Pur­ple may not be one of the most pop­u­lar col­ors in the appar­el of our age, but if you want it — as cer­tain cul­tur­al fig­ures have amply demon­strat­ed — you can get as much of it as you like, even if you don’t belong to the aris­toc­ra­cy. That was­n’t the case in antiq­ui­ty, as explained by ancient-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Gar­rett Ryan in the new video from his chan­nel Told in Stone above. Back then, long before the inven­tion of syn­thet­ic dyes, human­i­ty had to get all its col­ors from nature, and some of those nat­ur­al sources were more abun­dant and acces­si­ble than oth­ers. To pro­duce splen­did “Tyr­i­an pur­ple” required the mucus of sea snails, and not just any sea snails: only three species, col­lec­tive­ly referred to as murex, would do.

This par­tic­u­lar pur­ple, as Ryan explains, “was vir­tu­al­ly immune to wash­ing and weath­er­ing,” unlike the veg­etable dyes com­mon­ly used in antiq­ui­ty, and per­haps that strength inspired the leg­end that it was dis­cov­ered by Her­cules him­self.

Though its recipe has nev­er quite been repli­cat­ed in moder­ni­ty, it seems to have required a near­ly Her­culean labor to exe­cute, with each batch of ten thou­sand snails pro­duc­ing a sin­gle gram of dye. Even ancient Roman sen­a­tors got just one pur­ple stripe each on their togas; full pur­ple was reserved for tri­umph­ing gen­er­als and emper­ors. In some ages, under emper­ors like Nero, pur­ple — at least in its most lux­u­ri­ant shades — was for­bid­den to the com­mon peo­ple.

Not that most of them could have afford­ed it any­way, in Rome or oth­er ancient civ­i­liza­tions. “In clas­si­cal Athens, a pur­ple cloak cost three minas, or 300 drach­mas, when a fam­i­ly of four could live com­fort­ably for a year on 200,” Ryan explains. “The finest pur­ple cloth was worth its weight in sil­ver, and an espe­cial­ly rich gar­ment could cost two tal­ents: 12,000 drach­mas.” Dur­ing the reign of Augus­tus, when impe­r­i­al legionar­ies earned 900 ses­ter­tii a year, “a cloak of sec­ond-rate pur­ple” might sell for 10,000. Cal­cu­lat­ing from Dio­cle­tian’s Price Edict, you could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly trade a few pounds of pur­ple silk for 75,000 pints of beer, 7,500 “suc­cu­lent sow udders,” 750 pheas­ants, “a sin­gle first-class male lion,” and 150 law­suits: the mak­ings of quite a high time in Ancient Rome.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Beau­ti­ful Pur­ple Dye from Snail Glands

Behold Ancient Egypt­ian, Greek & Roman Sculp­tures in Their Orig­i­nal Col­or

When the Romans pushed their way north into the Ger­man provinces, they built (cir­ca 90 AD) the Saal­burg, a fort that pro­tect­ed the bound­ary between the Roman Empire and the Ger­man­ic trib­al ter­ri­to­ries. At its peak, 2,000 peo­ple lived in the fort and the attached vil­lage, and it remained active until around 260 AD.

Some­time dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry, the Saal­burg was redis­cov­ered and exca­vat­ed, then lat­er ful­ly recon­struct­ed. It’s now a UNESCO World Her­itage site and hous­es the Saal­burg Muse­um, which con­tains many Roman relics, includ­ing a 2,000-year-old shoe, appar­ent­ly found in a local well.

If you think the Ital­ians have mas­tered the craft of mak­ing shoes, well, they don’t have much on their ances­tors. Accord­ing to the site Romans Across Europe, the Romans “were the orig­i­na­tors of the entire-foot-encas­ing shoe.” The site con­tin­ues:

There was a wide vari­ety of shoes and san­dals for men and women. Most were con­struct­ed like mil­i­tary cali­gae, with a one-piece upper nailed between lay­ers of the sole. Many had large open-work areas made by cut­ting or punch­ing cir­cles, tri­an­gles, squares, ovals, etc. in rows or grid-like pat­terns. Oth­ers were more enclosed, hav­ing only holes for the laces. Some very dain­ty women’s and children’s shoes still had thick nailed soles.

The image above, which puts all of the Romans’ shoe-mak­ing skill on dis­play, comes to us via Red­dit and imgur.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ancient Romans First Com­mit­ted the Sar­to­r­i­al Crime of Wear­ing Socks with San­dals, Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Sug­gests

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman San­dal with Nails Used for Tread

How Wear­ing Ridicu­lous­ly Long Point­ed Shoes Became a Medieval Fash­ion Trend

A Huge Scale Mod­el Show­ing Ancient Rome at Its Archi­tec­tur­al Peak (Built Between 1933 and 1937)

Exquis­ite 2300-Year-Old Scythi­an Woman’s Boot Pre­served in the Frozen Ground of Siberia

We can all remem­ber see­ing images of medieval Euro­peans wear­ing pointy shoes, but most of us have paid scant atten­tion to the shoes them­selves. That may be for the best, since the more we dwell on one fact of life in the Mid­dle Ages or anoth­er, the more we imag­ine how uncom­fort­able or even painful it must have been by our stan­dards. Den­tistry would be the most vivid exam­ple, but even that fash­ion­able, vague­ly elfin footwear inflict­ed suf­fer­ing, espe­cial­ly at the height of its pop­u­lar­i­ty — not least among flashy young men — in the four­teenth and fif­teenth cen­turies.

