Greek Helmets. with or without crests.... ??

[katsika]

It makes absolute sense that wooden crestboxes were the general mode of mounting horse hair to the helmet (for reasons listed above). I don't subscribe to the theory that only high-ranking hoplites wore crests. If everything else in the panoply was so indiviualized, then why select only the crest to signify rank. This, of course, does not include Spartan Polemarchs, who wore the transverse crest, but they were a select few. Literature, pottery and statuary bear out the fact that crests were not uncommon by any means. Yes, it is logical to assume that the gentry had the best armor; it would follow that they would also be able to afford more "bling" on their panopy, so a more elaborate crest could have been an option. However, I do not advocate the use of materials other than wood for the boxes, as agility is more valuable in battle than "bling." One other point - re: the hypothesis that Corinthian helmets were a vision/hearing impairment, I reply, "Poppycock!" If you have ever worn a proper-fitting Corinthian, you will find these assertions are completely false.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

As long as the person giving the orders is loud enough..I agree! :mrgreen:
The clatter of shield on armour etc is more of a factor, I think and the
general clamour of fighting.

[Gulan]

No it's not. What is depicted in the pottery is definitely a box with hair mounted within it. Your crest example is a solid bronze one that is meant to mimic the hair crest.

The 5th century is really where the art and tactics of the Phalanx are really perfected as is the equipment and ornamentation of Hoplites. The Pelopennesian War doesn't have heavy phalanx style battles because it is more a cold war. Battles of any kind are rare and when they occur they can display unusual tactics and freer thinking than traditional Phalanxial warfare. The crests factor into this not one bit.

Wood crest boxes, wood shields, wood spears etc is not modern logic or solely my point of view. It's actually widely evidenced in the archeology. You're picking an argument just to have an argument and obviously haven't read or seen as much to move you from a stubborn points of view. The bronze shield rims you mention are not carved bronze, they a extremely thin bronze repousse. It's fairly easy to do and not terribly hard just time consuming. The example of this is singular though about 4 other whole shield faces exist. Out of hundreds of thousands of shield just this handful exist and so they are judged as rare and expensive. Generally such fine equipment was dedicated and the lesser quality equipment kept or distributed so their mere presence is not an argument that all Hoplites had bronze faced shields. In fact the far greater number of bronze shield appliqués makes the point that this was a far more common shield decoration.

To use these artifacts to make statements they the easy way was not what they did or that they used unadvisable is spurious. Above anything if you actually see these objects you realize everything they did was extremely thought out and well engineered. You make them sound unsophisticated and wasteful. A wooden crest box with horsehair is feasible, logical and falls in line with the general practices of everything else they created in the period. You're trying to make the point that because we can't find one or that no helmet in a museum has a crest that therefore they didn't exist. That's about like saying that because we don't have all the corpses of the ancient Greeks that they to we're imaginary.

The references to Spartan dog tags and other military innovation as well as crests in colors are easily found if you read. Even the pottery shows solid, bi and tricolored crests in use. There is nothing contrived or assumed in these notions. They are documented and not things I've assumed or made up with 'my logics' as you say. I'd advise you to read more and argue less.

The point of this thread was to point out whether they used crests or not. They did, no one has ever disputed this. Were they made of wood? I can't think that lumps of terra cotta, or heavy bronze ones were and most any other material would be unsuitable. The 'assumption' of wood is grounded in fact and practicality as many other items in use by Hoplites were also wooden. That contemporary cultures also used wood for military equipment and accoutrements as well as ornamental fixtures like crests.

But I'm sure your response will be just another attempt to further a senseless argument.

''You're trying to make the point that because we can't find one or that no helmet in a museum has a crest that therefore they didn't exist. That's about like saying that because we don't have all the corpses of the ancient Greeks that they to we're imaginary.'

Not at all. My point is it was certainly not as common as is in the pottery. You are the one trying to proove point by the lack of evidence itself - ''it was organic that is why we don't have any''..And when I show you that there is, but in bronze. You say - well it was votive. You try to fit the history and evidence into your assumtions, and you should be doing the exact opposite. :grin: :!:

We differ in many key points that make our discussion pointless. Beginning with the 6th century not being the most typical century for heavy phalanx combat, and archeology supporting wooden boxes, like Tyrtaeos supporting red horsehair...I will not make any more arguments because I don't wish to repeat myself.

