passage for yet another fastening. The dressing of the hair recalls in a measure the elaborate coiffures of the Roman ladies of the first and second centuries, so much so indeed that the mask can hardly have been intended to represent a male head. Compared with the iron visor, which, with its beautiful idealised features, must rank as a work of art of high quality, the brass mask is distinctly inferior in style. It is altogether more mechanical. Yet, both are the outcome of that phase of art which, under the influence of Greek tradition and Greek craftsmen, produced in Rome the remarkable portrait busts and reliefs of the first and second centuries.
It may be doubted whether any of the surviving monuments provides a representation of a Roman visor helmet in actual use. Nor indeed is it likely that a representation of a man should show the visor drawn down and the face concealed. M. Reinach has pointed out among the arms in the trophies upon the balustrade of Pergamum a helmet which is evidently of this type.[1] But it belongs to ari earlier period. On the tombstones of the standard-bearers QUINTUS LUCCIUS and CAIUS VALERIUS at Mainz, the helmet is shown on the left shoulder, and the front of it appears to take the form of a face with peaked ears. In both instances, however, long bands hang over the shoulder below the helmet, suggesting the skin of an animal's forelegs terminating in paws. It is, therefore, probable that we have in each of these cases a representation of a skin hood with the animal's features drawn over the helmet. In the gravestone of the standard-bearer PINTAIUS of the Fifth Cohort of the Asturians at Bonn, a hood of this kind is shown worn above a helmet with cheek-pieces, the long bands of skin with their claws being crossed over the breast.[2] Such coverings for helmets had been fashionable at least since Hellenistic times. On some of the coins of Seleucus I., for example, the king wears a helmet covered with the skin of a panther.
The Period of the Helmets
The great rarity of the visor-helmets has already been alluded to. In Britain the Ribchester helmet has hitherto been the sole representative of the class, and complete examples from the Continent are almost as scarce, although the number of visor-masks is greater.[3] The most perfect specimen of head-piece and visor together is that already mentioned as
1 Reinach, Art. 'Galea,' Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités, fig. 3410.
2 Donner von Richter, 'Die Heddernheimer Helme,' Mittheilungen über römische Funde in Heddernheim, Heft 1. p. 50.
3 A list of helmets and of visor-masks corresponding to those found at Newstead, which have been discovered throughout Europe, will be found appended to this chapter.
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