Face mask or face guard in late roman period

[Macharivs]

*now to the correct place
Hi everyone!
I really need some sources on whether romans used face masks,or full-face guards on helmets in the late roman period,for infantryman,or not.I know cavalry used them,but i was thinking about:could infantryman wear those type of helmets?Looking forward to any answer,thank you very much.

[M. Val. Naso]

The idea in itself is horrendous.

[Robert Vermaat]

I really need some sources on whether romans used face masks,or full-face guards on helmets in the late roman period,for infantryman,or not.I know cavalry used them,but i was thinking about:could infantryman wear those type of helmets?

Hi Rab,

The answer is no. Nor, for that matter, did Late Roman cavalry use face masks on their helmets. I don't know where you got that from, but there is no evidence that these were used in the Late Roman army.

[Nathan Ross]

I don't know where you got that from, but there is no evidence that these were used in the Late Roman army.

It's fairly common in illustration, I think. Christa Hook (in Late Roman Cavalryman, Osprey) pictured 4th C Roman cataphracts wearing ridge helmets with 'Sutton Hoo' style facemasks, as did Angus McBride on a couple of occasions. The cataphract pictured in Warry's Warfare in the Classical World appears to be wearing a 3rd-C cavalry sports helmet with moulded facemask.

I would guess this approach is intended to address the idea, sometimes expressed in Roman literature, that cataphract cavalrymen looked like 'statues'. If not just hyperbole, that might at least suggest that they wore some sort of mask or other facial covering. What that might have been, though...

[Renatus]

I would guess this approach is intended to address the idea, sometimes expressed in Roman literature, that cataphract cavalrymen looked like 'statues'. If not just hyperbole, that might at least suggest that they wore some sort of mask or other facial covering. What that might have been, though...

It's Ammianus Marcellinus (Amm. 16.10.8):

. . . sparsique cataphracti equites (quos clibanarios dictitant) personati thoracum muniti tegminibus, et limbis ferreis cincti, ut Praxitelis manu polita crederes simulacra, non viros . . .

' . . . and scattered among them were the full-armoured cavalry (whom they call clibanarii), all masked, furnished with protecting breastplates and girt with iron belts, so that you might have supposed them statues polished by the hand of Praxiteles, not men.' (Loeb translation)

EDIT: Forget the smiley; it's supposed to be an 8! Why does it do that? It's bloody annoying!

[Nathan Ross]

It's Ammianus Marcellinus (Amm. 16.10.8 ):

Also Julian's Panegyric to Constantius:

Your cavalry was almost unlimited in numbers and they all sat their horses like statues, while their limbs were fitted with armour that followed closely the outline of the human form... The head and face are covered by a metal mask which makes its wearer look like a glittering statue, for not even the thighs and legs and the very ends of the feet lack this armour.

The statue image occurs elsewhere too. Heliodorus, in his novel Aethiopica, describes a cataphract as 'some man made of iron, or a mobile statue'. I looked back at Panegyrics IV and XIII for something similar - the orator does not mention masks or statues, but only the 'terror' inspired by the clibanarii, who were 'dreadful to behold'.

Forget the smiley; it's supposed to be an 8! Why does it do that? It's bloody annoying!

Just insert a space between the numeral and the right bracket, and your computer will no longer think you are trying to emote...

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Something like this?

[attachment=6468]Cornutionparade.jpg[/attachment]

[attachment=6469]Bucelliarii.jpg[/attachment]


I'd imagine that for parades they may have worn masks similar to in the principate, but I seriously doubt they would in battle.

[Caballo]

Using the face mask in battle is, I think perfectly practical, especially if the mask is tailor made for the wearer ( as early masks appear to be). With a flush fitting mask, you lose very little peripheral vision ( certainly less than a mediaval helmet).

Here is an early sculpture ( Genialis from Cirencester) with face ask being worn and depicted in battle ( or at least the classic Reiter pose).

http://www.romansociety.org/index.php?eI...parameters[0]=YTozOntzOjU6IndpZHRoIjtzOjQ6IjYwMG0iO3M6NjoiaGVpZ2h0IjtzOjQ6IjYw&parameters[1]=MG0iO3M6NDoid3JhcCI7czo0NzoiPGEgaHJlZj0iamF2YXNjcmlwdDogd2luZG93&parameters[2]=LmNsb3NlKCk7Ij4gfO%2B%2FvTwvYT4iO30%3D


There is an argument that other pictures also depict helmets being worn in battle, eg the armoured but apparently bare headed rider from Adamklissi.

Finally, the psychological effect of a face mask in battle , especially on a horseman , would be big, making the wearer look other worldly and god like, and incidentally hiding any fear that the cavalryman might be showing.

[Agraes]

The lost column of Arcadius depicted a few helmets with masks and crests.

