Hyrcanus I was succeeded by Aristobulus I (104 103), who extended Hasmonean territory northward and is said to have assumed the title of king (basileus), though on his coins he appears, like Hyrcanus I, as high priest.
Three of the archons had special functions: the basileus, or "king"; the polemarchos, originally a military commander (though after the institution of the Cleisthenic stratēgoi, military authority passed to this new panel of 10); and the "eponymous archon," who gave his name to the year.
Functionaries received the actions and arranged the trials that took place before the courts, with each functionary having a specific jurisdiction: the archon over matters pertaining to family and succession, the "king" (archōn basileus) over religious matters (including murder), the thesmothetai ("determiners of customs") and others over the rest.
Alexander added the title basileus (king) only after his Persian conquest.
He was the first of his house to adopt the title of king (basileus).
With regard to those same early Archaic times, one hears for example, in the poetry of the 7th-century Boeotian Hesiod of control, sometimes oppressively exercised, by basileis (singular basileus).
The Byzantine basileus, or autocrat, had moral responsibility for guarding and harmonizing an elaborate state, a "colony" of heaven in which reason and not mere will ought to rule.
He was neither a Roman king (rex) nor a Hellenistic monarch (basileus), nor was he, as the 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen thought, a partner with the Senate in a dyarchy.
That word is usually translated as "kings," and such titles as the Athenian basileus (an official, or archon, with a defined religious competence, conveniently but less correctly called the archon basileus by modern scholars) are then explained as survivals of an age of monarchy.
The material structure of the empire, which had long been crumbling, was now under the management of the sultan-basileus.
Then, there were the leaders of black sorority groups, with their marvelous titles--the Grand Exalted Ruler of the Elks, the Grand Polemarch of Kappa Alpha Psi, the Supreme Basileus of Alpha Kappa Alpha.
