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 later used 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 Indus. The Persians referred to both the Macedonians and the rest of the Greeks as "Yauna" (Ionians), but made a distinction between "Yauna by the sea" and those "with hats that look like shields" (yauna takabara), probably referring to the Macedonian kausia hat.[4] According to Bonnie Kingsley the kausia may have came to the Mediterranean as a campaign hat worn by Alexander and veterans of his campaigns in the Indus[5] but according to Ernst Fredricksmeyer the kausia was too established a staple of the Macedonian wardrobe for it to have been imported from Asia to Macedonia.[6]
A modern descendant of the hat may be the Pakol: the familiar and remarkably similar men's hat from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir.[7]