As my main passion for the ancient world lies with the Roman army, it seemed sensible for me to choose this as the topic of the book, and the name 'The Real Roman Army' fell into place rather quickly. But it's during the researching that writing a book gets really interesting, since it's at this stage where you find out all of the small details that you've previously overlooked or never even considered. I've started off my research by sorting out one of the messier topics of the book, helmets (it also happens to be the first chapter, but that had nothing to do with it, honest...). Although it's easy enough to separate the helmets by type, it becomes far more difficult to place them into subcategories such as Imperial Gallic F or G. This is because many of the original helmets just haven't been photographed and you'd have to visit them in various museums, something I'm unfortunately unable to do. Instead, I've searched online for replica helmets of various types and collected the images into one document, which has worked relatively well except for the rarity of certain helmets and minute differences between them, which has made filling in all the gaps rather difficult. Nor do I have access to a copy of H. Robinson's Armour of Imperial Rome, which would be a great help since it was he who initially classified the helmets. Unfortunately these are now very rare, and tend to sell for at least £100. |
Christopher