Play World of Warships here: wo.ws/3kUmLWA Thank you World of Warships for sponsoring this video. During registration use the code FIRE to get for free: 200 Doubloons 1M Credits Tier 5 - USS Texas 20x Restless Fire Camouflage 7 Days Premium Account The promo code is only for new players during the registration.

Everyone knows that the Romans didn’t use nasal guards because they loved the smell of victory in the morning! But they were nothing compared to the immense incalculable genius of the Metatron!!! You da greatest Metatron!!!!

As a person who likes hiking and camping I find a lot of military gear can be evaluated by the "marching" test. Most of soldiers time is not spent in battle, but doing everything else. 99% of the time a lighter helmet that is more convenient to carry is best. That is why we see more extensive helmets in SWAT teams or medieval tournaments where people were expecting to fight immediately.

Short answer is that they did change their helmets over time, for exactly the reasons you speculated on. Especially with the shift of emphasis from infantry to cavalry, and as cavalry panoply got heavier, they started using variations on full-covered face protection, be it armored masks, mail aventails that covered everything but the eyes, or other modifications. I suspect that the shift from the scutum to other shield patterns would have impacted this trend also, as would the increased use of missile weapons by highly mobile opponents (Huns, Avars, Sassanians, Arabs, Turks, the list just keeps growing). The helmet, like the weapon, shield, cuirass, and every other part of a soldier's kit, should be seen as part of a system and evaluated as such. As the system adapts to changing threats or shifting fortunes, the components of it will necessarily change.

The Corinthian helmet had a nasal guard but the Romans did not include it into the army. Thanks for helping me clarify why romans didnt use something to cover up their face or a most closed helm. U r the best, Metatron!

Building things, marching, policing, fighting aboard ship... all these things were done by men with nasal helms.

If you want to know what DID make the Romans change their helmets, look at the Dacian wars. So many soldiers were having their skulls done in by the Falxes that they reinforced the helmet to better protect against those weapons

The Roman helmet actually looks really good with a nasal guard.

One major benefit from the Nasal piece is that it stops your shield from breaking your nose. I did Dark Age reenactment and I almost got a faceful of shield a fair few times but kept my teeth thanks to the nasal.

Q. Why Didn't The Romans Use Nasal Guards On Their Helmets ? A. Nobody Nose

It is worth noting that the Romans did start to adopt nasal guards, as early as the reign of Marcus Aurelius. In addition auxiliary units often did sport nasal guards or differences in helmets, however by the time of Constantine and Diocletian disregards were quite common. This is probably due to a change of weapon tree and armor, you have to remember Roman started using Spears after the third century. Spears being thrusted towards someone's face with a round shield, is not a good situation for exposed face. The classic roman armor that you see in Hollywood in in movies was only utilized in the Roman empire for roughly 300 years or less. Late Republic too early mid empire, the late empire's equipment is completely different. The mid Roman empire while still recognizable with things like Lorica segmentata, changed helmet designs dramatically and did make use of nasal guards. Great video and good information, I just think it's worth noting that the Romans did use nasal guards. It just wasn't usually used by the Roman heavy soldiers that were familiar with. As later Roman heavy soldiers did of course use it

Perhaps it is more interesting to ask why the Normans made their helmets with noseguards, instead of asking why the Romans didn't. I think you are quite right in stating that the Romans probably simply didn't feel the need to, so why did the Normans? My guess is that it had to do with the role of the shield in combat, which, if I am correct, was much more offensively prominent in the medieval era. Looking at the noseguard, I have serious doubts how well it would protect against sword slashes and cuts, and a noseguard definitely won't stop a thrust. However, I think it could protect very effectively against a shield bash. I've seen some reenactment videos of Nordic/Viking fights with sword & shield, and the offensive use of the shield seems like a very plausible explanation for why they liked noseguards (and disliked broken noses!).

A lot of this could be answered by a series of "it depends', the classic Roman helmet of the late Republic to mid Empire didn't have it but they later adopted helmets with them, Berkasovo type Ridge helmets and Spangenhelms. The change in the style of warfare might have meant it became necessary, or they simply took the idea from the German and Persian foes influencing them. Same reason why all infantry helmets before the 3rd century have exposed ears, but you start seeing covered ears show up from then on.

