"Linothoraxes" in the army of Aetius?

[Nathan Ross]

we also have images like this from the same mosaics where they even go so far as to put the eyes on the ridge helmets, and distinguish the upper rectangular plate on the Berkasova-style cheekpieces:

the inverted V brim is not really odd in the 5th century, if we mean lack of frequency by oddity.

Yes, sorry - I meant odd as in 'occasional' (or meant to; could have been clearer!...)

But I agree - these helmets show up in Roman art very frequently from the 3rd century onwards. I still don't think they're intended to be Intercisa or Berkasova types, but some other version currently unknown to us. Why they're so common in art I don't know - perhaps the distinctive shape just made them easier to represent?

Looking at a few 4th-5th century coins showing soldiers, there does seem to be a lot of 'archaic' looking military equipment on them. Perhaps that's just the way the artists of metropolitan Rome had decided to depict 'soldiers'?

But the images from these mosaics do seem to show different styles of equipment - the guys with the blue shoulder doublers in the first picture, the men in scale or mail (who look very much like the troops on the Arch of Galerius!) in the second, and so on. I don't suppose it's impossible that the artist(s) intended some of them to look 'foreign' or even 'ancient'. It would help if we knew which Bible story each picture relates to, but my knowledge of such things is scanty. Anyone got any ideas?