RomanArmyTalk

Quote:

Crispianus post=358632 Wrote:30 hours to make a pair of shoes

To make caligae??? No. Looking at this pattern

http://www.legiotricesima.org/campusMart...ligae.html

then I'd say that with practice cutting out might take 1 to 2 hours and putting the nails half an hour. Add in 2 more hours for edging and sewing, double for a pair.

I suggest you try it from scratch and make it to the original Roman standard rather then talking about it ;-)

Quote:Ah, but you're not taking prep-work into account; I've made a pair with the method you've posted, and doing a tunnel-stitch into a solid piece with a curved awl would be very difficult without soaking the outer sole first to soften it up - that takes some time. However let's say that you're not doing something like that, but rather making something like this:

Calcei tutorial

In that case, you will definitely need several hours for the glue to set up between steps.

Your assuming here that the Romans used similar leather to what is easily available for soling today, if you use uncompressed leather its really no problem :wink:

Quote:I suggest you try it from scratch and make it to the original Roman standard rather then talking about it ;-)

Yes, you IMAGINE that taking the caligae would have taken longer than my estimate - but where, when you break it down into stages, would the time go? Have you ever seen an experienced canvas or leather worker using a sailors palm or sewing awl? The caliage is designed for rapid and relatively low cost production.

How much time it would take is irrelevant - I'm not skilled at any of the jobs, let alone a team of specialist workers! If you think that a caligae was slower to make than my estimate then stopping hiding between generalities and explain where the time would go.

Quote:Quintus Britannicus wrote:
Ah, but you're not taking prep-work into account; I've made a pair with the method you've posted, and doing a tunnel-stitch into a solid piece with a curved awl would be very difficult without soaking the outer sole first to soften it up - that takes some time.

No, that doesn't take time in any meaningful sense. If you have a big workshop full of slave you don't have a skilled worker standing watch a sole soften waiting to sew it. You have hundreds of soles soaking at once, the sole-sewer pulls one out and sews it.

He's done it thousands of times and will do the job much more quickly than you can, too. The Roman's may not have been able to produce Model T's, but they understood that much about efficient production. A production line of competent workers will produce items many times faster than even a skilled craft worker, let alone a modern amateur. (You might want to google for Adam Smith's famous example of pin making.)

Quote:In that case, you will definitely need several hours for the glue to set up between steps.

Yes. Every caligae would have been made by a single worker. Who waited around for soles to soften and glue to set. Because.... using more than one worker and having more than one caligae at once was impossible because, umm, ROMAN NUMERALS!!!

I don't this should be hard to understand. You have a several rooms full of people making these things. Each person does his specific task and then repeats it over and over. There's no waiting because there are vats full of soles softening and shelves full of caligae with hardening glue.

Even if you only had one person alone making these things, do you really think someone making caligae would have made one at a time, waiting for glue to harden for hours on one before starting the next? Apparently, yes, some people here do - but any real caliage maker who thought that way would have died of starvation.

People confuse pre-modern production with modern crafts-as-a-hobby. They are NOT the same thing! There's an exasperated example on the ARMA website about swordmaking - people imagine, and movies show, iron ore arriving a blacksmith's forge and polished, jewelled and sheathed swords leaving the forge - but the reality would have been very different with stages of production carried out at different sites. The guy - well, guys - who produced ingots of pig iron, for example, would not have waited for the swords from Batch 1 to be completed before they started Batch 2...

Quote:The ridiculous assumption in this thread is that Roman soldiers marched every day. Well, no, this is very, very silly. You march to go places. Most of the time you do not want to do this! You're already at a fort or camp.

Your first assumption is that Romans are at a camp or fort. They didn't conquer all their lands by sitting in forts, they did it by marching.

Your next problem is that while no one is stating Romans marched (as in unit wide marches) every day, especially in garrison (though they would have more so while on campaign), they certainly did walk everyday. Its speculation whether they wore their marching boots every day, I don't think they would have as the boots would have worn out too quickly and the logistics of constantly providing tens of thousands of boots every few months would have been too much for a campaigning army.

As I stated in a previous post, a normal active modern person walks 5 miles a day and I'm guessing the ancient people, without cars or bikes walked a bit more. More so, they would have had other daily reasons for walking more than the usual 5 miles allocated to soldier, such as guard duty, escort duty, etc. Vegetius mentions, and this is during garrison duty not while capaigning, that units three times a month did training marches of 25 miles. The 3 month lifespan is a general guideline but would more accurately translate in distances vs. time, but there is no doubting that a pair of boots if worn would fall apart quite quickly (months).

And if you are a Roman logistics officer, then new caligae every three or six months for your soliders are the least of your problems. Because you are going to have to feed men every day. If you have the logistics to do that, caligae are not a problem! Reasonably, caligae that were good for three months marching would have been good for a year or more of normal activity and the bill for footwear would have been small compared to that for food.