I think you guys forget about the brim above the eyes, attached to the head. If a swing is coming towards the face, then the cheek guards protect the soldier. If a stab comes towards the face, the soldier lowers his face so the stab arrives at the dome of the helmet. If it goes to the sides it hits the strong shoulder protection and if the stab moves down it gets caught by the brim.

I could be wrong, but I've been under the impression that the Roman legionnaires fought by pushing their Scutum so close up against the enemy that it inhibited the enemy's ability swing their weapons efficiently, while allowing them to stab the enemy with the (relatively) short gladius, whether it be the enemy in front of them or an enemy at either side being inhibited by their fellow legionnaires. In contrast to how most armies would try to keep a comfortable distance where they could rely on the reach of their spears and longer blades. And if you deny your enemy the space to slash their weapons at your face in the first place, then you've sort of eliminated the need to protect your face from slashing attacks.

The real reason: everyone knows Roman had big nose (proof in Life of Brian). Adding extra protection would be extremely hard and costly.

*COMMUNICATION* The facial expressions and body language of the soldier fighting next to you in combat can end up saving your life at a glance and vice versa. This might sound silly to those that have not been in combat but I can assure you this is a very real factor. Roman's were highly verbally communicative in battle with orders constantly coming down from the higher ranks to the legionary. In combat it is often so loud and chaotic that soldiers often just watch their commanding officers mouth in a rough form of 'lip reading' Legionnaires doubled as 'police' and law enforcement, checking paperwork, interrogating people and taking reports and could often spend the entire day patrolling and talking to merchants and citizens. Being able to see the entire face makes this inter personal communication much more effective. It also made identifying each other much easier, the social aspect. Nose guards DO impede vision even if slightly its still a loss and they do impede the ability to view the mouth and even the eyes, so again the loss of communication. The more a helmet impedes a soldiers vision and the heavier and hotter it is the more likely they are to take it off. So a good lightweight 'jack of all trades' helmet on the head does a lot better job of protection than the heavy helmet on the baggage train!

I'm a security guard and a freight handler I literally wear full body armor and equipment from both world wars and some chainmail knight gear that I collected over the years it looks cool and keeps me injury free but I literally have to wakeup a few hours earlier than necessary to put it all on properly.

Its worth mentioning that by the time the empire started adopting helmets similar to the norman nasal (or other forms of spangen helmet)the highly disciplined trained legions of old were being replaced by quicker to raise and cheaper to kit out units of spearmen weilding smaller amd rounder shields. This happened because demand for soldiers outstripped the time ot took to train up good heavy infantry(due to both civil wars and batbarian invasions after the crisis of the 3rd century(yeah if Aurelian(Restorator Orbis) wasn't slain when he was this probably would not have happened) and that infantry were increasingly becoming less important in comparison to cavalry. Soldiers did not need to worry so much about hearing commands mid battle as they were not really disciplined enough to carry out any sort of manouvers mid combat as the legionaries of old could.

You can see the same thing in modern military, armored mandibles and balistic visors exist, however they are not worn regularly by the vast majority of infantry. They are very uncomfortable to wear, and retain a lot more heat and heat stroke is more of a liability than a slow moving projectile in most circumstances. However you do see ballistic visors being used occasionally by SWAT like teams in barricaded suspect scenarios, where the likely hood of being shot is greater and the distance to travel, and time in the elements is greatly reduced.

First thought I've had so far: there were nasal helms with sliding nasal guards and could slide up away from the face. This would solve the carrying on the bossom problem.

Training is also armor- and the Romans were the best trained. I'm fairly sure "Not getting stabbed in the face 101" was in the curriculum.

As a veteran I would go with the Roman style helmet as it was. Breathing, vision and communication are paramount in my opinion. Id feel protected enough.

If the Romans faced an enemy, for which having a nasal guard would have been useful, they would have done it locally. Similar to how the legions in Dacia were equiped with metal sleeves to avoid arm injuries caused by the falx.

Metatron - very interesting thanks. A little advice on English usage: the word "bosom" is a little old fashioned and almost exclusively applied to a woman's chest or breasts! It is never used when referring to a man's chest - at least not in my lifetime (I'm 70). PS apart for the occasional minor slip your English is excellent and better than that of most Englishmen!

