Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/473

 for the handkerchief, and sometimes for the purse. Others wear the red skull-cap, or fess." The Lycians, as we are informed by Herodotus (viii. 92), wore caps of felt, which were surrounded with feathers. Some of the Lycian coins and bas-reliefs, however, show the "Phrygian bonnet," as it is called, in the usual form.

The cap worn by the Persians is called by Greek authors [Greek: kyrbasia] or [Greek: tiara], and seems to have had the form now under consideration. Herodotus, when he describes the costume of the Persian soldiers in the army of Xerxes, says, that they wore light and flexible caps of felt, which were called tiaras. He adds, that the Medes and Bactrians wore the same kind of cap with the Persians, but that the Cissii wore a mitra instead (vii. 61, 62, 64). On the other hand he says, that the Sacæ wore cyrbasiæ, which were sharp-pointed, straight, and compact. The Armenians were also called "weavers of felt" (Brunck, Anal. ii. p. 146. No. 22). The form of their caps is clearly shown in the coins of the Emperor Verus, one of which, preserved in the British Museum, is engraved in Plate VIII. fig. 14. The legend, surrounding his head, , refers to the war in Armenia. The reverse shows a female figure representing Armenia, mourning and seated on the ground, and surrounded by the emblems of Roman warfare and victory. The caps represented on this and other coins agree remarkably with the forms still used in the same parts of Asia. Strabo (L. xi. p. 563, ed. Sieb.) says, that these caps were necessary in Media on account of the cold. He calls the Per-*, this was the Attic term, [Greek: tiara] meaning the same thing in the common Greek. Plutarch applies the latter term to the cap worn by the younger Cyrus: [Greek: Apopiptei de tês kephalês hê tiara tou Kyrou].—Artaxerxes, p. 1858. ed. Steph.

The "Phrygian bonnet" is called Phrygia tiara in the following lines of an epitaph (ap. Gruter. p. 1123):

Indueris teretes manicas Phrygiamque tiaram? Non unus Cybeles pectore vivet Atys. ]