Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers with me, Murray, your weekly fix of ancient warfare related ranting, where I attempt to answer a question from a reader, viewer or listener.

You can, of course, ask your own question. You can send me an email. You can yell it in the street. You can send me a postcard.

And of course, the email address is Murray at Carvancelryp publishers.com. And even if you send it

and put it on one of the other videos, and I don't see it, it will get sent to me. All these things

get their way to me. All roads lead to Murray. Now, I think this is Klaus Weissar 3769. I think that's the

person who sent us in this question. Question for a future episode if it hasn't been done before.

I don't think it has. Here it is. How did ancient Greek and Roman soldiers protect the top of

their feet? With the rest of the body, including shins, heavily protected, this seems like an

oversight. One good jab to the foot and you are out of action. Thanks. Indeed. Now, it's also

really interesting the idea of footwear. Now, most of our surviving evidence of footwear is

sculptural and occasionally, occasionally,

occasionally, that's the words I meant to say. And we do occasionally also have archaeological remains of, especially Romanwear but also some others and it survives

for various reasons obviously in Roman Britain it survives because it's waterlogged and therefore

leather survives in the deserts of Egypt and North Africa it survives because it's so dry and

there's no moisture to deteriorate such things. Now, interestingly, what you've got

is a range of footwear from barefoot, and we're told at various points in time that, for instance,

Spartans for barefoot, a lot of people don't believe that, all the way through to the Roman boot

and Roman Callagai, the sandal, which again probably offers some protection, but the toes are exposed.

We've got these beautiful sculptural examples of Hellenistic and other boots which have open toes.

So they seem to offer some protection to the top of the foot, but not a lot, all the way

through to the boot of various armies, whether it be the Huns or the Scythians or later

Roman soldiers.

...