We're not discussing food, let's focus on footwear. In garrison duty, the armies won't be as active and their logistic hub is co-located with them. Overall, everything logistic wise is going to be easy, so this topic isn't really even about that.

However, the Romans, especially during the Republic and early Principate era, when the caligae were first issued out and worn, were frequently campaigning, which meant being away from forts and camps and the thousands of slaves/work shops that would have been necessary to repair/replace footwear. So that means that armies on campaign had a few choices only regarding their footwear:

1. Issue everyone a pair of caligae, demand that they be worn at all times, and replace them on a case by case basis when the boots are worn out, which would entail that the commanders of the army constantly find a source of over 100,000 boots to be built, not to mention transporting them to the units/individuals needing them. When you fail at providing boots for everyone because this method is impossible, fall on your sword.

2. Issue everyone multiple pair of caligae and don't issue anymore until end of campaign year/winter quarters, or until a time allows unit wide replacement of equipment, to include footwear or other issued items. If the soldier wear out their issued footwear while marching, it sucks to be them. Without boots, the individuals can go barefoot in battle or try to "acquire" a new pair by whatever means necessary. This method invites stealing.

3. Issue everyone multiple pair of caligae and don't issue anymore until end of campaign year/winter quarters, or until a time allows unit wide replacement of equipment, to include footwear or other issued items. Issue orders to the men that the caligae are to be saved for battle or inclement weather or bad terrain, the rest of the time they go barefoot or march in rags.

I don't see many other options when it comes to campaign season. My theory is that #3 makes the most sense, especially considering the men already had toughened feet back then and that caligae don't seem to make walking that much easier, compared to a battle situation, where they give traction and protect the feet from whatever errant sharpened things litter the ground.

Quote:Yes. Every caligae would have been made by a single worker. Who waited around for soles to soften and glue to set. Because.... using more than one worker and having more than one caligae at once was impossible because, umm, ROMAN NUMERALS!!!

...wow. Really? :grin:

Quote:I don't this should be hard to understand. You have a several rooms full of people making these things. Each person does his specific task and then repeats it over and over. There's no waiting because there are vats full of soles softening and shelves full of caligae with hardening glue.

Even if you only had one person alone making these things, do you really think someone making caligae would have made one at a time, waiting for glue to harden for hours on one before starting the next? Apparently, yes, some people here do - but any real caliage maker who thought that way would have died of starvation.

People confuse pre-modern production with modern crafts-as-a-hobby. They are NOT the same thing!

Oh, my apologies. *re-reads thread* If I may ask, exactly what is your experience on the matter? Crispianus and myself have actually made multiple pairs of functional period footwear. I daresay (And gladly) that his experience in the field is superior to mine, so I'd give his estimate a lot of credibility in regards to construction time. You're quite right that they would mass produce...in a large warehouse fabrica setting. Funny thing about that though - on the march, units didn't always have access to those sorts of facilities. You see, I also have experience in logistics, mostly from my time serving in Iraq. I don't recall very many supply warehouses that sold or produced footwear on some of the smaller FOBs (Forward operating bases). We can make the supposition that fort supply lines might have been able to make drops to some of the units containing extra boots or the like, but supply trains are very susceptible to being raided. Local resupply may also be possible from hamlets that know an army is marching by, and supplying non-issued footwear still means money.

I think Bryan actually makes may good points in his rebuttal. We can always make the argument of comparing apples to oranges, but I've yet to hear any anecdotal evidence on construction times or methods other than "Oh SURELY the Romans did X or Y!"

Cool story, bro. 8+)

More modern analogies have to be treated with caution, of course, but how did armies before the age of mechanised transport, such as those of (say) Marlborough and Wellington, cope with this problem?

More modern analogies have to be treated with caution, of course, but how did armies before the age of mechanised transport, such as those of (say) Marlborough and Wellington, cope with this problem?

Perhaps by using wooden soled shoes or clogs many look like leather shoes so would be difficult to tell from images of the time, possibly including Sole irons/horseshoes and hobnailing on the heel and sole, the wooden component is very quick to make but does require specific tools... very common in earlier times as they were cheap, they survived mostly in heavy industry areas until the advent of modern safety boots... in a nutshell...
Its curious how only a few years and a change in technology can wipe out an entire trade including pretty much all memory of it.... see http://chrisbrady.itgo.com/clogmaker/clogmaker1.htm for some interesting stuff on clogs

There may be some relevance in comparing with 19th century Colonial wars though the forces were often quite small the logistics were enormous in comparison..... the Anglo Zulu war for example where the conditions for the shoes could not have been much different...

