The Greek _Kausia_ and the Roman _Petasus_ are described as “hats of a pliant material which could be bent down at the sides like that worn by _Atalanta_.” La Croix, a French writer on the subject, assures us that the early Romans and Franks “sought Bast and Straw of which to make them hats,” and there is an antique statue of Mercury in the Vatican at Rome, which has for head covering a hat of a “wide-awake” nature, sculptured in close imitation of a finely plaitted straw. The Goddess Hera (the Grecian name for the Roman Juno), Queen of Olympus, is depicted on ancient vases, coins and statues wearing a _Stephanos_ [one of the statues, the original of which was by Praxiteles (350 B.C.), representing _Hera Teleia_ standing, is known to moderns by copies to be found in the Vatican and other museums]. Pausanias (c. 160 B.C.) speaking of the coins of Argos, specifically describes _Hera_ as wearing a _Stephanos_. This was a head covering consisting only of a crown, similar in shape to a modern Turkish fez inverted, of the same breadth and height all round, and was made of various vegetable products. [Illustration: Fig. 2 STEPHANOS, FROM TERRA-COTTA (700 B.C.), BRITISH MUSEUM] In the British Museum is to be seen a small terra-cotta figure seated wearing the above sketched _Stephanos_ in which the plaitting marks of coarse vegetable fibres are very distinct. This is probably the earliest extant record, in the plastic art, of a straw hat. “Wicker work (_poloi kalathoi_) was also used by the ancient Greeks to make brim-less hats.” (Gerard. Antike Bildwerke.) The ancient Etruscans wore what was known as a _Tutulus_, a brimless hat with a high pointed centre to the crown; and a broad brimmed hat similar to the _Petasus_, but with a pointed top like the _Tutulus_. Etruria covered the district now occupied by the Italian straw plait and hat makers, but while there is an extreme likelihood, from the shape of the hat in the accompanying sketch, that the denizens of this fertile champaign, producing as it does, and probably did, unlimited materials that could be plaitted, made these hats of straw, there is no definite information as to their being constructed of any vegetable fibres. [Illustration: Fig. 3 ETRUSCAN HAT (_circ._ 440 B.C.), HEAD OF PELEUS FROM PAINTING ON EARTHENWARE DISH FOUND IN A TOMB AT VULCI] Another very important link of classical interest with the remote past is shown in the two sketches of hats and bonnets as worn by the ancient inhabitants of ill-fated Pompeii. The mural decorations of this long-buried city illustrate in a far more cogent manner than any other known examples, the probable actual appearance of the people who lived there before its catastrophe, and the hat shown on the head of _Penelope_ is a model that has been imitated during the last thirty-five years. The little knob on the top is, however, quite novel.