Also - crest holder to the right is not the imitation of the hair, but the holder for the hair to be attached. I don't think I am the one who doesn't read and just argues.

You probably mixed up my crest holder with this http://www.flickr.com/photos/i-deia/3621...otostream/ because you seem to be talking about this all the time.

@ Bill...I have. I said that compared to later types, like pylos - bu I am not one of those who criticize corinthians.I am in love with corinthians and absolutely hate later types.
As I said my general opinion is corinthians were replaced because of the economics not because of the evolution or some faults of corinthians.

Also I clearly said what are situations in which I think cersts were used. It goes well beyond ranking.

Guys..I gave the material evidence. Whatever logics we apply we can not beat it until some other written or material evidence appear.

Also..What about those horns. Did you ever see such horns in pottery,logics or written evidence,no. And yet it exists.

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

I can no longer follow that discussion.

We know that crests were used, perhaps not as often as they are represented in art. But they were not really THAT uncommon. We don't have any evidence that they were a status symbol or a rank symbol.
There is some evidence that specific groups had specific colours in their crests, but still, there is no evidence that crest colour was commonly used for identification of larger groups. After all, vases show phalanxes where the hoplites have different crest colour each.

Now on the material.
We actually have real evidence for a number of materials used. The J shaped tall crests seem to have had a bronze base, like the one posted above, and like the one that Connolly shows, where a different material crest box was mounted. However, this was not a rule, because there is at least one example of a corinthian with a tall crest, where the "neck" was made of wood, held on a rectangular base.

There is no reason why leather could not have been used for the crest box. I don't know of any actual examples preserved however.

Finally, there is representational evidence for flexible crest boxes i.e. an armourer holding a crest with its "crestbox" hunging from his fingers, and the crest hungs straight down.
To complete this strange vase painting comes an actual crest from archaic Crete. A crest has recently been found that was made by weaving the tuffs of horsehair together, after wrapping their ends in linen thread. I think this find has not been published and my information comes from Christian Cameron (aka Kineas) who speke with the archeologist who excavated it. Christian has replicated this method in his J crest and it works beautifully! I plan to make such a crest two, in the future.

So we should stop being very dogmatic, because as far as we know, nothing was made in only one way!

Kyros, i am very interested on the pitch you mentioned. More info on that?

Khairete
Giannis

[Kyros]

Absolutely correct. While wood is the most likely and probably commonest material it's important to remember that individual taste is always a factor. No across the board standard in any item can be used as construction varies from region, chronology.

Pitch! Yes! I make it if anyone is intersted in buying a chunk. It's tacky like molasses when heated. Then it hardens and glues stuff together surprisingly well. While modern glues may have better adhesion overall, pitch is hard to beat for welding wood and metal together. It has a little flex in it unlike modern glue. If you used it to affix a crest, and that crest needed to be removed, simply heat the helmet and the pitch loosens. I used it for spearheads and sarouters and it is really unmovable. I was not able to budge the spearhead at all even with pliers. I heated the spearhead with a torch and it loosened and came right off. It's windeed up stuff.

It's a mess to make but I have a pot of it made if anyone is interested.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Well said, Giannis! Or, in other words, there were and are more than one way to skin a cat! :-)

[Gaius Colletti]

We don't have any evidence that they were a status symbol or a rank symbol.
There is some evidence that specific groups had specific colours in their crests, but still, there is no evidence that crest colour was commonly used for identification of larger groups. After all, vases show phalanxes where the hoplites have different crest colour each.

I do recall reading somewhere that the helmets along with the crests were inspired to strike fear and terror into their enemies

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Absolutely correct. While wood is the most likely and probably commonest material it's important to remember that individual taste is always a factor. No across the board standard in any item can be used as construction varies from region, chronology.

Pitch! Yes! I make it if anyone is intersted in buying a chunk. It's tacky like molasses when heated. Then it hardens and glues stuff together surprisingly well. While modern glues may have better adhesion overall, pitch is hard to beat for welding wood and metal together. It has a little flex in it unlike modern glue. If you used it to affix a crest, and that crest needed to be removed, simply heat the helmet and the pitch loosens. I used it for spearheads and sarouters and it is really unmovable. I was not able to budge the spearhead at all even with pliers. I heated the spearhead with a torch and it loosened and came right off. It's windeed up stuff.

It's a mess to make but I have a pot of it made if anyone is interested.