“Hey, should we give our soldiers’ helmets a nasal guard so þey have more faċe protection?” “OH, BUT ÞIS IS SO MUCH CHEAPER!!”

you missed something that could be important as well: being able to see a soldiers face was important as well. they didnt have nametags. the identifier was ones face... a commander knows his men, and knows who are not his men... its harder to wear stolen armor to infiltrate a camp when they can see your face. furthermore, as a policing force, face to face interactions were important. the romans hated abuse of power, and an accuser of such could identify tge face of the man who did something. so IDENTIFICATION was another big reason for the open face helmets.

Just wanted to say I appreciate your dedication to giving information that's true to the primary sources and your passion for history. Thank you!

I think you nailed it. I also think the open-face helmet allows for better team communication. The ability to recognize facial expressions and to read body language would be reduced if everyone was wearing a nose guard.

I like the new intro graphic... I also like how you, Shad, Matt, and a couple others keep tabs on what each other are doing and each chime in with your own perspectives and how it relates to your individual area of interest. It gives a more complete idea of the topic and each of you pick up on things that the others didn't think of.

While not during the period you study the most, during the Dominate & Byzantine periods (and even before during the 3rd Century as other have stated) Roman helmets did happen to have Nasal Guard be added, one can look no further than to Ridge Helmets with Nasal Guards during the 4th & 5th Centuries & Spangenhelms worn by Eastern Roman Skutatoi during the 7-11th Centuries to name a couple.

Hellenic fighting was reliant on hoplite tactics, which were essentially shield-wall tactics. The hoplon or aspis shield was designed to overlap a neighbour' shield and provide a level of protection to the man to the left in the phalanx. Corinthian and Chalcidian helmets had nasals. Late Republican and Principate Roman tactics relied on barrages of heavy javelins followed by essentially individual combat with the gladius. Roman scuta were personal defence shields (except in the testudo), they were too curved around the holder's body to be overlapped. In the Roman Dominate period army, shield-wall tactics were adopted, with a concomitant replacement of scuta with wide oval and round shields, that could be, and were, overlapped. At the same time Roman helmets changed radically, the old types, based on Celtic models, were replaced by ridge helmets and spangenhelms of Persian and Sarmatian origins. Though not universal, nasals were quite a common feature of the new helmet types. If I were looking for a reason for nasal usage, I would look at the nature of shield-wall/phalanx tactics. It may be as simple as a high incidence of people having nose injuries from their own shield rims, when being jostled and violently pushed about in a close and deep formation.

The Romans liked to dabble a bit in Fashion Souls

Good video again, Raffael, and a lot of good points. Your last point was my first thought already when I read the title: Carrying the helmet flat on your chest while on the march, the nasal guard would make the helmet thicker so it would be in the way.

Really appreciate this video, as I have been wondering about this for a while. It seems that the Greeks usually had a nose guard, normans, medieval, etc all have them. Thanks for this, really helped!

Well, as far as I know, Romans during the V century did adopt nasal guards, and it's not just barbarian helmets but actually Roman ridge helmets with nasal guard. Legions of Constantine, Majorian and Justinian were using these.

Hi, the Romans must have had a factory production line, I mean there must have been people that did nothing but make helmets and other armor for the troops.Who were those people ? Where and how did they make the armor ? What were there lives like ? Nobody ever talks or thinks about that. It must of taken a lot of work and organizing.

Here we go again! Vital answers to pressing questions l didn t even know l had. Props to you sir!

Production value going right up! Congrats my Nobel dude!

With Scuta being a thing, I'd feel OK with an open-faced roman helmet. I'd feel less OK about drinking water from lead pipes...

i agree. the romans when they faced the dacian falxmen, they developed manica and helm strengtheners specifically to protect from the two-handed falx, which cut through roman shields like butter. they were the most flexible army of the ancient world.

I would expect the front rim above the forehead would also cover at least many of the same strikes as a nasal. They both protect against some, but not all, diagonal slashes across the face. Certainly "good enough" for institutional use, especially when the rim also protected against the more common downward stabs.

Absolutely love your personal armor we get to admire. Your videos lead me to things to ponder that really gives insight during the reality of needing armor and how thought out it all was. Also very beautiful. The Japanese comparison, beautiful. The reality of choices on 1 set of armor for every battle circumstance makes the choice of open face helmet seem like a correct one to me. The best option for any environment. Great fun to watch. Leads to thinking on different subject far from current time. I enjoy the look back in time. Thank You …

I was wondering the same question a couple of days ago. I'm glad this video gave me the answers I was looking for.

