Time travel ghost story is just the modern day reboot Cinderella needed.
Thousands of years ago, a person was cleaning out a well in Roman Spain when one of their leather sandals slipped off their foot. Now, 2,000 years later, archaeologists have found the well cleaner’s missing shoe.
Finally!
That thing looks surprisingly modern.
A lot of the very few surviving samples do of course look really primitive, but at the high end, cobblers in the Roman world were not fuckin’ around.
UC28327 here is a pretty ornate sole with a very modern shape.
The upper on this one must have been super nice when new.
Then, there’s no reason to suppose that Marcus Aurelius’ (and/or Hadrian’s) sandals on their statues were idealized past the point of plausibility, though I’m sure once one government contracted statue with approved Imperial sandals gets made, there’s a temptation to stick with the motif regardless of the current Emperor’s footwear preferences.
