Byzantine Weapons and Warfare

[MARCENTIUS]

Nice plates, but the artist loves purple and gold colours - not to mention everybody has peacock feather helmets!!

Yes, some helmets are definately incorrect, although older 3rd c. types could survive into the 4th c. (I doubt whether the Praetorians would still have these older types though). I have great doubts about these helmets with metal 'feathers' though. I know they're based on the 'supposed' Cornuti from the Constantinian Arch, but these reconstructions look more like samurai helmets instead of Roman ones. Too fanciful.

Wasn't Gainas killed by the Huns? Not some peacock-feathered Roman, surely?

Dear.
No. The artist used purple and gold because this is the colour of the Imperial Guardsmen reconstructed. Colours that You can see on the artistical sources used, and read in the description of Johannes Chrisostomos and the others.
Not everybody has peackock feathers on the helmets: but only the Emperors (as attested by all the sources), the Cataphracts of Imperial Guards (Claudianus) and the Exarch of Ravenna, the copy of the Emperor in the reconquested Italy. The Praetorians are represented only with these types of helmets, because they were very effective and more linked with the Roman tradition.
The helmets of the 3rd cent. were still widely used in the fourth.
Of course other types of helmets were in use, but the sources I used for this warriors were with these helmets. For example a second type of helmet shown for the praetorian was a kind of helmet with eagle protome.
The horns are exactly like this in the Constantine Arch. There are represented two versions.
Gainas was killed by a combined army of Romans and Huns in the winter (23 December 400). The scene was represented on the Column of Arcadius so I had to use the warriors from the Coloumn.
Best wishes
Raffaele