Metatron, I used to work in Channelview, Texas, (East Houston), and the U.S.S. Texas is berthed 5 miles (8 KM) away from where I worked. She is MAGNIFICENT! Boy Scout troops can spend the night on her. I hope that you get to visit her some day.

Love the setup!

I think another big thing to look at is the type of fighting going on. Legions were expected to fight in tight orderly formations that relied upon your battle brother covering each other's sides. As you get more into the norscan territory. Alot of grapple fighting started entering the traditional sword and axe and spear fighting. Making a nasal guard all the more practical when flying fists and a helmeted headbutt was coming your way. Of course. Leguonaires also had a giant piece of protective shielding in their hands, as shields got smaller, this probably raised the question of minimally maximizing every advantage onto a helm without spending too much. Just my two cents, but your video was very enlightening

Your content is great as always!

Great video! As always!

Great video, like the new set up

I didn't know i wanted to know the answer to this until i saw you ready to explain it for 10 minutes!

I agree with your conclusions (as usual). 😊 Great and interesting video. Thanks!

Great video! I’ve never thought so deeply about Roman armour, and certainly never considered the economics of it. It is interesting that armour would improve in protection as the wearer became richer and had greater control over its making. Even at the height of European armour craft, those who wore those amazing head to toe exoskeletons of steel, were just the top one percent of the top one percent. I wonder if Roman generals and aristocracy had similar custom pimped out suits, and if not, why?

Another overlooked advantage of the nasal guard is the fact that it offers good protection against your shield bashing your own face in. Quite useful in tight shield formations. Might save you from getting your nose broken or losing your teeth in a tussle.

Great video. Thanks. My 5 cents? Medieval soldiers were more likely to receive slashes to the head than Roman legionnaires, because they did not fight in formation. Another downside of the barbute btw, is that is obstructs hearing. The Roman helmet and the medieval nasal helmets do not. Wearing a helmet on the chest is an important feature, but can be done with a nasal helmet is the nose guard is adjustable or removable. This seems to be the case with the helmets used in Game of Thrones for the Unsullied. It also makes the helmet modular, which is good for flexibility and from an economic perspective.

A fantastic video I love expanding my knowledge of the roman army

Love ya man... I have learned a lot from watching you're videos great presentation!!!

Interesting video, good job!

Great piece of work, Metatron! '" All of life is a compromise "

I was literally thinking about this a few days ago and I finally got an answer

This is a great history channel,not boring at all.

I am sooo jealous that you have a full set of samurai armor. You look great in yours, with that katana.

You hit the nail pretty squarely on the head. You touched on pretty much all the points.

thank you....great argument against nose shields....

Man, I was way off. My first assumption was that they omitted the nasal helm because it would slightly impair the soldiers' vision. I figured they'd have to decide between 1.) using a nasal helm which would offer only slightly more protection and 2.) omitting the nasal helm which would offer slightly better vision. Great info, Metatron! I love seeing your cool armor and weapon collections in the videos too!

So much of the time people focus on the effective protection aspect of armour and don't mention the ergonomics and logistical ones. Being able to carry a Roman helmet easily not on your head is an awesome innovation.

Another great video. Thanks.

If the nasal was able to articulate like the cheek protectors then it wouldn't effect the carrying of the helmet while giving additional protection to slashes across the face or glancing off the upper helmet. There are quite a few accounts of people loosing part of their nose during battles throughout history. It would be a nice addition that could have been used by some soldiers but it wasn't necessarily enough for it to become standardized.

Sir, thank you for your historical perspective. Speaking as someone not versed in these matters but perhaps as a raw recruit wearing either helmet…my personal uninformed preference might be to wear: 1. a nose guard equipped helmet if my enemy tended to use down-slashing strokes, say, if axes were expected (close-quarters); or, 2. an open style helm if I had to march quite a bit and chafing would be an issue, and the enemy was equipped with weapons where I would not want my binocular vision interfered with (bobbing/weaving/ducking). Again, pure conjecture on my part. Thank you for provoking this speculations!

