Centuries and centuries before, indeed a thousand years before, the word _Rex_ had meant the chieftain of the little town and petty surrounding district of Rome or of some similar neighboring and small state. It had in the Latin language always retained some such connotation. The word “_Rex_” was often used in Latin literature as we use the word “King” in English: _i.e._, to describe the head of a state great or small. But as applied to the local rulers of the fifth century in Western Europe, it was not so used. It meant, as I have said, Chieftain or Chief officer of auxiliaries. A _Rex_ was not then, in Spain, or in Gaul, a King in our modern sense of the word: he was only the military head of a particular armed force. He was originally the commander (hereditary or chosen or nominated by the Emperor) of an auxiliary force serving as part of the Roman Army. Later, when these troops—originally recruited perhaps from some one barbaric district—changed by slow degrees into a body half police, half noble, their original name would extend to the whole local army. The “Rex” of, say, Batavian auxiliaries, the commander of the Batavian Corps, would probably be a man of Batavian blood, with hereditary position and would be called “_Rex Bataviorum_.” Afterwards, when the recruiting was mixed, he still kept that title and later still, when the _Batavii_, as such, had disappeared, his fixed title would remain. There was no similarity possible between the word _Rex_ and the word _Imperator_, any more than there is between the words “Miners’ Union” or “Trade Conference” and the word “England.” There was, of course, no sort of equality. A Roman General in the early part of the process planning a battle would think of a _Rex_ as we think of a Divisionary General. He might say: “I shall put my regulars here in the centre. My auxiliaries (Huns or Goths or Franks or what not) I shall put here. Send for their ‘Rex’ and I will give him his orders.” A _Rex_ in this sense was a subject and often an unimportant subject of the _Imperator_ or Emperor: the _Imperator_ being, as we remember, the Commander-in-Chief of the Roman Army, upon which institution the Roman State or Empire or civilization had depended for so many centuries.