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430 MANUFACTURE AND USE OP
worn by a person to indicate that he was coming from a journey.
In the prologue to the Amphitryo, ]Mercury says,
Ego has babebo hie usque in petaso pinnulas,
Turn meo patri autem toruhis 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 1. 1. 2S7, 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 person-
ating 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.) Cahgula permitted the
senators to wear them at the theatres as a protection from the
sun (Dio. Cass. hx. 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 collec-
tion in the British Museum is copied in Plate IX. Fig. 15.
It is a coin of the reign of Alexander I. and exhibits a Mace-
donian 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 (ca«ffto)*, and was adopted by the Romanst, and more
* Val. Max. v. 1. Extern. 4. Pausan., op. Eustath. in II. ii. 121. It is to be
observed, that the causia and petasus are opposed to one anotlier by a writer in
Athenaeus (L. xii. 537, e), as if the causia was not a petasus !
t Plautus, Mil. iv. 4. 42. Pers. i. 3. 75. Antip. Thess. in Brunch Anal. ii. 111.