Painted lorica segmentata ?

[Titus Manlius Verus]

That may be. However, during the principate, wasn't most armor was produced in-house by the legions themselves? If so, the armor would have had almost no transport distance. Even if some armor was produced from private sources and had to be transported, it wouldn't have been transported far enough to justify the time-consuming process of painting the armor and the even more time-consuming process of chipping off the paint and getting the armor back to parade quality. Some people make it sound like armor was produced in Egypt and transported to Britain. It's rather unfeasible that the Roman army would risk damaging equipment (imagine paint accidentally getting paint in a segmentata hinge) just to avoid some rust that a milite would love to buff out. ;-)

Additionally, tinning does a fantastic job keeping the rust off.

[attachment=7454]72575.jpg[/attachment]

I believe this helmet was found in a river?