Editing Emperor (section)

===Classical Antiquity===
{{Main|Roman emperor|Imperator}}
[[File:Rimini083.jpg|thumb|upright|A statue of [[Roman dictator|''dictator'']] [[Julius Caesar]]]]
When [[Roman Republic|Republican Rome]] turned into a ''de facto'' [[monarchy]] in the second half of the 1st century BC, at first there was no name for the title of the new type of monarch. Ancient Romans abhorred the name [[King of Rome|Rex ("king")]], and it was critical to the political order to maintain the forms and pretenses of republican rule. [[Julius Caesar]] had been [[Roman dictator|Dictator]], an acknowledged and traditional office in Republican Rome. Caesar was not the [[Titus Larcius|first]] to hold it, but following his assassination the term was abhorred in Rome.{{Citation needed|date=September 2015}}

[[Augustus]], considered the first [[Roman emperor]], established his hegemony by collecting on himself offices, titles, and honours of Republican Rome that had traditionally been distributed to different people, concentrating what had been distributed power in one man. One of these offices was ''[[princeps senatus]]'', ("first man of the Senate") and became changed into Augustus' chief honorific, ''[[Princeps|princeps civitatis]]'' ("first citizen") from which the modern English word and title [[prince]] is descended. The first period of the [[Roman Empire]], from 27 BC to AD 284, is called the ''[[principate]]'' for this reason. However, it was the informal descriptive of ''[[Imperator]]'' ("commander") that became the title increasingly favored by his successors. Previously bestowed on high officials and military commanders who had ''[[imperium]]'', Augustus reserved it exclusively to himself as the ultimate holder of all ''imperium''. (''Imperium'' is Latin for the authority to command, one of a various types of authority delineated in Roman political thought.)

Beginning with Augustus, ''Imperator'' appeared in the title of all Roman monarchs through the extinction of the Empire in 1453. After the reign of Augustus' immediate successor [[Tiberius]], being proclaimed ''imperator'' was transformed into the act of accession to the [[head of state]]. Other honorifics used by the Roman emperors have also come to be synonyms for Emperor:

