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Roman iron helmet
Iron legionary helmet, from Brigetio, Hungary. Early 1st century A.D.
The skull is hemispherical with a large neck-guard, which slopes down towards the shoulders at an angle of approximately 45° at the centre. It had been decorated with ornamental bronze bosses in all the usual positions except on the cheek-pieces, where only two were used: one at the centre of the plate and the other under the rivet head holding the chin-tie ring.There had been a reeded brow-band, and another bronze strip had been applied to the forward edge of the reinforcing peak. The eyebrows, very broad and flat with a medial step, are placed high up on the front of the skull.No crest holder survives, but the positions of the crest holder retaining hooks can just be discerned – as can the holes for the split-pins for attaching a carrying handle at the centre of the neck-guard.The one surviving original cheek-piece is somewhat narrower than earlier patterns and with much shallower depressions in the forward edge on a line with the eyes and mouth. Robinson (1975) Imperial-Gallic Type I
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Site Name: Brigetio, Hungary
Notes: Found at Brigetio in Hungary and first recorded in the Hollitzer Collection in Vienna in 1896, passed to the Howard de Walden Collection and then to the National Museum of Wales as part of a large bequest of classical arms and armour