Footware in the last 300 years has come with heels and this does change the way you walk, military leather boots from the later 19th and early 20th century would have used a fair amount of machinery and modern methods of tanning in the production and often wooden nails to attach the wear soles, sported horseshoe type metal reinforcing and hobnails on the heel and soles, the French army carried a spare pair as normal during this time, comparing with the Foreign legion in North Africa may be interesting as they marched great distances.... Unfortunately I have no relevant information to do with shoes on this....

Most of this stuff (shoes generally) I guess is so mundane and ordinary it seems to pass without comment...

After battle, casualties amongst your units and those of the enemy could mean there would be at least some spare footware going....

Quote:

thiswayup post=359032 Wrote:The ridiculous assumption in this thread is that Roman soldiers marched every day. Well, no, this is very, very silly. You march to go places. Most of the time you do not want to do this! You're already at a fort or camp.

Your first assumption is that Romans are at a camp or fort. They didn't conquer all their lands by sitting in forts, they did it by marching.

This is silliness. The normal state of the army, by at least 100 to 1, is occupation rather than conquest. If you try to calculate the cost of the keeping the army shoed using the conquest rate, you will be wrong.

Quote:Your next problem is that while no one is stating Romans marched (as in unit wide marches) every day,

Actually they did when the 3 months figure was given.

Quote:especially in garrison (though they would have more so while on campaign), they certainly did walk everyday.

Yes. BUT A LOT LESS THAN WHILE ON THE MARCH! Again, not hard! If caligae are good for 20 miles a day of marching for 3 months, then they're good for a year of 5 miles a day. So if you have been a bit of a wombat and declared that each soldier will need normally 4 pairs of caligae a year, then, no, your economics are wrong.

Quote:And if you are a Roman logistics officer, then new caligae every three or six months for your soliders are the least of your problems. Because you are going to have to feed men every day. If you have the logistics to do that, caligae are not a problem! Reasonably, caligae that were good for three months marching would have been good for a year or more of normal activity and the bill for footwear would have been small compared to that for food.

We're not discussing food, let's focus on footwear.
[/quote]

I can't understand why this argument seems to complex for you, but I'll try again. The argument has been made that caligae would have been a significant burden on Roman military operations. But if the purchase costs and logistical costs were small compared to other items - eg food - then, no, they were not.

More modern analogies have to be treated with caution, of course, but how did armies before the age of mechanised transport, such as those of (say) Marlborough and Wellington, cope with this problem?

That's an intelligent question - but the answer is that it is generally irrelevant. Because

1. There is no such thing as just a campaign; each varies

2. Access to something like footwear depends on logistics, which depends on roads, rivers and the sea - which is one reason why it varies with the campaign. And generally, even while mobile, Roman armies had decent communications. There roads were one factor in this, but water transport - the empire was built around the Mediterranean and control of key German rivers - was a larger one. You can add military storehouses to this picture.

When Roman armies were out of touch with this logistical network, caligae were the least of their problems. (Hint: FOOD!) The normal answer for longterm operations was of course to establish local bases. For example, the Romans didn't just turn up in Spain and conquer the place in one go. They had allied cities which acted as local sources of supply. If a pair of caligae lasted only 3 months of active campaigning 10,000 men still only need 100 pairs a day, which is a need which might have been filled by 20 local leather workers. I suspect that this wouldn't have been an option for the British in the Peninsular War: British military boots were quite alien to anything made locally in large numbers and making lasted footwear is a specialist job.

So to sumarize -

- You can't base the Average Recurring Boot Cost of running the Roman Empire on campaigning, because campaigns were atypical rather than average

- Roman armies generally campaigned froma strong logsitical base. When they didn't, boots would have been one of their lesser problems

- Conquests like Gaul and Spain took decades of alliance building and repeated operations during which the army usually held secure areas. Caligae were not the Classical equivalent of Typhoon fighters but something any town or village could have turned out.

- If you look at Roman operations which lacked a decent logistical base (eg Crassus's last holiday) and went off-plan, then it is doubtful that anyone would have found time to worry about caligae. Feeding armies is hard - much harder in the ancient world than in Gunpowder Europe because food surplus was often lower in campaigning areas. We think of Germany as a breadbasket, but before the invention of the iron plough and horse collar it was a wilderness of forests with very little to eat.

Quote:So to sumarize -

- You can't base the Average Recurring Boot Cost of running the Roman Empire on campaigning, because campaigns were atypical rather than average

- Roman armies generally campaigned froma strong logsitical base. When they didn't, boots would have been one of their lesser problems

- Conquests like Gaul and Spain took decades of alliance building and repeated operations during which the army usually held secure areas. Caligae were not the Classical equivalent of Typhoon fighters but something any town or village could have turned out.