Called poulaines, a name drawn from the French word for Poland in ref­er­ence to the footwear’s sup­pos­ed­ly Pol­ish ori­gin, these pointy shoes appeared around the time of Richard II’s mar­riage to Anne of Bohemia in 1382. “Both men and women wore them, although the aris­to­crat­ic men’s shoes tend­ed to have the longest toes, some­times as long as five inch­es,” writes Ars Tech­ni­ca’s Jen­nifer Ouel­lette. “The toes were typ­i­cal­ly stuffed with moss, wool, or horse­hair to help them hold their shape.” If you’ve ever watched the first Black­ad­der series, know that the shoes worn by Rowan Atkin­son’s hap­less plot­ting prince may be com­ic, but they’re not an exag­ger­a­tion.

Regard­less, he was a bit behind the times, giv­en that the show was set in 1485, right when poulaines went out of fash­ion. But they’d already done their dam­age, as evi­denced by a 2021 study link­ing their wear­ing to nasty foot dis­or­ders. “Bunions — or hal­lux val­gus — are bulges that appear on the side of the foot as the big toe leans in towards the oth­er toes and the first metatarsal bone points out­wards,” writes the Guardian’s Nico­la Davis. A team of Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge researchers found signs of them being more preva­lent in the remains of indi­vid­u­als buried in the four­teenth and fif­teenth cen­turies than those buried from the eleventh through the thir­teenth cen­turies.

Yet bunions were hard­ly the evil against which the poulaine’s con­tem­po­rary crit­ics inveighed. After the Great Pesti­lence of 1348, says the Lon­don Muse­um, “cler­ics claimed the plague was sent by God to pun­ish Lon­don­ers for their sins, espe­cial­ly sex­u­al sins.” The shoes’ las­civ­i­ous asso­ci­a­tions con­tin­ued to draw ire: “In 1362, Pope Urban V passed an edict ban­ning them, but it did­n’t real­ly stop any­body from wear­ing them.” Then came sump­tu­ary laws, accord­ing to which “com­mon­ers were charged to wear short­er poulaines than barons and knights.” The pow­er of the state may be as noth­ing against that of the fash­ion cycle, but had there been a law against the blunt­ly square-toed shoes in vogue when I was in high school, I can’t say I would’ve object­ed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ele­gant 2,000-Year-Old Roman Shoe Found in a Well

Exquis­ite 2300-Year-Old Scythi­an Woman’s Boot Pre­served in the Frozen Ground of Siberia

The Ancient Romans First Com­mit­ted the Sar­to­r­i­al Crime of Wear­ing Socks with San­dals, Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Sug­gests

Doc Martens Boots Adorned with Hierony­mus Bosch’s “Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights”

How to Get Dressed & Fight in 14th Cen­tu­ry Armor: A Reen­act­ment

How Women Got Dressed in the 14th & 18th Cen­turies: Watch the Very Painstak­ing Process Get Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Recre­at­ed

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

A recre­ation of the mil­i­tary san­dals. (Pho­to: Bavar­i­an State Office for Mon­u­ment Preser­va­tion)

Whether you’re putting togeth­er a stage play, a film, or a tele­vi­sion series, if the sto­ry is set in ancient Rome, you know you’re going to have to get a lot of san­dals on order. This task may sound more straight­for­ward than it is, for sim­ply copy­ing the styles of clas­sic pro­duc­tions that take place in the Roman Empire will put you on the wrong side of the his­tor­i­cal research. We now know, for instance, that some ancient Romans wore their san­dals with socks, a look that, seen in today’s cul­tur­al con­text, may not give quite the desired impres­sion. And thanks to an even more recent dis­cov­ery, it seems we also need to think about what’s on their soles.

Dis­cov­ered near the Bavar­i­an city of Ober­stimm, “an ancient Roman san­dal, large­ly decayed but recon­struct­ed through X‑ray, sug­gests the spread of mil­i­tary fash­ion to local pop­u­la­tions.” So writes Madeleine Muz­dakis at My Mod­ern Met, explain­ing that its type were known as cali­gae, which “had tough soles with hob­nails [that] pro­vid­ed trac­tion for the troops,” who did a fair bit of march­ing.

This par­tic­u­lar cali­ga dates from between 60 and 130, around the time the Roman army switched from san­dals to boots, and it shows that, dur­ing their time in this part of Bavaria, their footwear had an influ­ence on what the civil­ians were wear­ing.

An x‑ray of the ancient san­dals. (Pho­to: Bavar­i­an State Office for Mon­u­ment Preser­va­tion

The idea that stan­dard-issue mil­i­tary gear could influ­ence pop­u­lar fash­ion may sur­prise any­one who’s ever had to wear a pair of “GI glass­es.” But in its hey­day, the Roman army was­n’t just a group of occu­piers installed to project force on the part of a dis­tant metro­pole, but an exten­sion of civ­i­liza­tion itself. If the hob­nails in Roman mil­i­tary san­dals afford­ed extra trac­tion in addi­tion to the sub­tle sug­ges­tion of cul­tur­al sophis­ti­ca­tion, so much the bet­ter. Though the ques­tion of just how far and wide this par­tic­u­lar type of footwear (which appears recon­struct­ed at the top of the post, and in X‑ray just above) spread through the Roman Empire remains a mat­ter for fur­ther research, now would be as good a time as any for cos­tume design­ers to stock up on nails.

via Live Sci­ence/My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ele­gant 2,000-Year-Old Roman Shoe Found in a Well

The Ancient Romans First Com­mit­ted the Sar­to­r­i­al Crime of Wear­ing Socks with San­dals, Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Sug­gests

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er a 2,000-Year-Old Roman Glass Bowl in Per­fect Con­di­tion

What the Romans Saw When They Reached New Parts of the World: Hear First-Hand Accounts by Appi­an, Pliny, Tac­i­tus & Oth­er Ancient His­to­ri­ans

Do You Think About Ancient Rome Every Day? Then Browse a Wealth of Videos, Maps & Pho­tos That Explore the Roman Empire

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.