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

[Nathan Ross]

But by the late 3d century, a shortage of good artificers

How do we know there was a 'shortage'? This seems like circular reasoning - we know the late empire was 'bad' because there were fewer skilled men, and of course there were fewer skilled men because the late empire was 'bad'...

imperial workshops (fabricae ballistariae)... maintain the materiel and trained men necessary to produce effective torsion weapons. No such workshops were perpetuated by the barbarians who overran the western Empire.

Who staffed these attested fabricae ballistariae if not 'skilled artificers'? And this is from the Notitia Dignitatum, dating from the very end of the 4th century... Of course the situation after 'the barbarians overran the western empire' was different - but that wasn't for another century still, and nearly 200 years after the introduction of the ridge helmet.

(The ballista is, of course, famously described in Book 23 of Ammianus Marcellinus, in an eyewitness account of the Persian campaign of AD363. Clearly these machines had not fallen out of use!)

ignoring totally officer gold equipment

Nobody is talking about 'officer equipment'. The law I mentioned (quoted below) states that 40-50% of all helmets produced by the fabricae were sheathed in precious metals, which is supported by archaeology. The famous and very elaborate Deurne helmet carries an inscription by a trooper from a numerus of Equites Stablesiani. Soldiers in the late empire were high status individuals, and their state-supplied equipment reflected that.


10.22.1: ARMOURERS (de fabricensibus). Emperors Valentinian, Valens and Gratian Augustuses to Tatianus, Count of the Sacred Imperial Largess.

Since six helmets for each period of thirty days are covered with bronze by each metalworker, both at Antioch and at Constantinople, and the cheekguards are also covered with wrought metalwork, but eight helmets and the same number of cheekguards are covered with silver or are gilded each thirty days at Antioch, and only three at Constantinople, We decree that at Constantinople also each metalworker shall decorate with gold and silver, not eight helmets for every thirty days but six each, with an equal number of cheekguards. (Given March 11, AD374)

following Adrianople, with the army unable to reorganize itself.

Adrianople was at least 75 years after the first introduction of the ridge helmet.

The army did have organisation and recruitment problems after that battle, increasing greatly into the 5th century, but the problems of those years cannot be backdated and used as evidence of a supposed decline in the overall quality of army equipment a century and more beforehand.