Interesting, Kyros! but aren't the forces that a crest has to undertake very different than those on a spearhead? The percentage of the glued surface on a crest is much lower than on a spear head, and a sideways force wouldn't disattach it very easily? Have you made any experiments with a plank of wood on a metal sheet?

What about the remnants of pitch or rather, the different oxidisation on the helmet? Why couldn't the oxidisation be made from the presence of leather under the crest? Leather liners also left a different colour on the edges of helmets... Is there a specific studdy?

Khaire
Giannis

[Gulan]

I will also agree with Giannis K. Hoplite. Same as we can agree that there are number of ways shield was constructed, there is a number of ways crests were. The Cretan method you suggested I like the best - personally. I see it as pre-decorated just by it's texture, I like the idea.

I may have been a little agressive on the organic theory, but just because bronze piece was immediately labeled as votive.

I will conclude this by completely agreeing with Caesar - there were and are more than one way to skin a cat!

[Kyros]

Giannis,

Yes the angles of stress are different but the pitch works equally well in all applications. On the fingers it doesn't seem like it would work but when pressed between two surfaces it grabs into ever pore and surface and holds very well. I've tested the bronze/wood combination a number of times and even with just a one inch square surface footprint of bronze to wood it held. I had to use pliers and 'roll' the bronze off using a fair amount of force. For crests it would work very well. In fact a thinned recipe of pitch is widely used today to mate blades and handles together in tableware.

Leather can leave discoloration if the burial environment was relatively dry allowing the leather to remain long enough. Pitch however is almost like amber as it is a tree sap base. So it can crystallize and maintain an air free seal against the metal for much longer before dissolving. This information on the oxidation change due to resin presence was a tidbit from a helmet conservator I had been speaking with. It's usually not a really an obvious change to the naked eye. Rather it's a lack of cupric and nitrate salts that indicated the surface had at one time been sealed with something like resin. Leather would likely be penetrated or infuse by those substrates.

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Thanks for the info!
The greeks seem to have used glue in surprizingly many cases.Things you wouldn't expect, like the arms of a silver kantharos! One would expect they would have been welded on! A sword seems to have had its wooden scales glued somehow on the bronze tang, rather than riveted like all the other known examples. Things like that. They trusted their glues!

In vergina i saw an ilyrian helmet with clear remains of the leather linning under the rivets around the edge. Actually it was mostly a combination of what could have been organic material and oxidisation products. It was brownish. What stoke my attention was that, although the rest of the helmet had a fairly even patina of green with bits of red and black, between the two ridges on the top there was the same brown oxidisation. It wasn't evenly destributed, like one could clearly trace where the crest was sitting, but it was only there and around the edges.
Khaire
Giannis

[John Conyard]

I applaud this lively discussion. But I eally do not think that any of the participants are that far from each others position.

It is certainly fun working with pitch and resin. Be it on a helmet on in wine mile:

When it comes to attaching a crest to a helmet, felt or leather glued to the helmet, and even the base of the crest box, helps "hold" the helmet in place.

In my experiance "floppy" crests without crest boxes were used in Roman re-enactment a lot in the last millenium. not so much today.

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Can one of the Greek members travel up to Olympia please and check EVERY single one of the complete helmets for crest mounts or remains thereof ?





The point of this thread was: were crests as widely used as re-enactors use them today given the lack of attachment point evidence on many of the helmets found.

You can come up with pitch attachments but still that is not proof.

Also, you can come up with many vase paintings, but take into account that many of the vase paintings show archaeic heroes or mythological characters and do not therefore represent actual battles or happenings like these days a photo would do. They are highly stylised depictions.

M.VIB.M.

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

In the case that there is actual archeological evidence that pitch or other resin were used to attach the crest firmply on the helmet, then you don't have to doubt the regular use of crests on helmets.
The whole point is that if the crests were attached only with nails, rings and other similar means, then we have a difference in the frequency of their artistic representation and the archeological finds.
As of yet, no such research has been published, discussing the frequency of holes on the bowls of archaic and classical helmets.
Khaire
Giannis

[Ghostmojo]

I do recall reading somewhere that the helmets along with the crests were inspired to strike fear and terror into their enemies

Yes indeed. I forgot to mention in my earlier post that they gave extra height, making the warrior look taller and more formidable - a bit like bearskins on Grenadiers, Chasseurs and Fusiliers in the horse & musket period. They also perhaps made him look less human and more animal - although when facing similar troops the effect would have been diminished somewhat.