Fake imperial gallic helmet!?

[marcos]

Uhmmm.... this is the 3th helmet I see like this, one is that already mentioned and another one was for sale (20.000 $) from an australian dealer 1 or 2 years ago. All of those are not convincing, I begin to suspect they come from the some modern craftman.

[Forty-One]

Yes, on the Umbricius Scaurus relief [...] Some venatores may have continued to use them for a while, before they abandoned armor altogether.

The Stabian Gate relief at Pompeii has "equites" in visored helmets too. Generally when other types use visored helmets the "equites" do too. See for example the reliefs from Chieti and the mosaics at Bad-Kreuznach, Augst, Zliten etc

Incidentally, regarding "venatores", for what it's worth in this one particular case, those on the Umbricius Scaurus monument are all shown bareheaded.

It has to be said, though, that the "Imperial Italic A" helmets don't look too out of place in relation to gladiators as they are generally portrayed in art from the late republic.
Perhaps the ones in Pompeii were relics (which doesn't, of course, discount their being withdrawn from arena "service" and re-issued later to security guards or whatever)? I remember our cadet force armoury when I was at school (1980s) still had Martini-Henrys in the racks which we used for drill! It would have been nice if the finders of the helmets had kept a record of their provenance.