The Phrygian Cap in Greek and Roman Art

 The Phrygian cap later known as a liberty cap is a soft conical cap with the apex bent over, associated in antiquity with several peoples in Eastern Europe and Anatolia, including Phrygia, Dacia, and the Balkans.  By the 4th century BCE (early Hellenistic period) the Phrygian cap was associated with Phrygian Attis, the consort of Cybele, the cult of which had by then become graecified. At around the same time, the cap appears in depictions of the legendary king Midas and other Phrygians in Greek vase-paintings and sculpture. The Phrygian cap also came to be applied to several other non-Greek-speaking peoples ("barbarians" in the classical sense). Most notable of these extended senses of "Phrygian" were the Trojans and other western Anatolian peoples, who in Greek perception were synonymous with the Phrygians, and whose heroes Paris, Aeneas, and Ganymede were all regularly depicted with a Phrygian cap. 

While the Phrygian cap was of wool or soft leather, in pre-Hellenistic times the Greeks had already developed a military helmet that had a similarly characteristic flipped-over tip. These so-called "Phrygian helmets" (named in modern times after the cap) were usually of bronze and in prominent use in Thrace, Dacia, Magna Graecia and the rest of the Hellenistic world from the 5th century BCE up to Roman times. 

The Greek concept passed to the Romans and encompassed not only Phrygians but also the other near-neighbours of the Greeks. On Trajan's Column, which commemorated Trajan's epic wars with the Dacians, the Phrygian cap adorns the heads of Trajan's Dacian prisoners. Parthians appear with Phrygian caps on the 2nd-century CE Arch of Septimius Severus and Gauls in Phrygian caps are depicted on the 2nd-century CE friezes of the 4th century Arch of Constantine. In the tauroctony images of Roman Mithraism, the figures of the god Mithras as well as those of his helpers Cautes and Cautopates are routinely depicted with a Phrygian cap. 

In later centuries, a Phrygian-looking cap became associated with liberty because of its resemblence to the Roman cap of liberty, the Roman pileus, a felt cap worn by manumitted (emancipated) slaves of ancient Rome, and an attribute of Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty. 

Figure of male with Phrygian cap, earthenware with painted decorations possibly from Palmyra, Syria, 1st-2nd century CE at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.

Paris of Troy wearing a Phrygian cap on a Roman sarcophagus dating to the Hadrianic period (117-138 CE) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Three wise men" with Phrygian caps to identify them as "orientals" 6th-century, Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor nina-no.

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Dacian Ferocity and the Transmigration of the soul

A scene from the Dacian Wars on Trajan's Column.  Photographed by

Mary Harrsch in Rome, Italy.

"To the strength and fierceness of barbarians they [The Dacians] added a contempt for life, which was derived from a warm persuasion of the immortality and transmigration of the soul." - Edward, Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire


When I got my five minutes worth of Gibbon today, I noticed his description of the Dacians in Trajan's time.  Although it's true that the Dacians of the early 2nd century believed in an immortal soul, they were one of the last Roman provinces to accept Christianity, not doing so until the 5th century CE.  Instead, the Dacians believed in a complex religious hierarchy with its priests divided into orders of  “god-worshipers”, “smoke-walkers” and “founders”.  Their supreme deity was known at different times as  Zalmoxis,Gebeleïzis and Darzalas.  

A Dacian draco standard 

According to the historian Mircea Eliade, wolves played an important role in Dacian mythology and secret societies of young warriors were said to engage in activities in which they imitated a wolf's behavior while wearing wolf skins.  It may be from these rituals that legends of lycanthropy have been derived in the Balkans-Carpathian region.  Their use of wolf symbolism is beautifully rendered in this relief depicting a Dacian draco standard capped with a ferocious-looking canine.


The relief also depicts the long-sleeved scale armor worn by wealthier Dacian warriors and their mounts as we see in the image from Trajan's column above left.  


I noticed when I researched their religion that the Dacians were sometimes considered interchangeable with the Getae, although Strabo seemed to distinguish between the two.  Whenever I think of the Getae, I envision the savage, almost inhuman warriors depicted in the pilot episode of "Spartacus: Blood and Sand".  If the Getae (Dacians) were that wild in the 70s BCE, they obviously underwent a considerable social transformation before opposing Trajan in 101 CE.  




      

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