Majesty is an English word derived ultimately from the Latin Maiestas, meaning Greatness. Origin Originally, during the Roman republic, the word maiestas was the legal term for the supreme status and dignity of the state, to be respected above everything else. This was crucially defined by the existence of a specific crime, called laesa maiestatis, literally "Violated Majesty" (in English law Lese majesty, via the French Lèse-majesté), consisting of the violation of this supreme status. Various acts such as celebrating a party on a day of public mourning, contempt of the various rites of the state and disloyalty in word or act were punished as crimes against the majesty of the republic.However, later, under the Empire, it came to mean an offence against the dignity of the Emperor. Even indirect actions such as paying for a service in a brothel with a coin bearing the portrait of the emperor could be punished

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