Face mask or face guard in late roman period

[Renatus]

Ah, but Ammianus was not a witness to this particular adventus! - therefore his description of the clibanarii must be generic and not individual. He's describing what they usually looked like...

Denied your honour. I know that because Ammianus did probably witness more heavy Roman cavalry elsewhere, and certainly describes them in action elsewhere, but in those cases, facemasks are never mentioned.

But, as far as I recall, he was not describing their armour, so there was no occasion to mention the facemasks.

I don't say it's impossible - indeed, Roman cavalry did wear facemasks in earlier periods, likewise do we know them from non-Roman cavalry, but the whole of the evidence for the use with Late Roman cavalry seems to rest on Constantius' parade into Rome and a copy of a vanished monument. :whistle:

Plus Julian's panegyric and the whole 'statue' theme. It is my understanding that the Roman clibanarii were based on the Persian model and the Persian's wore facemasks. The sources, though few in number, seem fairly explicit; you can't reject them just because you don't like them.