This is my first post on this forum, I am a wargamer with an interest in this period, and have found this forum to be of great value.
I am no expert, but it seems to me that tha most common headgear, aside from helmets(if they were common) is the Pillbox Hat.
Was the Phrygian Cap also as common. At one time it was the favoured headgear for Late Roman illustrations of troops and wargame figures, now it appears on pictures of Early Saxon Troops only.Would the Phrygian Cap still be used by Late Roman and Sub Roman troops.
I like to paint and research my Wargame Armies to be as accurate as possible.
I've seen some images of Late Roman Re-enactors using them, so I'd imagine so.
Also, the resoning behind metal armor seems to be that chainmail and the like were only worn in set-piece battles, or in planned engagements. On the march or on guard duty, soldiers seem to have worn leather subarmalis. We had a good discussion on TWC, if I can find it I'll link you to it.
But helmets would be perfectly accurate, most troops were equipped with them.
Which Phrygian cap are you referring to? The Smurf hat?
If you've seen late re-enactors wearing them, are you sure they are not doing another period in the picture?
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
Titus Flavius Germanus
Batavian Coh I
Byron Angel
By the way, Steve, welcome to RAT. If you have questions about how to find things, don't be shy, ask. Feel free to PM me or any moderator, and we'll try to direct you to topics that are within your interest.
Quote:Which Phrygian cap are you referring to? The Smurf hat?
If you've seen late re-enactors wearing them, are you sure they are not doing another period in the picture?
Yeah, they might of. The pannonian cap was very common though as far as I can tell. When was it introduced, second century?
I've heard people say they may have been around even earlier, but I can't recall if there was evidence.
Visne partem mei capere? Comminus agamus! * Me semper rogo, Quid faceret Iulius Caesar? * Confidence is a good thing! Overconfidence is too much of a good thing.
[b]Legio XIIII GMV. (Q. Magivs)RMRS Remember Atuatuca! Vengence will be ours!
Titus Flavius Germanus
Batavian Coh I
Byron Angel
The Pannonian 'pillbox' hats first appear around the mid to late third century, coincidentally at the same time as the 'Illyrian' soldier emperors and the rise to primacy of the Danubian region as a recruiting ground and military powerbase - I suspect these facts may be connected...
They seem to have become near-ubiquitous fairly quickly - Constantine's troops (from the Rhine) are shown wearing them on his Arch. Emperors too adopted the hat, even on coin images, possibly to demonstrate their affinity with the common soldiers.
While I'm sure civilians wore them too - presumably they were adopted from actual Pannonians, perhaps shepherds? - this style of hat is so commonly used as visual shorthand to represent soldiers in late Roman art that it may have been one of the closest things the Roman army ever had to a 'uniform'.
The 'Phrygian' caps turn up rather earlier - some are shown on the column of Marcus Aurelius, and I believe the Arch of Severus too. There even seems to be a type of helmet modelled after this style of hat. So a late 2nd-early 3rd C. date is probably best. Perhaps they reflected a fashionable eastern or Syrian influence at the time?
Nathan Ross wrote: The Pannonian 'pillbox' hats first appear around the mid to late third century, coincidentally at the same time as the 'Illyrian' soldier emperors and the rise to primacy of the Danubian region as a recruiting ground and military powerbase - I suspect these facts may be connected...
There is now an actual example of Hadrianic date from Mons Claudianus. It has been suggested the design evolved from the Persian Tiara.
Other hats are illustrated in 'Roman Military Dress'.
Graham.
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream" Edgar Allan Poe.
"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.
"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
Quote:There is now an actual example of Hadrianic date from Mons Claudianus. It has been suggested the design evolved from the Persian Tiara.
Ah! That changes things... I did wonder about the 'tiara' idea you mentioned on the thread linked above: I'd assumed it was based on the notion that the Tetrarchs statues showed jewelled hats, which appeared to be a misconception. The original Persian tiara looks to me to be a much looser cloth headdress, neither pillbox shaped nor made of fur or leather! (surely I'm missing something though...) What other evidence is there on origins?
Just wondering if phrygian caps were more common amongst sailors/naval chaps as both the Low Ham mosaic & Virgilius Romanus manscript (from late 4th & 5th century Brtannia respectively) show most of the ship's crews in phrygian not pannonian caps.
Semisalis Abruna of the Batavi iuniores Britanniciani
aka Nick Marshall
Quote:phrygian caps were more common amongst sailors/naval chaps
That sounds very possible. Perhaps more common in certain parts of empire (Britain?) than others as well.
I'd still be interested to know more about the theory that the cap was developed from the Persian tiara. It seems to me that since it was called Pannonian and was initially (?) worn by Danubians, it probably came from Pannonia... :dizzy:
The late Roman hat is sometimes called a tiara which might offer one explanation. However if you Google image 'Persian Tiara' in amongst the usual flotsam, there are some images of Persian Guards on reliefs from Persepolis. They have hats that are practically identical to what we know as the 'Pannonian' hat and I do not mean those fluted Persian hats which always remind me of the wrappings around chocolate cup cakes!!
(There is also a small photo taken from the awesome re-construction of the Shah's parade from the 1970's showing both types of hat with those in the front wearing white hats presumably based on the Persepolis sources that might be the ancestor of the Pannonian.)
If you can not find the ones I mean, send me your email address via PM and I will post the pictures to you.
I am in the process of studying the Pannonian hats further. However I wonder if the term came about because it was the soldier emperors from that region who made the hats popular rather than that the hats actually originated from there.
Something similar perhaps to the 'Caracalla' cloak, which a lot of ancient writers seemed excited about and attributed its invention to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus who was named after it. For all intents and purposes the cloak itself looks no more or less like a paenula cloak which was around well before and after the early third century.
Graham.
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream" Edgar Allan Poe.
"Every brush-stroke is torn from my body" The Rebel, Tony Hancock.
"..I sweated in that damn dirty armor....TWENTY YEARS!', Charlton Heston, The Warlord.
They do look very similar to the Pannonian hats, yes. But surely these are Achaemenid Persians, so a very long time before the third-century appearance of our hat (or even its Hadrianic version)? I could be wrong, but the Sassanids appear to have favoured a different sort of headgear - a type of bulbous domed thing, amongst others. So why would the Roman army suddenly all start wearing a type of hat popular in Persia hundreds of years previously?
I don't mean it's impossible, of course - and your note about the Roman version being called a 'tiara' (but by whom?) is pretty suggestive. It's not such an outlandish sort of headwear though - there are many sorts of round flat-topped cap from cultures all around the world, and all of them need not derive from the same source.
Surely what's most interesting about these hats is their comparative sudden introduction (even if we admit, on the Egyptian evidence, that similar things had existed before) and their rapid spread over a few decades until they became apparently synonymous with Roman soldiers, at least in visual representations. Since, as I say, the appearance of the 'Pannonian' hat coincided so closely with the rise of Pannonian soldiers and (more importantly) Pannonian and Danubian emperors, surely some obvious connection with the region would be a logical assumption?
I did wonder, actually, whether the 'Persian tiara' theory might be connected to the idea that the tetrarchic emperors imported aspects of 'oriental' (i.e. Persian) practice to their system of rule. Current thinking seems to go against this - the ceremony of adoratio or proskynesis, for example, was apparently adopted by the Persians from the Romans, rather than vice versa. A fascinating subject, but perhaps deviating a bit too far from hats!