[Renatus]

Here is an early sculpture ( Genialis from Cirencester) with face ask being worn and depicted in battle ( or at least the classic Reiter pose).

http://www.romansociety.org/index.php?eI...parameters[0]=YTozOntzOjU6IndpZHRoIjtzOjQ6IjYwMG0iO3M6NjoiaGVpZ2h0IjtzOjQ6IjYw&parameters[1]=MG0iO3M6NDoid3JhcCI7czo0NzoiPGEgaHJlZj0iamF2YXNjcmlwdDogd2luZG93&parameters[2]=LmNsb3NlKCk7Ij4gfO%2B%2FvTwvYT4iO30%3D

This link does not work, apparently, unless you type in the whole thing. This produces the same result:

http://www.romansociety.org/imago/search.../1168.html

You can click on the image to enlarge it.

[Nathan Ross]

The lost column of Arcadius depicted a few helmets with masks and crests.

Thanks - I'd never noticed those before! Some interesting articulated limb armour on there too, by the looks of it.

The closed helmets (if that's what they are) on the lower two panels do quite strongly resemble certain crested 'cavalry sports' helmets - this one, for example, or this, with a face-mask rather like this perhaps.

All these examples are dated 2nd-3rd century, I think (on what grounds I don't know), but would appear to be a better model for a later cataphract helmet than the Sutton Hoo version.

(Incidentally, to address the original post, I think we can safely say that there is no evidence for the use of masked helmets by infantry!)

[Robert Vermaat]

It's fairly common in illustration, I think. Christa Hook (in Late Roman Cavalryman, Osprey) pictured 4th C Roman cataphracts wearing ridge helmets with 'Sutton Hoo' style facemasks, as did Angus McBride on a couple of occasions.

I know this is a description from Ammianus aboiut Constantine's parade. The images are of course completely based on the Sutton Hoo helmet. And we all know that, although that one resembles the ridge helmets of the Roman army, it's of course NOT a Roman helmet. The origins of the Sutton Hoo helemt are far more likely to have been in the Middle East. We know of Turkish cavalry helmets with face masks, but so far, no examples of such Roman helemts have been found, in the ground or in art.

[Robert Vermaat]

It's Ammianus Marcellinus (Amm. 16.10.8 ):
. . . sparsique cataphracti equites (quos clibanarios dictitant) personati thoracum muniti tegminibus, et limbis ferreis cincti, ut Praxitelis manu polita crederes simulacra, non viros . . .
' . . . and scattered among them were the full-armoured cavalry (whom they call clibanarii), all masked, furnished with protecting breastplates and girt with iron belts, so that you might have supposed them statues polished by the hand of Praxiteles, not men.' (Loeb translation)

Yes, I know, and that's the only occasion, and from the text of Ammianus it's also clear that this was meant to be quite the spectacle. Some parts of the description defy logic ("Thin circles of iron plates, fitted to the curves of their bodies, completely covered their limbs; so that whichever way they had to move their members, their garment fitted, so skilfully were the joinings made.") and seem to be sprouting from fantasy rather than an eye-witness account, which makes me doubt that the passage is 100% trustworthy.
So in fact we have no idea if this was a regular helmet, or perhaps added for dramatic purposes (I mean, even without a face mask, do cataphracts really look like metal statues??) or that we may see a Sassanid Persian or perhaps Ghassanid Syrian cavalry unit here? There's no telling.

Anyway, I'm not prepared to accept 'Late Roman masked cavalry helmets' as a common item, just on the basis of this single passage.

[Robert Vermaat]

Something like this?
[attachment=6468]Cornutionparade.jpg[/attachment]

The man in the middel is a wearing a 3rd century Persian helmet with a Persian mail aventail, also an item not proven for Roman cavalry. The man on the right is wearing a version of the English Sutton Hoo helmet, 'similar to' Sassanid and Roman ridge helmets, but dating to the mid-7th century, while this scene is 300 years earlier.

While I like the way the artist has tries to 'translate' Ammianus' passage, it's also clear that no Roman helmet could be used from any of our sources.

[Robert Vermaat]

The lost column of Arcadius depicted a few helmets with masks and crests.

Yes, but also with some other 'fanciful' weapons such as double-headed axes, 'Phrygiasn caps' (the defeated enemy is supposed to be a Gothic army in Roman service) as well as 'Thracian' shields, neither which you would expect to see in a Late Roman inventory. It's clear that the enemy is supposed to be 'Eastern'. And while I count 5 'facemask' helmets, some of them complete with a neck (??), there is no 'common' ridge helemt shown. Which is odd, because other details seem quite correct (some shields, cloaks) for the early 5th century.
Apart from the obvious problem that this is a very late copy of a now lost original (which will keep us guessing forever), I think that many 'classical' pieces of arms & armour made it to this monument, some doubtless taken from older monumnets and some even purely symbolic, which leaves me at leasy in doubt about the credibility of the 'facemask' helmets shown, and still unprepaired to accept this as proof for their existence in the Late Roman inventory. Just my opinion.