Kausia

Name

The name is derived from its keeping off the heat (καῦσις, kaûsis).

Background

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

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 India. 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. 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 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.

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.

Gallery

File:Ancient Macedonian soldiers, from the tomb of Agios Athanasios, Greece.jpg|Ancient Macedonian soldiers, from the tomb of Agios Athanasios (Greece) wearing the kausia, grave of Agios Athanasios, 4th century BC File:Antimachos I.jpg|Coin of Greco-Bactrian king Antimachus I Theos wearing the Macedonian kausia, c.185–170 BC File:Pompejanischer Maler um 40 v. Chr. 001.jpg|Antigonus II Gonatas wearing the kausia and holding a spear, detail of a fresco in Villa Fannius, c. 40 BC, Archaeological Museum of Naples

References

References

1. "καυσία".
2. [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0062:id=causia-harpers Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Causia] {{source-attribution}}
3. (1984). "The Kausia Diadematophoros". American Journal of Archaeology.
4. (1997). "Miles gloriosus". Harvard University Press.
5. (2010). "A Companion to Ancient Macedonia". John Wiley and Sons.
6. Kingsley, Bonnie M.. (1981). "The Cap That Survived Alexander". American Journal of Archaeology.
7. Fredricksmeyer, Ernst. (1986). "Alexander the Great and the Macedonian kausia". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association.
8. (1994). "Ventures into Greek history". Clarendon Press.