A purple kausia with a diadem was worn by the Macedonian kings as part of the royal costume.
[2] It was worn during the Hellenistic period but perhaps even before the time of Alexander the Great[3] and was later used as a protection against the sun by the poorer classes in Rome.
[4] 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 India.
[5] 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[6] 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.
[7] 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.