The
Phrygian cap is a soft conical
cap with the top pulled forward, associated in
antiquity with several peoples in
Eastern Europe and
Anatolia, including
Phrygia,
Dacia and the
Balkans. In early modern Europe it came to signify freedom and the pursuit of liberty through a confusion with the
pileus, the felt cap of
manumitted (emancipated) slaves of ancient Rome. Accordingly, the Phrygian cap is sometimes called a
liberty cap; in artistic representations it signifies freedom and the pursuit of liberty.