A suggestion: could you make another top ten or at least talk about the top “Chinese weapons” or unique weapons? Because those really are very interesting ones, like the hooked swords ⚔️, triple nunchucks, many different pole weapons and more… I find those very interesting.

Your Roman videos are amazing. I just got a set of lorica segmentata myself, could you do a video on how you clean yours?

Actually the Romans did add nasal guards on their helmets from 2nd century onwards. But the ones who regularly wear war masks into combat did not have helmets with nasal guard.

For me it's pretty obvious, the roman helmet could be carrier attached to the breadtplate by folding the cheek guards. A nasal protection would stand in the way of this brilliant mechanism and the tradeoff would probably not be in favor of the nasal protection since soldiers most often then not were marching, not fighting.

As a Roman soldier, My first line of defence is the strategy of my commander. The second, the tactics of my formation. The third, my hands, feet, eyes, and ears. (and an open helmet makes for better battlefield awareness, as well as make for lower fatigue than a heavier one) The fourth, my scutum. The fifth, my helmet, which already covers most of my head, without sacrificing vision. Ask yourself, how many enemy strikes would get past the above five lines of defence, yet miraculously be stopped by a narrow piece of metal between my eyes? Not enough to justify it being there.

It occurs to me that a narrow nasal guard is pretty much useless 99% of the time in protecting against a thrust to the face, since all it's going to do is to deflect the thrust away from your nose into your eye. It would only work of the thrust was exactly perpendicular to the guard and on the dead centre of it, which wouldn't happen terribly often. It's also useless against a cut to the head since the blade will hit the top of the helmet or the cheek-guards first. It's only really going to be useful to stop a sidewise slash to the face if you haven't got cheek guards. I might speculate that the use of a nasal guard returned when the Romans started economising on the presumably fiddly to make and more expensive flexible cheek guards, so it became a cheaper alternative for blocking head cuts.

Visibility and weight certainly play the most important role. Nasal guards are often found on lone warriors and riding fighters and less on soldiers marching long distances in formation.

I feel like I would probably be fine with the standard issue equipment, but I might do what a lot of American tankers in wwii did and scavenge armor to add it to my own.

Please note, that in late republic and early empire times most of the fighting was in the civil wars - legionaries against legionaries. In heavy infantry fights, soldiers stand often in front of each other, and they attack the face in 2 ways - thrust directly in the face or slash horizontally from the side (the scutum edge prevented other attacks). In both scenarios, cheek plates are better, as the nasal guard can't help with thrust in any scenario, but the cheek plate can. If one is thrust in the face, by reflex, one can turn out of the thrust his head. It is a small reflex move and thrust hits the cheek plate and slips. Obviously with horizontal side slice cheek plates are the first to catch it. For the cavalry, the situation is different - there are many situations when the attacker is on the side of the rider and slices horizontally or diagonally directly at the front of the face. Then, the nasal guard works better than cheek plates. Also, in later periods, when infantry fought in less disciplined and loose formations, the battle situations, when the attacker was on your side and sliced diagonally or horizontally at your face were more often and so the arrival of the nasal guards.

Great discussion

Hello Metatron love the channel! ...I got nothing else. Until I watch the vid 🤔

I find it interesting, that the Lobster Tail Burgonets of the 17Th Cent. have more than a little in common with the Imperial Gallic helmets in terms of overall features. Similar answers to similar requirements? Maybe another video some day. Keep up the good work.

Thank you for the really interesting reminder of how broad the skill-sets and functional roles of the legions' members were! Although they did take along some specialists (engineers and such), it still seems like the combo of policing, construction work and all-out battle is quite an unusual one...? I'm trying to think of parallels in other cultures of the time, but can't off the top of my head. Combining militia/policing & armed combat was common, but other armies seemed to generally use locals or slaves to do their fort-building for them AFAIK...?

1:19 It would have been fascinating watching _how_ they mass produced these helmets, with their technology.

