Helmets
Only the helmet is now required to complete the figure of the soldier in his armour. Of this the pits furnished specimens remarkable alike for their beauty and for their preservation. Pit No. XXII yielded an iron helmet without decoration, an iron helmet with a visor-mask, and a brass helmet, while the brass visor-mask of a fourth helmet came from the pit in the Bath Buildings. These appear to be the first Roman helmets that have come to light in Scotland. In England, at least five such helmets have been found. Four of them are preserved in the British Museum, and one in the Municipal Museum at Colchester. The specimens from England present a considerable variety in shape, only two of them being of the same type. No one of them quite represents the helmet of the legionary of the Trajan column, which was probably of thin iron, or perhaps sometimes of thick leather with raised metal bands, usually of bronze, projecting from the surface to protect the head.
The Legionary Helmet
The undecorated iron helmet from Newstead (Plate XXVI., Fig. 1) is probably the ordinary legionary helmet of the end of the first century. It is of very simple form, covering the head and coming well down over the brow. At the back it is prolonged downwards to protect the neck, and terminates in a rim projecting outwards for a distance of one inch and three-eighths. The inside of this undecorated helmet was no doubt furnished with thick padding, as we shall see to have been the case with the decorated helmet. On the outside, mountings which are now lost were probably attached to it for the better protection of the wearer and for ornament. The face was covered by two hanging cheek-pieces or bucculae, hinged one on either side of the helmet, and fastened together under the chin, so that only the eyes, nose and mouth were left exposed. The loops to which the cheek-pieces were attached still remain on the rim in front of the portion cut out for the ears.
Several different forms of helmets are known to have been in use among the Romans. In all of them we begin with a simple cap of metal whose general appearance is modified in various ways according to the particular method employed for protecting the back of the neck, and according to the particular mountings attached to strengthen or to ornament the whole. The helmets themselves are usually either of iron or of bronze or of brass. Many appear to have been made of iron with mountings of bronze. The hanging cheek-pieces, traces of which are so distinct on Plate XXVI., Fig. 1, are a constant feature of the legionary helmet in common use at the end of the first
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