Talk:Caligae

Centurions
What did they wear if not caligae? 100.40.12.15 (talk) 20:43, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Reducing wear
I imagine the function of hobnails was to reduce wear on the leather sole by transfering it to something more durable and greatly extending the service life of the caliga (or at least the sole and upper. The hobnails could perhaps be recycled a few times).

Think horseshoes for humans.--Fulminouscherub 22:00, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Calling these things boots is a little silly. They are clearly a type of sandal. 66.55.6.146 (talk) 21:00, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

They are clearly not sandals, as explained in the article following the terminology used by the Romans. "From Rome onwards and over many centuries these boots conquered the larger part of the known world." Can this be reedited to not be overly dramatic? I edited the article to hopefully make it a little more neutral and flow better. Umma Kynes 14:08, 25 April 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ummakynes (talk • contribs)

Articles Needed
Dear All, we need some English-language articles here for the carbatina, the soccus and the solea. All are mentioned in this article and should hyper-link to articles of their own. Some of the articles do exist on Wikipedia but not in English. Please consider creating these articles, if you read one of the other languages (Italian, German, ...) it is probably not too hard to do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skates61 (talk • contribs) 13:01, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge
This article is one of several would-be "definitive" articles on types of Roman footwear. We also have Calceus and Soccus, and a general article on Sandal. As ever, the definitions and categories seldom accommodate the objects themselves: Caligae are indeed "typically military" but were worn also worn by civilians, and many different patterns were in use. There's tremendous variation in Roman contemporary terminology for footwear, whether military, or civilian, or in some cases both. In many cases we've not a clue what was meant by a particular Latin term for an article of footwear. And curators and scholars acknowledge the tremendous, inventive variety in the footwear itself, notwithstanding the tendency to simplify and standardise in statuary and other artistic renditions. Just to take a couple of examples; where might the "Hellenistic-style high-laced, soft-topped but rather military-looking high-boot shown on some statuary and paintings" be dealt with? Not quite a Caligus, not quite a sandal. When does a calceus or a Caligus become an enclosed "shoe-boot"? Modern scholarship addresses these issues with increasing caution, and I suggest we acknowledge this by having a nicely capacious and broad new article, which would absorb all separate articles on Roman footwear. It would probably be titled Footwear in ancient Rome, based on a sub-section I'm currently working on; Clothing in ancient Rome. The new article would be split into subsections, providing targets for linkage. Any objections? Haploidavey (talk) 15:34, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
 * This sounds good to me. I'll look at setting this up when I have some more free time later this week. Incidentally, if you have time for a quick laugh, I was trying to clean up some of the citations needed on this page and although I did find the book that appears to confirm most of the information here, I also found this book which was published last last year and directly copies from the article, and I'm glad I noticed the copying because citation loops like this make uncited info seem legitimate drives the wannabe historian in me crazy. Mehmuffin (talk) 15:29, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually,yes - I oppose the merge. Not that I disagree with anything said above with regard to roman footwear, however I don't conclude from that a merge is the best "solution". I rather see a separate overview/summary article on Roman footwear and in addition keep the individual ones. One reason I dislike the merge version is, that we already have significant amount of non-English Wikipedia having sometimes extensive articles under the individual names (in particular for caligae) and a merge breaks the navigation between the different language wikipedias (and probably related to that creates mess in wikidata as well).
 * Aside from structural issue, external sources often use the individual terms and particular for the military caligulae there seems to be a lot of material available that could be added but which would be a bit out of scope/too detailed for a general footwear article.--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:10, 14 July 2017 (UTC)