Painted legionary helmets?

[Carlton Bach]

The question that immediately comes to mind for me is did the Romans have paint that would even adhere well to metal? Certainly if it cannot be shown that they did or even potentially did given what's known about paint in use, then idea loses a lot of its plausibility. Anyone know if they did?

They certainly had all the ingredients, Basic oil paint holds on metal no problem. I just finished a few experiments in that direction and ended up with a painted 12th century nasal helmet in heraldic colours. The paint is pigment (aniline ersatz cinnabar, chomium oxide ersatz verdigris and red ochre) in bleached linseed oil, no siccatives or other additives. It takes a long time to dry, but holds very firmly. I painted a steel bowl for testing purposes, and the only way we managed to seriously damage the paint was with the pointy end of a 400-g hammer. It stood up to rattan sticks, mallets, the flat end of a carpenter's hammer, and repeatedly being stomped on.

I wonder what the evidence the author of that article on Norman equipment has for his statement about painting armor going back to the ancient Greeks- it would have to be actual artifacts to be reasonably considered more than a possibility as the only other 'evidence' would be art- and artistic license is too great a possibility to consider painting armor a truth without other supporting evidence- such as the existence of paint that would adhere to metal.

We hae Egyptian depictions of coloured scales in armour suits. Of course these could have been proto-enamel or painted leather. But while I am not sure whether the Greeks actually painted armour, I am fairly certain that they could have had they wanted to. They did paint on bronze statues as far as we know.