Fox-wolf-dog tail on helmets

[FAVENTIANVS]

I love the way it looks, anybody knows any evidence of it?

[M. Demetrius]

Yow! It looks pretty cold, if you ask me.

[chrisanson]

None whatsoever!

Looks good though dunnit!


Well if feathers/mossgrass/horsehair are definitely used and considering that soldiers from the Samnites to the G.I.s in Vietnam have shoved totemic, symbolic & outright fun objects on their headgear why not!

Careful though, you run the risk of upsetting the more conservative elements of living history


This picture was taken at the start of British summertime! :lol:

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Well, if a Roman centurion can get away with sticking a lit brazier full of burning coals on his helmet.....why not? :lol:

[Peroni]

Don't forget the helmet from Krefeld which was covered in a Marten fur too.

[M. Demetrius]

Well, if a Roman centurion can get away with sticking a lit brazier full of burning coals on his helmet

...Yeah, but he was a well-known hothead.
(don't kill me)

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Well, if a Roman centurion can get away with sticking a lit brazier full of burning coals on his helmet

...Yeah, but he was a well-known hothead.
(don't kill me)

Actually true, and a brutally ignorant one too....

[Caballo]

Don't forget the helmet from Krefeld which was covered in a Marten fur too.

And the animal skin covered helmets worn by auxilaries on Trajan's Column (its not just standard bearers).

Mind you, I suspect Lord Derfel's wolf tailed soldiers from Bernard Cornwell's books may be an influence as well!

[john m roberts]

And there was the Roman officer who covered his helmet with the skin of a Gallic chieftain he'd killed, and crested it with the scalp of another. Romans had a discerning design sense.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

And there was the Roman officer who covered his helmet with the skin of a Gallic chieftain he'd killed, and crested it with the scalp of another. Romans had a discerning design sense.

hock: Where was this? That sounds pretty psycho!

[chrisanson]

Was it a Carthaginian... perhaps Hannibal?


Oh, Someone had to say it!

[Peroni]

Florus 2.26.16

"Florus reports on the bizarre contraption worn by one centurion in the early imperial wars fought in Moesia. It consisted of a fire-pan attached to the man's helmet which, when fanned by the movement of his body, sent out flames from his head. The historian is rather scathing of the centurion, suggesting this was stupid, and comparing him to the barbarian enemy, but he admits that the effect torrorised the enemy".

"Display in Ancient Warfare: The Appearance of Armies and Individuals on the Battlefield".

Kate Gilliver
War in History 2007

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Thanks Ade, that one I know...but the scalp and skin..... hock: :?

[john m roberts]

I found this in Ross Cowan's "For the Glory of Rome," p. 159. "Silius Italicus, a consul and epic poet of the 1st century AD, imagined Flaminius riding to his doom wearing a bronze helmet covered with the skin (the scalp?) of a Gallic chief he had killed in single combat, and crested with the long hair of another barbarian warrior." Parentheses are author's. Okay, it's a poem, but it may well have come from an older tradition, and the poet seems not to regard the practice as barbaric.

[A_Volpe]

It consisted of a fire-pan attached to the man's helmet which, when fanned by the movement of his body, sent out flames from his head.

OMFG How awesome/crazy is that?!

Geeze, beating out ol' Capt. Blackbeard and his burning slowmatch by 1,700 someodd years, eh?