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]
The name is derived from its keeping off the heat (καῦσις). [2]
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]
{{
cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (
help)
{{
cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (
help)