Ego has habebo hic usque in petaso pinnulas,
Tum meo patri autem torulus inerit aureus
Sub petaso: id signum Amphitruoni non erit.
[631] Brunck, Anal. ii. 170, No. 5.
[632] Hope, Costume of the Ancients, vol. i. pl. 71.
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 (καυσία)[633], and was adopted by the Romans[634], and more especially by the Emperor Caracalla, who, as Herodian states, aimed to imitate Alexander the Great in his costume. It appears probable, nevertheless, that the turning up of the brim was not peculiar to the Macedonians, and it may have depended altogether on accident or fancy; for we find instances of it on painted fictile vases, where there is no reason to suppose that any reference was intended either to Macedonia or Thessaly. Fig. 16. [Plate IX.] for example, is taken from the head of Bellerophon, on one of Sir William Hamilton’s vases[635]; and the left-hand figure from a fictile vase at Vienna, engraved by Ginzrot[636]. This hat is remarkable for the boss at the top, which we observe also on the Ætolian coins, and in various other examples.
[633] 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!
[634] Plautus, Mil. iv. 4. 42. Pers. i. 3. 75. Antip. Thess. in Brunck Anal. ii. 111.
[635] Vol. i. pl. 1.