Who will convince those in this position that they differ not a whit from those in shows on the stage?
...Those however who strut on the stage of life because of their imperial office take into account neither what is shortly before or shortly after, and in just the same way that bubbles expand as they are blown up, these people are roundly inflated by the loud proclamation of the herald; they plaster over themselves the shape of some other personality, switching the natural features of the face into something unsmiling and daunting, and they contrive a harsher voice, one made to resemble an animal in order to terrify the hearers.
They stay no longer within the bounds of human nature, but assume divine power and authority. They believe they have sovereignty over life and death because to some of those who are judged by them they give the sentence of acquittal, while others they condemn to death.
And they do not even consider who is truly the Sovereign of human life and determines both the beginning of existence and its end. Nevertheless this alone should have been enough to restrain vain conceit, the sight of many rulers even during the performance of their reign snatched from their very thrones and carried out to their graves, and for them lamentation has replaced the cries of the heralds.
-- St Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies On the Beatitudes