The red Olympic Phryge (pronounced FREE-juh) and Paralympic Phryge — together the Phryges — may seem innocuous. But the Phrygian symbol upon which they are based has a fraught global history that challenges the narrative of freedom and unity the Olympics, and its French hosts in particular, want to tell.
When the Paris 2024 mascots were rolled out two years ago, the Games’ president hailed the novel selection of an “ ideal rather than an animal .” A marketing video introduced a throng of conical Phryges, who skateboarded their way into the internet’s affections .
The Phryges - Paris 2024 Paralympic and Olympic Mascots | Paralympic Games.
But what “ideal” are the Phryges meant to represent? Students in my European history class likened the character to an anthropomorphic steak or tongue, reasonable conjectures given France’s rich culinary heritage . Cruder interpretations have ranged from the sexual to the scatological .
In fact, the Phrygian cap is a cross-cultural symbol of liberty with special resonance in France. The Olympics website notes it was worn during the construction of Notre-Dame cathedral and the Eiffel Tower, as well as during the Paris 1924 Olympics.
The symbol is especially associated with the French Revolution (1789-1804), as referenced in the Games’ vague pledge to “drive a revolution through sport.” The mascot’s enormous eyes, moreover, double as cockades , the tri-colour badges that inspired the national flag in the 1790s.
In the first millennium BCE, the Phrygians of central Anatolia wore pointed red hats that marked their status as foreign freemen throughout the Greek world.
In Roman iconography, meanwhile, the goddess Libertas often hoisted a tapered cap (or pileus ) on her spear, and former slaves donned them to mark their liberation.
If the liberty cap has been “nearly forgotten in America,” the historian Yvonne Korshak notes, “it is taken for granted as an emblem of the republic in France.”
This is why the Phryge was chosen. But the cap has meant different things at different junctures in France’s tumultuous past .
During the Revolution’s moderate stage, idealistic reformers strove to replace divine-right absolutism with a constitutional monarchy and meritocratic society. Their 1789 declaration of rights was garnished with a blue Phrygian cap .
But as politics radicalized from 1792, red caps proliferated among the new republic’s working-class supporters, known as sans-culottes due to their practical trousers. According to historian Richard Wrigley , the bonnet rouge (red cap) became a “factional badge” associated with the sans-culottes ’ brand of violent populism. Louis XVI was made to don one several times in the months preceding his ouster, trial and execution.
Colourized engraving, ‘Les furies de guillotine,’ (Furies of the Guillotine) from the 1843 book ‘Les Français sous la Révolution,’ (The French Under the Revolution) by Augustin Challamel and Wilhelm Ténint. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Republic was saved, at least for the moment , but the cost in terms of lives and compromised principles was immense.
After the Terror ended in 1794, Wrigley continues, bonnets rouges were “removed from sight” and “edited out of the political vocabulary,” their hue associated with “blood-drinking” and “throat-slitting.”
For a time, a tricolor cap replaced the red one. Some French embraced the Gallic cockerel — still a popular choice today — as a more neutral patriotic icon.
Republican symbols fell out of favour during the Bourbon Restoration (1814-30) . But the revolutionaries of 1830 resurrected the red cap. This time, it denoted the more inclusive cross-class alliance celebrated in Eugène Delacroix’s iconic painting, “ Liberty Leading the People .”
‘Liberty Leading the People’ (‘La Liberté guidant le peuple’) by Eugène Delacroix. (Wikipedia)
Whose rights?
Today, the cap pervades French public spaces, making it an apt rallying symbol for this year’s Olympics.
But understanding the country’s fraught politics — including the fissures exposed in last month’s elections — requires an appreciation for the icon’s shifting and selective uses.
Dress, then, continues to expose republican contradictions, in this case between France’s commitment to freedom of expression and religious conscience and its efforts to discipline its citizens . What would Marianne say?
Kelly Summers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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