Reply To: Roman military mask dates…

[Not Connard Sage]

Mike Headden wrote:

A number of re-enactors use these and claim that they are perfectly comfortable to wear and restrict vision very little. I imagine they were, at least, no harder to wear than medieval closed or visored helms. The morale impact should be considered too. There is a boost to the wearer from the extra protection and the negative impact on an opponent suddenly finding themselves fighting a living statue!

 

Let’s be contentious.

I put very little store on what re-enactors claim about any historical period. They don’t have any skin in the game. It’s all very well dressing up and playing soldiers when you know that you’re going to be down the pub after the ‘battle’ and not lying in a field with your intestines hanging out waiting to die.

The ‘morale’ impact is often overplayed too. You’re not going to have an entire tuma, much less an ala, wearing those things (think of the expense for a start), and if a body of charging armed and armoured men on horseback doesn’t put the fear of Mars into the barbarian hordes, a few of them wearing a poncey face mask isn’t going to help much.

Medieval helms were padded/worn with arming caps. I don’t see any way the ones under discussion could have been. I don’t mind being proved wrong.

I’d also assume that small, divided, eye slits would play buggery with your binocular vision. You really don’t want to be looking for the enemy one eye at a time like a sparrow pecking for worms. 🙂

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.