I have been looking at the Vindolanda tablets online http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/
BTW Vindolanda is well worth a visit.

and saw this letter
The English translation reads ""... I have sent (?) you ... pairs of socks from Sattua, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants, two pairs of sandals ... Greet ...ndes, Elpis, Iu..., ...enus, Tetricus and all your messmates with whom I pray that you live in the greatest good fortune."


So, the Romans wore socks with sandals ;-)

Sock with sandals... huge scandal

Here in Australia socks with sandals is a dead giveaway you're a Pom! And when worn at the beach it's a definite fashion faux par.

My first thought was that maybe they did if they were Germans. Well, it turns out that the troops stationed there came from a cohort raised in Batavia. The Batavians were a Germanic tribe, and although they lived in the area that is now the Netherlands, it's still funny.

That's a wonderful website, by the way; thanks for posting it.

Comes of reading too many Italian fashion clay tablets.

Anout three years ago, some amazing classical sculptures were lent to the Royal Academy by Copenhagen's Carlsberg Glyptotek. They included an emperor: memory says it was Vespasian - whoever, it was certainly a relatively earlyish one we remember as a good egg. May even have been Hadrian.

Anyway, there among the flatteringly overcarved pectorals, impossibly stout arms and preposterously ornate breastplate were his ever so elegant sandals (no doubt designed by Jacobus Sinus Choous).

And underneath them: the dearest pair of socks. I swear I could read Octavius Dalmaticus Missonus me fecit on one of them. Or maybe that was the sponsored reception champagne at work.

They've always been fashion victims, these Italians.

flanneruk, I don't care what you are writing about, you almost always make me laugh.

Thank you MissP, I just spent a pleasant 10 minutes in the past, avoiding work...

MissPrism, MissPrism -- I seem to be forgetting my English lit; what novel? Or am I imagining this?

Thanks to Google, got it!

Hey if you want to wear socks and sandals, go for it. Who cares what others think. They're your feet

Annabelle, it was a "three-volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality".....

In France, we used to think it was only the Germans and the Austrians, but with the expansion of the EU, we know that the Poles and Czechs are also fond of socks in sandals.

Better a pair of socks than ten ugly toes peeking through.

"...socks with sandals is a dead giveaway you're a Pom..."

Is it a bad thing to be English in Australia? (By the way, isn't it spelled p-o-h-m any more?)

Annabelle, it was a "three-volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality".....

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

>>Is it a bad thing to be English in Australia?<<

No, it's just that the locals aren't very adventurous when it comes to sending people up..

Better to wear socks with sandals than to leave a baby in a handbag at the local RR station, and probably an unfashionable RR station at that!

A handbag?! said she in her best Dame Edith Evans imitation. (There's no way to write handbag so it has three syllables.)