Ancient bronze greek helmet -South Italy

The Attic helmet was a type of helmet that originated in

Classical Greece Classical Greece was a period of around 200 years (the 5th and 4th centuries BC) in ancient Greece,The "Classical Age" is "the modern designation of the period from about 500 B.C. to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C." ( Thomas R. Mar ...

and was widely used in Italy and the

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

world until well into the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

. Its name is a modern historiographic convention: "Terms such as Illyrian and Attic are used in archaeology for convenience to denote a particular type of helmet and do not imply its origin." The Attic helmet was similar to the

Chalcidian helmet A Chalcidian helmet or Chalcidian type helmet was a helmet made of bronze and worn by ancient warriors of the Hellenic world, especially popular in Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. The helmet was also worn extensively in the Greek (s ...

but lacked a nose guard. Although its use was not as widespread in Greece itself as the Corinthian or Phrygian types, the Attic helmet became very popular in Italy, where most examples have been found. Many Italian peoples used variations of the attic helmet, but archaeologically it has been especially prominent in Samnite and

Lucanian The Lucanians () were an Italic tribe living in Lucania, in what is now southern Italy, who spoke the Oscan language, a member of the Italic languages. Today, the inhabitants of the Basilicata region are still called Lucani, and so is their dial ...

burials and their associated art (frescos, etc.). As an artistic motif, variations of the Attic helmet long outlasted other contemporary helmet types, being used to impart an archaic look to depictions of generals, emperors and Praetorians throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods. As such, a form of Attic helmet has become part of the popular image of a Roman officer, as found in art from the Renaissance onwards or in earlier Hollywood productions. However, no archaeological remains of this type of helmet have been found to date. The closest surviving Imperial Roman helmet to the type illustrated in relief sculpture dates to the 2nd century AD and was found in

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

. It has been classified as a "pseudo-Attic" helmet by some scholars. It is of tinned bronze and is very elaborately decorated with an integral crest raised from the skull incorporating an eagle..

References

Bibliography

* {{helmets Ancient Greek helmets Ancient Greek military equipment