Equites sagittarii (late 2nd century)

[jho]

So if I understand, we have now two oppinions. Niederbieber as universal helmet and Niederbieber as infantry helmet. Niederbieber seems to me really rather infantry type, but Im confused about this because I saw drawings where are horsemen equipped with Niederbieber (as that one above). And I believe this artists did not include Niederbieber in their pictures just because they wanted. However, they may be wrong of course! Artists are usually not historians.

I believe that the reason is historical:

Both Lindenschmit for German scholarship and H.R. Robinson for Anglo-Saxon scholarship set the tone by qualifying these as cavalry helmets. The main reasons being the cheek guards which cover the ears, the deep neck and certain other features which are also found on earlier Pseudoattic helmets.

As stated above, Waurick in his own study concluded in the same year in which Robinson's book was published that they were (at least also) infantry helmets. This was largely overlooked in continental Europe and more or less completely overlooked in the Anglo-Saxon world. I believe it was Bishop and Coulston who in the 90s concluded ( I believe independently of Waurick) that this was - also - an infantry helmet (based (a) on representations in art and (b) on the plain fact that otherwise there would be no infantry helmets for the period).

Robinson's work in particular was the basis for many earlier artistic representations of Roman soldiers and even today artists either work based on Robinson or simply copy older artists.