• trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 day ago

    Julius Caesar was one of those dictators. He actually made a point of telling people “Non sum Rex, sed Caesar”. Caesar later became the title used for emperor in many languages.

    • Zombie@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      For the curious:

      The second incident occurred in 44 BC. One day in January, the tribunes Gaius Epidius Marullus and Lucius Caesetius Flavus discovered a diadem on the head of the statue of Caesar on the Rostra in the Roman Forum.[5] According to Suetonius, the tribunes ordered the wreath be removed as it was a symbol of Jupiter and royalty.[7] Nobody knew who had placed the diadem, but Caesar suspected that the tribunes had arranged for it to appear so that they could have the honour of removing it.[5] Matters escalated shortly after on the 26th, when Caesar was riding on horseback to Rome on the Appian Way.[8] A few members of the crowd greeted him as rex (“king”), to which Caesar replied, “I am not Rex, but Caesar” (“Non sum Rex, sed Caesar”).[9] This was wordplay; Rex was a Latin title meaning ‘king’. Marullus and Flavus, the aforementioned tribunes, were not amused, and ordered the man who first cried “rex” arrested. In a later Senate meeting, Caesar accused the tribunes of attempting to create opposition to him, and had them removed from office and membership in the Senate.[8] The Roman plebs took their tribunes seriously as the representatives of the common people; Caesar’s actions against the tribunes put him on the wrong side of public opinion.[10]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Julius_Caesar

    • deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      Tsar/czar and kaiser are derived from caesar.

      I’m going to assume that ‘king’ probably does in some tortuous way.

      • pet the cat, walk the dog@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        11 hours ago

        ‘King’ is kinda obviously Germanic.

        Interestingly, Proto-Germanic ‘*kuningaz’ or ‘*kunungaz’, meaning “king”, are equivalent to ‘kin’ +‎ ‘-ing’, since ‘*kunją’ meant kin, family, or clan. So a king was a dude (presumably) who was clan-ing over the clan.