The Mainz or Imperial Roman helmet was a masterpiece of defensive kit. Probably the best combat helmet ever made. In all aspects, it was built to deflect blows to the head from any direction and transfer that energy to the pteras (shoulder plates), where the energy would be absorbed like a modern NFL shoulder pad. The wide neck guard came almost 160 degrees around the back and sides, while the ear embrasures covered the openings but still allowed full hearing. The brow guard was designed specifically to deflect a down stroke of a sword that would have gone either off to one side or another. The only possible issue would have been the ability to lift ones' head back to look up - and that is why I think the nasal was not used. Anyone who reenacts a combat situation will be in a posture to receive a charge of infantry. They will not be standing stock straight, but crouched and braced for impact. The neck guard would likely have been pressed, or nearly so, to the segmentata rear bands. The scutum held to just below the eyes, perhaps with a shoulder braced into it high, to support it against a certain kick or wild body impact. The nasal guard was simply not needed, even though I believe that in such melee combat, many facial injuries were suffered. Medically, a broken nose is not a serious injury, and neither is a large cut on the cheek. Bloody as hell, but no Roman soldier would have been rendered ineffective if so injured. Over time, all this changed with new adversaries and tactics, along with new tribes that joined the army and brought their kit with them. Just my opinion.

I think the Greeks had it right with the Corinthian helmet and muscle ciurass. I'd feel safer in those vs hamata or segmentata. A massive scutum helps you feel safe though. It's interesting even though lorica segmentata and lorica hamata were available at the time, most higher rank and wealthy Romans, who generally would not have been equipped with a scutum, opted for lorica musculata. I think that says a lot about its protective abilities. Great video as always!

Good reasoning. Thank you.

Actually, late roman ridged helmets had nasal protection (Berkasovo-type). Adding half-mask to galea would provide additional point of contact to cheek flaps against side strikes

I totally agree with you on everything you said in this video.

The Romans clearly did come to see the advantages of nasals with time. Consider the Berkasovo-type helmets of the 4th Century, which combines a nasal with the previously established cheekplates.

The numbers on the financial/logistics side would stack up pretty fast. One of my clients has a fleet of about a million PCs, and they'd much rather spend what seems like big dollars on centralized solutions, than spending what (to an outside, uninitiated observer) seems like only a few dollars per system to deal with things. Because everything with the desktop fleet is multiplied by a million. Yes, the right helmet is more important than RAM, but there's still a similar numbers game going on. Only a few extra danari for a nasal, but times many thousands (how many thousands obviously varied throughout the Roman "age").

That mild flex in the background lol 😂

I would say a sudden turn could distort your sight as the nose guard slides over eye.

What I also find interesting is how the Corinthian helmet evolved over time. It seems that wearing it "at the back of the head" became so normal, that they stopped making the face plate correctly, and in the end the helmet became completely different.

I never thought about this before

I would consider going into battle in an armorkini. Not only is it very economical, but it also causes your enemies to die laughing or trigger fatal facepalms.

Interestingly, of course, by the 4th Century as warfare changed Roman helmets did often, even usually, have a nasal guard. As you said the helmet design changed as the enemy changed....

Another aspect that you go by a little bit too fast is the weight! The more you cover the body, the more you add weight and by so the less you are mobile and agile, the quicker you tire yourself on battles, marches or on any other task. You need to find a good balance between weight and protection. And to prove your point about statistics and protection: when the Romans faced the Dacians, they implemented crossed metal bars on the helmet to harden it against the dacian weapon (whose name I forgot right now) and they developed a full right arm protection against the same waepon. Only one arm because it was the most vulnerable when they tried to strike exposing it out of the shield protection. The left one holding the shield was never exposed in such a way.

as they say "when the amateur thinks of tactics, the professional thinks of logistics".

I'm a relatively new member of your channel and I certainly haven't watched all your videos so I'm wondering if you could do a video on the calendar the Romans used and compare it to the one used currently worldwide(the Gregorian calendar). If you have already done such a video, I'd be glad if you could direct me to it; thanks.

The typical norman nasal helmet has been developed mainly for the cavalry, at the inception of knighthood (and late roman cavalry helmets do have nasals!). In my opinion it has to do with the fact, that rider on rider combat, if swords are used, would mostly consist of passing each other on horseback, trying to use the momentum to land a horizontal, passing cut. Add to it the fact that if someone is passing you on your sword side, your ability to protect the face with a shield is limited, as the horse gets in the way. In this case, a rib in the middle of the face is perfect for stopping such blows, if they're aimed at the face. As for roman legionnaries - their ability to cover their face in time with a scutum was superb, with the shield being so tall, so the only real danger was attacks from above. Especially since in their tight formation individual soldiers would rarely fight in any other direction than front.