Roman helmets: Imperial Gallic/Italic and Ridge - comparisons and sources

[Robert Vermaat]

I have used different sources and the theory can be applied without any issue to military helmets. Discontinuous materials don't transmit forces, they need to be connected somehow and this connection is poorer than a contiguous piece of material. If you take that helmet and make it also monoblock, you'd still have a better helmet than one made by joining two plates. Continuity is a prerequisite for forces to transmit from one molecule onto another molecule at the molecular level. This is purely material science.

This is a problem that prevent the spread of the force on a greater area, so this increase the probability that the soldier is compromise. It is the beauty of mathematics, it is exact and not subject to opinions. Material science, and you cannot deny this, so I am afraid that you don't have any real substance, just useless diversions and theories denied that you don't want to abandon

Hi Marco,


You seem quite conviced of your point, and even though I can find no original source in your hypothesis (Goldsworthy does not say how he came to his point of view and is, of course, not a source), I understand that you think science tells us that the later Roman helmets are inferior to the Imperial Gallic types.
If this would be the case, perhaps we should wonder why these so-called 'inferior' helmets were not replaced when the Roman Empire was able to spend more time and money on their production? I mean, after the ridge helmet we see centuries of the use of the spangenhelm, which was of similar design. These helmets were even wrapped in gilded silver and sometimes embellished to because truly works of art - which we know were used in battle and not the 'parade helmets' as erroneously thought during the early 20th century. 

Now I am thinking we do not need to discuss the universal wish of any soldier to be protected by the best of what is available. On the other hand I am not following you in your earlier idea that the ridge helmet was supposedly 'proof' of the Roman Empire going down the drain - if only that there is a wealth of evidence that this was not the case for the entire Empire for all the remainder of its history. 

So why, if helmets of a connected plate design are supposedly 'compromise', do we see that very design for centuries on end, and not just in the Roman Empire but also in Japan, China, Persian, Arab, Mongol and Turkish Empires? Were they all backward enough to dismiss the 'superior design' of the single-bowl Imperial Gallic helmet type? Or might we contemplate the thought that the 'science' behing the supposed superior strength of that helmet is not based on actual testing and perhaps incorrect?