Byzantine Weapons and Warfare

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Rafaelle,

Good defence! Glad to hear from you.

The artist used purple and gold because this is the colour of the Imperial Guardsmen reconstructed. Colours that You can see on the artistical sources used, and read in the description of Johannes Chrisostomos and the others.

I have no doubt that the colours are correct as colours. Howver, my comments were about the heavy use of them in all the drawings. My comments were not directed at you as the advisors of the artist, but at the artist and his general choice of colours, including backgrounds. Just a personal taste thing.

Not everybody has peackock feathers on the helmets: but only the Emperors (as attested by all the sources), the Cataphracts of Imperial Guards (Claudianus) and the Exarch of Ravenna, the copy of the Emperor in the reconquested Italy.

OK! I did not know that, thanks for the information.

The Praetorians are represented only with these types of helmets, because they were very effective and more linked with the Roman tradition.

Ah, but isn't that a dangerous assumption? The helmets, if they were so effective, why were they phased out, as the evidently were? And were the Praetorians that 'traditional'- and did that mean they walked around and 'archaic' armour as a result of that 'link with Roman traditions'. Even more so, how do we know that there was a 'Roman tradition' when it came to practical things such as armour?

The helmets of the 3rd cent. were still widely used in the fourth.
Of course other types of helmets were in use, but the sources I used for this warriors were with these helmets. For example a second type of helmet shown for the praetorian was a kind of helmet with eagle protome.
The horns are exactly like this in the Constantine Arch. There are represented two versions.

I agree with no. 1, but I would rather turn your previous argument around; in my rasoning, as an elite force, the Praetorians would sooner have had the new style helmets rather than the old.
The use of the Arch of Constantine as a correct source for contemporary details is a double-edged sword...

Gainas was killed by a combined army of Romans and Huns in the winter (23 December 400). The scene was represented on the Column of Arcadius so I had to use the warriors from the Coloumn.

Although I can imagine that the Column of Arcadius would have no good idea of what Huns looked like, I agree with you that are perfectly right in this choice. Having said that, I would have loved to see the Hunnic king Uldin!