worn by a person to indicate that he was coming from a journey. In the prologue to the Amphitryo, Mercury says,
Ego has habebo hic usque in petaso pinnulas,
Tum meo patri autem torulus inerit aureus
Sub petaso: id signum Amphitruoni non erit.
Mercury and his father Jupiter are here supposed to be attired like Sosia and Amphitryo his master, both of whom had been travelling and were returning home. At the same time there is an allusion to the winged hat of Mercury, of which more hereafter. Again, in act i. scene i. l. 287, the petasus is attributed to Sosia, because he is supposed to be coming from a journey; and to Mercury, both because it was commonly attributed to him, and because on this occasion he was personating Sosia.
The Romans were less addicted to the use of the petasus than the Greeks: they often wore it when they were from home; but that they did not consider it at all necessary to wear hats in the open air is manifest from the remark of Suetonius about the Emperor Augustus, that he could not even bear the winter's sun, and hence "domi quoque non nisi petatasus sub divo spatiabatur." (August. 82.) Caligula permitted the senators to wear them at the theatres as a protection from the sun (Dio. Cass. lix. 7. p. 909, ed. Reimari). What was meant by wearing hats "according to the Thessalian fashion" is by no means clear. Perhaps the Thessalians may have worn hats resembling those of their neighbors, the Macedonians, and of the shape of these we may form some conception from the coins of the Macedonian kings. One of these coins from the collection in the British Museum is copied in Plate IX. Fig. 15. It is a coin of the reign of Alexander I. and exhibits a Macedonian warrior standing by the side of his horse, holding two spears in his left hand, and wearing a hat with a broad brim turned upwards. This Macedonian petasus is called the Causia ([Greek: kausia])[1], and was adopted by the Romans[2], and more
- ↑ Val. Max. v. 1. Extem. 4. Pausan., ap. Eustath. in Il. ii. 121. It is to be observed, that the causia and petasus are opposed to one another by a writer in Athenæus (L. xii. 537, e), as if the causia was not a petasus!
- ↑ Plautus, Mil. iv. 4. 42. Pers. i. 3. 75. Antip. Thess. in Brunck Anal. ii. 111.
