hair-locks, all bound together by a laurel wreath, the flowing ends of which divide over the nape of the neck. The same curling hair comes down over the temples of the visor-mask. The ears are gone, but on the left side the beautiful clear-cut profile of the face shows little signs of injury. The features are beardless and youthful. The lips are slightly apart, and the nostrils and eye-holes both open. The stud which is visible low down, beneath the ear, doubtless formed part of the fastenings that held head-piece and visor together. Among the locks of hair, small attachments of silver can still be discerned. Five of these are on the left side of the face, one on the lock over the forehead, and two on the right side. These fragments of silver have the appearance of small circular pins inserted into the iron. One of those on the left side of the face has still affixed to it a small piece of thin silver plating, a circumstance which appears to indicate that the purpose of the circular pins was to hold a plating of silver in place over the hair, and probably over the whole face. The thin plate of bronze with its chevron pattern, which covers the projection over the neck, may also have been plated with silver or with gold. Traces of similar decoration on the rim of the plain iron helmet have already been noted, and several of the visor-masks known to us have evidently been enriched by a plating of more precious metal. Thus, on a visor-mask found at Gräfenhausen, Wurtemberg, the hair, the eyebrows, and the eyelids are gilded, while the rest of the face is overlaid with silver; the Bettenberge helmet is plated with silver, and the helmet from Nikopolis is bronze gilt.
The helmet with visor-mask was doubtless developed by a simple process of evolution from the helmet with hanging cheek-pieces. The cheek-pieces would tend more and more to cover the face, and would thus gradually assume the form of a mask. On a bronze cheek-piece from a votive helmet found at Dodona, the lips, the heavy moustache, and beard, are all reproduced.[1] Another example in the same metal, which shows the lips and moustache but is of coarser execution, is in the Museum of St. Germain-en-Laye, its original provenance being unknown. Such cheek-pieces are in all probability the fore-runners of the complete visor-mask. The masks themselves sometimes show traces of their ancestry. In the Bettenberge helmet, as also in a helmet from Heddernheim, the visor retains the outline of the cheek-pieces, while the open space between them is filled up with a small mask that covers the eyes, nose, and mouth, and can be detached at will. In the Ribchester and
1 Benndorf, Op. cit. Taf. xiv. 4.
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