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Macedonian boy BM 1906.10-19.1.jpg Terrakota Statue eines Makedoniers 3 Jhdt v Chr.jpg
Two 4th and 3rd century BC terracotta statues from Athens depicting ancient Macedonians wearing the kausia.
Indo-Greek king Antialcidas wearing the kausia. Japan Currency Museum.

The kausia (Ancient Greek: καυσία[1]) was an ancient Macedonian flat hat.

It was worn during the Hellenistic period but perhaps even before the time of Alexander the Great[2] and was also used in lion hunting[citation needed] and as a protection against the sun by the poorer classes in Rome.[3]

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 India.

A modern descendant of the hat may be the Pakol, or 'Chitrali cap': the familiar, and remarkably similar, men's hat from the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan.


  1. ^ καυσία, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
  2. ^ "The Kausia Diadematophoros", American Journal of Archaeology, 1984, on JSTOR
  3. ^ "Miles gloriosus", Harvard University Press, 1997, on Google books