- If you look at Roman operations which lacked a decent logistical base (eg Crassus's last holiday) then it is doubtful that caligae, Roman soliders for the use of, ever became a problem.

will you please modify your signature to contain your name I think is rude not to know who you are talking too

Thiswayup wrote:
This is silliness. The normal state of the army, by at least 100 to 1, is occupation rather than conquest. If you try to calculate the cost of the keeping the army shoed using the conquest rate, you will be wrong.

For the record, the point of my original post was about marching. Even in garrison, individuals would have marched and walked over 225 miles a month. That has a tendency to wear out shoes. On campaign, they marched far more, I used the example of Caesar's Vercengetorix campaign to demonstrate that in a six month window, the army marched over 1,200 miles, nowhere near a reliable supply of boots makers.

Thiswayup wrote:
Actually they did when the 3 months figure was given.

And your point? The three month figure corresponds to opinions by people who have walked extensively in caligae and is used as a time estimate of how long a pair would last. Another method, though more accurate but harder to gauge, would be putting a distance limit on the boots. Unfortunately, too many variables come into play over this.

Thiswayup wrote:
Yes. BUT A LOT LESS THAN WHILE ON THE MARCH! Again, not hard! If caligae are good for 20 miles a day of marching for 3 months, then they're good for a year of 5 miles a day. So if you have been a bit of a wombat and declared that each soldier will need normally 4 pairs of caligae a year, then, no, your economics are wrong.

All capitalizing implies yelling. Why are you yelling? What point are you trying to get across? Let me make this simple for you so you can stop insulting me and others:

During a campaign, if caligae are worn for 20 miles/day for 3 months (combination of daily marching and walking around), and at that point they fall apart, but the campaign still continues for another six months, what happens next? Where are the new caligae requisitioned from? An army can't just march up to the nearest town or settlement and demand 20,000 pairs of shoes like it can with food. Nor can you forage for shoes like you can with food. So logistically, a commander would have to send back to friendly controlled areas, possibly hundreds of miles away through enemy controlled roads and trails, have an order filled by thousands of workers which would take weeks, fill hundreds of wagons, and then have them sent to the "front" to join the army. Or the men simply didn't march in boots, at least not always.

Thiswayup wrote:
I can't understand why this argument seems to complex for you, but I'll try again. The argument has been made that caligae would have been a significant burden on Roman military operations. But if the purchase costs and logistical costs were small compared to other items - eg food - then, no, they were not.

Food can be requisitioned locally. A thousand head of cattle can be attached to the army, to serve as "cattle on the hoof". Other food stores can be taken by force. Food can be gathered by foraging, literally taken from the fields or stores on farms or while still growing.
Shoes cannot. Shoes must come from some place where large leatherworkers and cobblers exist who already know how to make Roman style shoes. You won't find them outside Alesia, nor Masada, nor the Teutoburg Wald. Therefore, they are OUTSIDE of the logistic support. Within the army's own supply train no doubt exist some leatherworkers and cobblers, but not in great enough numbers or properly organized to reshoe an army, possible multiple times in a year.

Thiswayup wrote:
- You can't base the Average Recurring Boot Cost of running the Roman Empire on campaigning, because campaigns were atypical rather than average

This discussion is entirely about boots falling apart. That means marching. Additionally, it was about the difficulties in replacing shoes, which delves into campaigning.

Thiswayup wrote:
- Roman armies generally campaigned froma strong logsitical base. When they didn't, boots would have been one of their lesser problems

And when they were hundreds of miles away from that logistical base, how do they get boots? They can still requisition and forage for food, they can't requisition or forage for boots.

Thiswayup wrote:
- Conquests like Gaul and Spain took decades of alliance building and repeated operations during which the army usually held secure areas. Caligae were not the Classical equivalent of Typhoon fighters but something any town or village could have turned out.

I don't even know where to start with this. No one even brought up conquering areas. Let's simplify this once again:

Soldier A is campaigning. They start in March. By June, his caligae are falling apart. They are deep inside enemy territory, marching everyday, fighting battles and sieges once a month. The logistic support of the army is entirely directed at this point to keeping it fed. What are Soldier A's solution and how could this be prevented?

Thiswayup wrote:
- If you look at Roman operations which lacked a decent logistical base (eg Crassus's last holiday) and went off-plan, then it is doubtful that anyone would have found time to worry about caligae. Feeding armies is hard - much harder in the ancient world than in Gunpowder Europe because food surplus was often lower in campaigning areas. We think of Germany as a breadbasket, but before the invention of the iron plough and horse collar it was a wilderness of forests with very little to eat.

What about the individual soldiers who don't have caligae anymore because they fell apart? This is the point of what I was originally asking. Logistically, they aren't going to be supporting the requisitioning of new boots, so the soldier either has the pairs he started out with that he is able to repair somehow, or he can scavange and steal from dead soldiers, or he can go barefoot.

You should create a separate topic where you can discuss other logistical needs, such as food. Additionally, try to limit the bile in your responses if you actually want a discussion.