory was triumphator.
I think the decline of Imperator as a military title came as a result of Octavian being given the title. Once Octavian was the Imperator, it probably seemed like a bad idea for anyone else to also be named Imperator, even if it was meant in the traditional sense. It implied that either the local guy potentially held the same power as Octavian or that Octavian’s power was really not that much bigger than what the local guy had. Either way, Imperator became an exclusive title for the head guy. And later it became even more - some of Octavian’s successors adopted Imperator as one of their personal names.
Now would seem to be a good time to mention that, it wasn’t actually an empire, wasn’t the least bit Roman, and in reality was secular.
Just thought I’d say because nobodys mentioned that yet, and I think that it is a valid point to make if we’re discussing this subject.
The lengths to which some people will go, just to get a census-designated place named after them!: King of Prussia, Pennsylvania - Wikipedia
To the best of my knowledge it was not holey, Romanian, or an umpire.
I thought it was a baseball referee who was not assigned to a single location but always kept moving around the field during a game. That’s right, it was a wholly roamin’ umpire
I can’t believe that no one has quoted Voltaire yet, who said in “Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire.” in his 1756 Essai sur l’histoire générale et sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations, Chapter 70.
Roughly translated: Leopold II is a big weenie. Whatcha gonna do about it, squirt?
Your amusing contribution is
- Not yours
- Not amusing
- Not a contribution
I am just surprised that there is a quote by Voltaire that he apparently actually said. The same would go for Mark Twain and Winston Churchill. And Oscar Wilde on Uncyclopedia, apparently.
“Defend your right to say it” indeed.
My god !I think that we’re getting into a double woosh situation here !
Or arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre we ?