Roman helmets: Imperial Gallic/Italic and Ridge - comparisons and sources

[Nathan Ross]

Result: some principiate helmets may have been of better quality overall than dominate models, but many were not. Most ridge helmets, on the other hand, were entirely effective and did what they needed to do, besides being available in far greater numbers. This is why they came to dominate later arms production for c.150 years.

Again, no, non and no. I understand that your points are in crisis,

I'm not sure what point you are disputing here!

Do you believe that all principiate helmets were of better quality?

Or that most ridge helmets were ineffective?

Or that they did not 'dominate later arms production'?

but you have to read

Your 'scientific' theories are unfortunately entirely non-objective and based on opinion alone, as we have no accurate tests available for measurement!

I have indeed read Simon James's 1986 paper - some years ago, in fact - together with his 2004 report on the military equipment from Dura Europos and his 2011 book Rome and the Sword.

His older paper has been highly influential, but more recent work undermines his conclusions somewhat. In particular the redating of the Leiden and Deir el Medineh helmets to the later 5th or 6th centuries, rather than the late 3rd, counts against a theory that they replaced the gallic types before being replaced by the ridge.

There have been a number of later helmet finds since 1986 as well - notably the Koblenz group of 12 (published 1988, Miks) and the Jarak example (2011). There's also been better study of the older finds - most of the helmets from Intercisa have been found to have been originally plated with silver (Coulston, in Sarantis, ed 2013), while other helmets are only known from the stripped gold sheathing - the 'crude' appearance of many of these helmets is often due to only the basic iron core being left behind.

In his 2011 work, James makes no reference to these helmets being 'crude' or ineffective - in fact he refers to some 'splendid examples [which] look more like something out of Arthurian epic or Wagnerian opera than our expectations of Roman military equipment' (Rome and the Sword p.238).

As I've said before, the continuance of these helmets over a long period, their frequent costly decoration (and, as James points out, their apparent use by emperors, who would surely have used the best gear available!) counts against them being in any way 'ineffective' or 'inferior' to previous models in all but stylistic aspects.