Painted legionary helmets?

[Magnus]

Waaaait a minute...did I write that or something? Why is it signed off with my name? lol

Or did the quote html scripty stuff get messed up?

And by the way...we need to see if the romans did indeed put eyes on their helmets...or any other grafiti for that matter. Can trace elements of paint be found on the metal that's corroded after all this time?

[Marcus Julius]

And by the way...we need to see if the romans did indeed put eyes on their helmets...or any other grafiti for that matter. Can trace elements of paint be found on the metal that's corroded after all this time?

I would like to hope so. Since there has been evidence of leather contacting the metal surfaces (unless I've been mistaken) through some form of chemical analysis, I'd like to hope that something would show up identifying paint as well.

[Tarbicus]

[url:tluohe3m]http://people.freenet.de/u-bahr/lombardisch.jpg[/url]
Non-Roman bronx example from a lombard tomp. It shows a special form of the Negau type with rivetted eyes and eye brows. The pupils of the eye are made of (formerly) blue glass.

Jim, the Imperial Gallic with the painted eyes is quite nice but why should the Romans have embossed the eye brows but only painted the eyes. Also they used to polish their armor regularly and I cannot imagine that painted eyes would have endured this procedure for long.

Excellent points Uwe and I think is the main flaw, if not fatal one, in the idea of painted eyes so far. Thanks. The eyebrows could just be to emphasis the real ones under the helmet's rim I suppose, as well as adding protection.

But then again, I'd love to know how these were maintained properly:

[url:tluohe3m]http://www.romanarmy.com/cms/component/option,com_helmets/task,view/cid,17/Itemid,96/[/url]
[url:tluohe3m]http://www.romanarmy.com/cms/component/option,com_helmets/task,view/cid,14/Itemid,96/[/url]
[url:tluohe3m]http://www.romanarmy.com/cms/component/option,com_helmets/task,view/cid,5/Itemid,96/[/url]

[drsrob]

As far as I know the Negau helmet dates from the 5th - 3rd century BC. I find it strange that one is classified as a Lombard helmet as there is a gap of (from the top of my head) about eight centuries between the two periods.

[Uwe Bahr]

Danno and dsrob,

sorry for the confusion, :?

but I did not say that the helmet was used by the German tribe of 'Langobarden' (in English 'Lombards') in late antiquity. I just quoted from 'Antike Helme' (Ancient helmets), a highly recommendable exposition catalog about the (former ?) collection Lipperheide.

There the author Marcus Egg says about the piece that it was "found allegedly in a Lombard tomb" - means: found in a tomb that was located in the modern Italian region called the Lombardy. The author consequently puts it side by side with the helmet of Lanuvium and writes that the helmet comes nearest to the type of Negau.

Favi,

after the description the calotte of the helmet is not painted, but only covered with a 'rough blue Azurit-patina'. It is just the pupils of the eyes that are made of blue glass.

Greets - Uwe

[Dan Diffendale]

Uwe,

thanks for the clarification! That makes much more sense, of course...

[FAVENTIANVS]

Ah, ok.

Thanks.

[Cornelius Quintus]

Ave Jim,

a lower skilled Indian manufacturer offers a painted helmet:

http://www.drachenschmiede.de/catalog/c ... -LH004.jpg

the paint might be the best of it - the applications are leather stripes hock: :lol:

[Martin Wallgren]

I think soldiers of all time has had a tendency to decorate their millitary gear.

I think of airplanes of WWII and of helmets in Vietnam with grafitti on, and so forth.

I will paint my helmet as a staitment it could have been like that 2000 years ago!

[richsc]

a convincing face replacement

You're going to see a lot more convincing faces in film and software games, including very realistic faces of long dead people: see this NY Times video on IMagemetrics: (free sign up required)

[url:2xvkejg9]http://video.on.nytimes.com/ifr_main.jsp?nsid=b270dbb7b:10e5abee909:-65a3&st=1161164169270&mp=FLV&cpf=false&fvn=9&fr=081706_061804_2079ba3ex10d1aa7b2ccx3f55&rdm=695157.5014295614[/url]

I'll presume they could use a statue of Caesar or Cicero to animate as well.

[Sulla]

I agree they propbobly did have at least some painted helmets. They seem to have painted everthing else from temples to statues in bright colors. And there is a history of painted helmets before them. And we know they liked to copy styles from the past. So seems only logical they did.