It does not appear clearly why the Chou dynasty took the new title
of wang, which does not seem to occur in any titular sense
previous to their accession: the Chinese attempts to furnish
etymological explanation are too crude to be worth discussing. No
feudal Chinese prince presumed to use it during the Chou
_regime_ and if the semi-barbarous rulers of Ts'u, Wu, and
Yiieh did so in their own dominions (as the Hwang Ti, or "august
emperor," of Annam was in recent times tacitly allowed to do),
their federal title in orthodox China never went beyond that of
viscount. When in the fourth century B.C. all the powers styled
themselves _wang_, and were recognized as such by the insignificant
emperors, the situation was very much the same as that produced in
Europe when first local Caesars, who, to begin with, had been
"associates" of the Augustus (or two rival Augusti), asserted their
independence of the feeble central Augustus, and then set themselves
up as Augusti pure and simple, until at last the only "Roman Emperor"
left in Rome was the Emperor of Germany.
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