Kausia

Kausia

Kausia

Broad-brimmed flat felt hat of Ancient Macedonian origin

The kausia or causia (Ancient Greek: καυσία[1]) was an ancient Macedonian flat hat. A purple kausia was worn by the Macedonian kings as part of the royal costume.[2]

Two 4th and 3rd century BC terracotta statues from Athens depicting Ancient Greeks wearing the kausia.

Name

The name is derived from its keeping off the heat (καῦσις).[2]

Background

It was worn during the Hellenistic period but perhaps even before the time of Alexander the Great[3] and was later used as a protection against the sun by the poorer classes in Rome.[4]

Depictions of the kausia can be found on a variety of coins and statues found from the Mediterranean to the Greco-Bactrian kingdom and the Indo-Greeks in northwestern Indus. The Persians referred to both the Macedonians and the rest of the Greeks as "Yauna" (Ionians), but made a distinction between "Yauna by the sea" and those "with hats that look like shields" (yauna takabara), probably referring to the Macedonian kausia hat.[5] According to Bonnie Kingsley the kausia may have came to the Mediterranean as a campaign hat worn by Alexander and veterans of his campaigns in the Indus[6] but according to Ernst Fredricksmeyer the kausia was too established a staple of the Macedonian wardrobe for it to have been imported from Asia to Macedonia.[7]

A modern descendant of the hat may be the Pakol: the familiar and remarkably similar men's hat from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir.[8]

See also

References

  1. [1]
    Henry George Liddell; Robert Scott. "καυσία". A Greek-English Lexicon – via Perseus.
  2. [2]
    Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Causia Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  3. [3]
    Kingsley, Bonnie M. (1984). "The Kausia Diadematophoros". American Journal of Archaeology. 88 (1): 66–68. doi:10.2307/504602. JSTOR 504602. S2CID 193037990.
  4. [4]
    Miles gloriosus. Harvard University Press. 1997. ISBN 9780674574373.
  5. [5]
    Roisman, Joseph; Worthington, Ian (2010). A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. John Wiley and Sons. p. 87. ISBN 978-1-4051-7936-2.
  6. [6]
    Kingsley, Bonnie M. (1981). The Cap That Survived Alexander. Vol. 85. p. 39. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  7. [7]
    Fredricksmeyer, Ernst (1986). Alexander the Great and the Macedonian kausia. Vol. 116. pp. 215–227. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  8. [8]
    Worthington, Ian; Geoffrey, Nicholas; Hammond, Lemprière (1994). Ventures into Greek history. Clarendon Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-0198149286.
  • Media related to Kausia at Wikimedia Commons
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