Bust of Attis wearing a Phrygian cap (Parian marble, 2nd century AD).

The Phrygian cap is a soft, red, conical cap with the top pulled forward, worn in antiquity by the inhabitants of Phrygia, a region of central Anatolia. Originally a priestly cap, it came to signify freedom and the pursuit of liberty in the Roman west — perhaps by a confusion with the pileus, the manumitted slave's felt cap of ancient Rome — and is sometimes called a liberty cap.

[edit] History

[edit] Antiquity

In Antiquity, the Phrygian cap had two connotations: for the Greeks as showing a distinctive Eastern influence of non-Greek "barbarism" (in the classical sense) and among the Romans as a badge of liberty. The Phrygian cap identifies Trojans such as Paris in vase-paintings and sculpture, and it is worn by the syncretic Hellenistic and Roman saviour god Mithras and by the Anatolian god Attis. The twins Castor and Pollux wear a superficially similar round cap called the pileus.

In Byzantium, Anatolian Phrygia lay to the east of Constantinople, and thus in this late 6th-century mosaic from Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna (which was part of the Eastern Empire), the three Magi wear Phrygian caps, identifying them as generic "easterners".

The Phrygian cap that was also worn by King Midas to hide the donkey ears given to him as a curse by Apollo, was first referred to in Aristophanes' Ploutos (388BCE) but illustrated in vase-paintings a generation earlier.^[1] Greeks were already picturing the people of Midas wearing the tall peaked caps before the earliest surviving literary sources: a mid-sixth century Laconian cup depicts the capture of Silenus at a fountain house, by armed men in Eastern costume and pointed caps.^[2]

In vase-paintings and other Greek art, the Phrygian cap serves to identify the Trojan hero Paris as non-Greek; Roman poets habitually use the epithet "Phrygian" to mean Trojan. The Phrygian cap can also be seen on the Trajan's Column carvings, worn by the Dacians, and on the Arch of Septimius Severus worn by the Parthians.

The Macedonian, Thracian, Dacian and 12th-century Norman military helmets had a forward peaked top resembling the Phrygian cap called Phrygian type helmets.

In late Republican Rome, the cap of freedmen served as a symbol of freedom from tyranny. A coin issued by Brutus in Asia Minor 44–42 BC, showed one posed between two daggers^[3] (illustrated). During the Roman Empire, the Phrygian cap (Latin: pileus) was worn on festive occasions such as the Saturnalia, and by former slaves who had been emancipated by their master and whose descendants were therefore considered citizens of the Empire. This usage is often considered the root of its meaning as a symbol of liberty.

Hargrave Jennings in The Rosicrucians: Their Rites and Mysteries (1870)^[4],speculated on the basis of its use in imagery that the Phrygian cap was a priestly adornment connected with Mithraism.

[edit] Revolutionary icon

Tinted etching of Louis XVI of France, 1792, with a Phrygian cap.

Anonymous bust of Marianne, with the Phrygian cap (Palais du Luxembourg, Paris).

During the 18th century the 'Mithraic Mysteries' and its symbolism was of great interest to the Freemasons, and the conflation of the cap used in Mithraism with the Pileus led to the red Phrygian cap evolving into a symbol of 'freedom', held aloft on a Liberty Pole during both the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution^[5].

In revolutionary France the cap, the bonnet rouge, was first seen publicly in May 1790, at a festival in Troyes adorning a statue representing the nation, and at Lyon, on a lance carried by the goddess Libertas.^[6]. To this day the national emblem of France, Marianne, is shown wearing a Phrygian cap^[7].

In this 1793 British cartoon by James Gillray, who was deeply hostile to the French Revolution, a Phrygian cap substitutes for Scylla on the dangerous rocky shore, as Britannia's boat navigates between Scylla and Charybdis

In 1792, when Louis XVI was induced to sign a constitution, popular prints of the king were doctored to show him wearing the bonnet rouge.^[8] The bust of Voltaire was crowned with the red bonnet of liberty after a performance of his Brutus at the Comédie-Française in March 1792. The spire of the cathedral in Strasbourg was crowned with a bonnet rouge in order to prevent it from being torn down in 1794.

