The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

432 MANUFACTURE AND USE OF
monly wore it, more especially in travelling*. Arrian, who
wrote about the middle of the second century, says, that " La-
conian or Arcadian hats," were worn in the army by the pel-
tastae instead of helmetsf. This circumstance shows a remark-
able change of customs ; for in the early Greek history we find
the Peisian soldiers held up as the objects of ridicule and con-
tempt, because they wore hats and trowsers+. On the whole, it
is very evident that " the Arcadian or Laconian hat " was one
and the same variety, and that this variety of head-dress was
simply the petasus, or hat with a brim, so called to distinguish
it from the proper -rXo?, which was the skull-cap, or hat without
a brim.
This supposition suits the representations of the only ima-
ginary beings who are exhibited in works of ancient art wear-
ing the petasus, viz. the Dioscuri and Mercury.
It has been akead}' observed that the Dioscuri are commonly
represented with the skull-cap, because they were worshipped,
as the reader will have perceived, as the guardians of the mar-
iner§ ; but on ancient vases we find them sometimes painted
with the petasus ; and if this was the same with the ^rXof Aaxuvi-
Kos, it would coincide with their origin as natives of Sparta. In
Plate IX. Fig. 16, an example is shown, on one of Sir Wil-
liam Hamilton's vases, in which their attire resemljles that of
the Athenian ephebi. They wear boots and a tunic, over
which one of them also wears the scarf or clilamys. They
are conducted by the goddess Night.
In like manner Mercury, as a native of Arcadia, might be
expected to wear " the Arcadian hat." In the representations
of this deity on works of ancient art, the hat, which is often
decorated with wnngs to indicate his office of messenger, as his
talaria also did', has a great variety of forms, and sometimes
the brim is so narrow, that it does not differ from the cap of the
artificer akeady described, or the rrrXoj in its ordinary form.
* Vit. Sophist, ii. 5. 3. t Tactica, p. 12. ed. Blancardi.
t Herod, v. 49. § See p. 419.
II Servius (on Virg. Mn. viii. 138) says, that Mercury was supposed to have
wings on his petasus and on his feet, in order to denote the swiftness of speech,
he being the god of eloquence.