century and for at least a hundred years longer. They are to be seen on the helmets of the legionaries sculptured on the bases of the Praetorium pillars from Mainz (Fig. 14), which cannot be later than 100 A.D.
They are worn by the soldiers on the Trajan column. In both cases a band, which frequently ends in a projecting peak over the forehead, is added in order to thicken the helmet round the temples. Such a mounting is of common occurrence on the actual Roman helmets which have survived to our own day. As a simple peak, it forms an integral part of the example from St. Albans, which is to be seen in the Municipal Museum at Colchester. It appears as an attachment in the helmet from Friedberg, in Hesse, preserved at Darmstadt.[1] Or again, as in the specimen from Witcham Gravel, Cambridgeshire, now in the British Museum, it is present as a band running all the way round the margin, doubling the thickness of the metal not only over the brow, but also at the back.
FIG. 14. BASE FROM
THE PRAETORIUM, MAINZ
Other characteristic mountings which may be mentioned are the raised rims fastened behind the ears, and a comb-like crest of metal running from above the forehead down to the back of the head, dividing the helmet into two equal portions, and sometimes having a second band crossing it from ear to ear transversely. A good specimen of the latter method of strengthening is to be seen in the helmet from Friedberg already mentioned, while detached mountings of the sort have been met with in several of the Limes forts, as at the Saalburg and at Pfünz. Helmets with such attachments must have been worn at Newstead, as a small portion of a bronze crest (Plate XXXV., Fig. 8) was discovered in tracing the lines of the later barrack buildings of the Praetentura.
There is no indication that the specimen now under discussion had ever had a crest. On the other hand, the line of small holes, surrounding the crown and placed at a distance of five-eighths of an inch apart, may well have been originally intended for the attachment of some thickening band which
1 Figured by Lindenschmit, Tracht und Bewaffnung des römischen Heeres, Taf. ix. 24.
165