Caesar, << SEE zuhr, >> was a title that came from the family name of Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar ruled Rome as a monarch without a crown from 49 to 44 B.C. Octavian, Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted son, took his great-uncle’s name. Octavian also took the title of Augustus (honored one). The next four Roman emperors all had some claim, by family or adoption, to the name of Caesar. Eventually the name became so closely associated with the idea of emperor that it was a kind of title. In choosing the person to follow him as supreme ruler, the emperor would give his heir the title Caesar. In the days of the Byzantine Empire, which existed from the A.D. 300’s to the mid-1400’s, anyone chosen as ruler of a country under the Empire might be called Caesar. In the Russian language, the title became czar. In German, Caesar was changed to kaiser. See also Czar ; Kaiser .