By wearing the red Phrygian cap the Paris sans-culottes made their Revolutionary ardour and plebeian solidarity immediately recognizable. During the period of the Great Terror, the cap was adopted defensively even by those who might be denounced as moderates or aristocrats and were especially keen to advertise their adherence to the new regime.

The cap was also incorporated into the symbol of the late 18th century Irish revolutionary organisation the Society of the United Irishmen. The English Radicals of 1819 and 1820 often wore a white "cap of liberty" on public occasions.

[edit] Use in American iconography

A Phrygian cap on the Seal of the United States Senate.

Seated Liberty Dollar, with Phrygian cap on a pole (1868).

[edit] United States

The Phrygian cap has used to symbolize liberty in numerous countries of the Americas. For example, an effigy of "Liberty" was shown holding the Liberty Pole and Phrygian cap on some early United States of America coinage. The U.S. Army has, since 1778, utilized a "War Office Seal" in which the motto "This We'll Defend" is displayed directly over a Phrygian cap on an upturned sword. It also appears on the state flags of West Virginia, New Jersey, and New York, as well as the official seal of the United States Senate (left), the state of North Carolina (as well as the arms of its Senate,^[9]) and on the reverse side of the Seal of Virginia.

In 1854, when sculptor Thomas Crawford was preparing models for sculpture for the United States Capitol, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (later to be the President of the Confederate States of America) insisted that a Phrygian cap not be included on a statue of Freedom on the grounds that, "American liberty is original and not the liberty of the freed slave"^[10]. The cap was not included in the final bronze version that is now in the building.

The seal of Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, also contains a Liberty Cap. The college, endowed by Founding Father John Dickinson at the behest of Benjamin Rush, was the first to be chartered in the new Republic.

[edit] Latin America

Many of the anti-colonial revolutions in Mexico and South America were heavily inspired by the imagery and slogans of the American and French Revolutions. As a result, the cap has appeared on the coats of arms of many Latin American nations.

The cap had also been displayed on certain Mexican coins (most notably the old 8-reales coin) through the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. Today, it is featured on the coats of arms or national flags of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Argentina, Colombia, Haiti, Cuba, Bolivia and Paraguay.

The Phrygian cap in Latin American coats of arms

Coat of arms of Cuba.

• Coat of arms of Argentina
• Coat of arms of Bolivia
• Coat of arms of Colombia
• Coat of arms of Cuba
• Coat of arms of El Salvador
• Coat of arms of Haiti
• Coat of arms of Nicaragua
• Reverse side of the Flag of Paraguay

[edit] Literary and popular culture references

• Washington Irving propounded the surprise of his famous protagonist, Rip Van Winkle, by noting among the unexpected details of the re-awakened Rip's newly post-revolutionary village a "tall naked pole, with something on it that looked like a red night cap..."
• The revolutionist protagonists of Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress often wear a liberty cap. It is referred to exclusively as such. It becomes a fashion article at one point, and is once placed on a telephone terminal open to the A.I. character "Mike."
• The popular comic / cartoon characters The Smurfs, are famous for their white Phrygian caps. Their leader, Papa Smurf, wears a red one, with other Smurf characters that wear "differently" styled hats, usually still having the Phrygian cap as the crown of their unique headgear.
• Cornish piskies wear Phrygian caps symbolising proto-Celtic origins and magical powers in Mystic Rose - Celtic Fire by Toney Brooks.
• The song Then She Appeared by rock group XTC contains the line "Dressed in tricolour and Phrygian cap"

[edit] See also

• Barretina
• Liberty cap (Psilocybe semilanceata)
• Pileus (hat)
• Liberty pole

[edit] References

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