Shoes, Slippers and Sandals: Feet and Footwear in Classical Antiquity ed. by Sadie Pickup and Sally Waite

Abstract

Reviewed by: Shoes, Slippers and Sandals: Feet and Footwear in Classical Antiquity ed. by Sadie Pickup and Sally Waite Tyler Jo Smith Shoes, Slippers and Sandals: Feet and Footwear in Classical Antiquity. Edited by Sadie pickup and Sally Waite. London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. Pp. xvii + 337. Hardback, $155.00. ISBN: 978-147288763. Like other items of clothing and adornment, shoes are bearers of meaning. Cultural anthropologists, social historians and fashion designers have studied footwear across the globe, from high heels to trainers, binding to fetishism. Classical scholars have shied away from calceology, tending to view shoes as extensions of dress history or as stylistic components for dating or identifying sculptures (i.e. Hermes of Praxiteles from Olympia). Such limitations have left no shortage of unanswered questions about ancient foot coverings. This illustrated volume derives from a conference held at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Great Northern Museum in summer 2015. Though neither a survey nor a complete history, it will nevertheless be consulted as a point of reference for many years to come. The contributors from the UK, Europe and elsewhere approach feet and footwear from archaeological, historical and literary perspectives. Following a general introduction that reviews past scholarship, fifteen core chapters are divided into four parts and cover a broad swathe of Greek and Roman evidence for shoes, sandals, slippers and boots. Readers learn where and how shoes were represented in antiquity through a series of object-based and thematic case studies. Ancient terminology is covered in the editor’s introduction and again by Caspers (“Pantāi Krēpides: Shoe-talk from Homer to Herodas”) whose focus is Greek poetry. Ancient footwear, being made of perishable materials (like textiles), rarely survives in the archaeological record. Thus, Greene’s chapter, “Metal Fittings on the Vindolanda Shoes: Footwear and Evidence for Podiatric Knowledge in the Roman World,” which looks at evidence from the site in northern England (famous for its handwritten tablets) where over 4000 shoes were discovered, is especially welcome. Here we encounter the look and material of a unique assemblage and the practice of Roman podiatry: metal bars were fitted onto shoes to correct gait or lend additional support. Throughout the volume it becomes evident that shoes are missing from our notice in other ways. In sculpture, shoes or sandals may have once been painted on, are concealed beneath long and heavy drapery or have broken off. Despite these limitations, the visual arts remain our most informative ancient source. As one author puts it: “Like dress, posture and [End Page 506] attributes, footwear is part of the visual and metaphorical language of ancient art” (Christof, “The Footwear of the Antonine Monument from Ephesus,” 296). Predictably, several chapters rely on Greek vases-painting as documentary evidence of ancient footwear. Waite and Gooch’s chapter, “Sandals on the Wall: The Symbolism of Footwear on Athenian Painted Pottery,” collects examples of hanging sandals on Athenian vases, breaking down the evidence by object, iconography, artist, provenance and shape. Despite the Etruscan context for just over 50% of their data-set, the authors believe that “the images reflect an Athenian mind-set” (41). Two other chapters, Toillon’s, “At the Symposium: Why Take off our Boots? The Significance of Boots placed underneath the Kline on Attic Red- figure Vase Painting (c.500–440 BC),” and Young’s “Donning Footwear: The Invention and Diffusion of an Iconographic Motif in Archaic Athens,” reveal further instances where object agency and human action reflect social and political contexts on vases. Smith’s essay (“The Left Foot Aryballos wearing a Network Sandal”) bridges archaeology and visual art by exploring an archaic vase shape of uncertain fabric found at many Greek sites and perhaps related to funerary cult. By comparison, Phillippo’s chapter, “Stepping onto the Stage: Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Tragic Footwear,” employs vases alongside terracotta reliefs to analyze the import of barefoot Orestes approaching his father’s tomb in the context of ancient performance. “Monosandalism” is a theme treated by several authors. The most famous attestation in Greek myth is the hero Jason who enters a marketplace unrecognized and wearing one sandal (monokrepis), a story alluded to in art...