*'''[[Caesar (title)|Caesar]]''' {{IPA|la|ˈkae̯sar|lang}} (as, for example, in [[Suetonius]]' ''[[Lives of the Twelve Caesars|Twelve Caesars]]''). This tradition continued in many languages: in German it became "[[Kaiser]]"; in certain [[Slavic languages]] it became "[[Tsar]]"; in Hungarian it became "Császár", and several more variants. The name derived from [[Julius Caesar]]'s [[cognomen]] "Caesar": this cognomen was adopted by all Roman emperors, exclusively by the ruling monarch after the [[Julio-Claudian dynasty]] had died out. In this tradition Julius Caesar is sometimes described as the first Caesar/emperor (following Suetonius). This is one of the most enduring titles: Caesar and its transliterations appeared in every year from the time of [[Caesar Augustus]] to the modern era.
*'''[[Augustus (honorific)|Augustus]]''' was the [[honorific]] first bestowed on Emperor Augustus: on his death it became an official title of his successor and all Roman emperors after him added it to their name. Although it had a high symbolic value, something like "elevated" or "sublime", it was generally not used to indicate the office of ''Emperor'' itself. Exceptions include the title of the ''[[Augustan History]]'', a semi-historical collection of emperors' biographies of the 2nd and 3rd century. This title also proved very enduring: after the fall of the Roman Empire, the title would be incorporated into the style of the [[Holy Roman Emperor]], a precedent set by [[Charlemagne]], and its Greek translation ''[[Sebastos]]'' continued to be used in the [[Byzantine Empire]] until the [[Fall of Constantinople]] in 1453, although it gradually lost its imperial exclusivity. Augustus had (by his last will) granted the feminine form of this honorific ([[Augusta (honorific)|Augusta]]) to his wife. Since there was no "title" of Empress(-consort) whatsoever, women of the reigning dynasty sought to be granted this honorific, as the highest attainable goal. Few were however granted the title, and it was certainly not a rule that all wives of reigning emperors would receive it.
*'''[[Imperator]]''' (as, for example, in [[Pliny the Elder]]'s ''[[Naturalis Historia]]''). In the [[Roman Republic]] Imperator meant "(military) commander". In the late Republic, as in the early years of the new monarchy, ''Imperator'' was a title granted to Roman generals by their troops and the [[Roman Senate]] after a great victory, roughly comparable to [[field marshal]] (head or commander of the entire army). For example, in AD 15 [[Germanicus]] was proclaimed ''Imperator'' during the reign of his adoptive father [[Tiberius]]. Soon thereafter "Imperator" became however a title reserved exclusively for the ruling monarch. This led to "Emperor" in English and, among other examples, "Empereur" in French and "Mbreti" in Albanian. The Latin feminine form [[Imperatrix]] only developed after "Imperator" had taken on the connotation of "Emperor".
*'''[[Autokrator]]''' (Αὐτοκράτωρ) or '''[[basileus#Romans and Byzantines|Basileus]]''' (βασιλεύς): although the Greeks used equivalents of "Caesar" (Καῖσαρ, ''Kaisar'') and "Augustus" (in two forms: transliterated as {{lang|grc|Αὔγουστος}}, ''Augoustos'' or translated as {{lang|grc|Σεβαστός}}, ''[[Sebastos]]'') these were rather used as part of the name of the emperor than as an indication of the office. Instead of developing a new name for the new type of monarchy, they used {{lang|grc|αὐτοκράτωρ}} (''autokratōr'', only partly overlapping with the modern understanding of "[[Autocracy|autocrat]]") or {{lang|grc|βασιλεύς}} (''[[basileus]]'', until then the usual name for "[[Monarch|sovereign]]"). ''Autokratōr'' was essentially used as a translation of the Latin ''Imperator'' in Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire, but also here there is only partial overlap between the meaning of the original Greek and Latin concepts. For the Greeks ''Autokratōr'' was not a military title, and was closer to the Latin ''[[Roman dictator|dictator]]'' concept ("the one with unlimited power"), before it came to mean Emperor. ''Basileus'' appears not to have been used exclusively in the meaning of "emperor" (and specifically, the Roman/Byzantine emperor) before the 7th century, although it was a standard informal designation of the emperor in the Greek-speaking East. The title was later applied by the rulers of various Eastern Orthodox countries claiming to be the successors of Rome/Byzantium, such as [[Kingdom of Georgia|Georgia]], [[Second Bulgarian Empire|Bulgaria]], [[Serbian Empire|Serbia]], [[Tsardom of Russia|Russia]].

After the turbulent [[Year of the Four Emperors]] in 69, the [[Flavian dynasty]] reigned for three decades. The succeeding [[Nervan-Antonian dynasty]], ruling for most of the 2nd century, stabilised the empire. This epoch became known as the era of the ''[[Nerva–Antonine dynasty#Five Good Emperors|Five Good Emperors]]'', and was followed by the short-lived [[Severan dynasty]].

During the [[Crisis of the 3rd century]], [[barracks emperors]] succeeded one another at short intervals. Three short lived secessionist attempts had their own emperors: the [[Gallic Empire]], the [[Britannic Empire]], and the [[Palmyrene Empire]] though the latter used ''rex'' more regularly.

The [[Principate]] (27 BC – 284 AD) period was succeeded by what is known as the [[Dominate]] (284 AD – 527 AD), during which Emperor [[Diocletian]] tried to put the empire on a more formal footing. Diocletian sought to address the challenges of the Empire's now vast geography and the instability caused by the informality of succession by the creation of co-emperors and junior emperors. At one point, there were as many as five sharers of the ''imperium'' (see: [[Tetrarchy]]). In 325 AD [[Constantine I]] defeated his rivals and restored single emperor rule, but following his death the empire was divided among his sons. For a time the concept was of one empire ruled by multiple emperors with varying territory under their control, however following the death of [[Theodosius I]] the rule was divided between his two sons and increasingly became separate entities. The areas administered from Rome are referred to by historians the [[Western Roman Empire]] and those under the immediate authority of Constantinople called the [[Eastern Roman Empire]] or (after the [[Battle of Yarmouk]] in 636 AD) the [[Byzantine Empire|Later Roman or Byzantine Empire]]. The subdivisions and co-emperor system were formally abolished by [[Zeno (emperor)|Emperor Zeno]] in 480 AD following the death of [[Julius Nepos]] last Western Emperor and the ascension of [[Odoacer]] as the ''de facto'' King of Italy in 476 AD.