What Did 25 Years of Marching Do to a Roman Soldier's Feet?

A Roman recruit hops on one foot at the side of the road, holding a blister the size of a coin, while hundreds of men march past without slowing down. Twenty-five years later, Rome won't even call him a soldier anymore. What did 25 years of marching do to a Roman soldier's feet? Follow one legionary from his first blister to his last pair of boots: the iron-nailed caligae he paid for out of his own wages, the callus Cicero wrote about, the corns Roman doctors scraped down with powdered stone, the sound of hobnails that terrified people in hiding, the "nail money" soldiers rioted for, the nine thousand miles of training marches, the centurion killed by his own boots in the Temple of Jerusalem, and the seven thousand men who walked the length of Italy to stop Hannibal's brother. Chapters 00:00 The blister at the side of the road 01:27 Boots you have to pay for 05:24 The first week 08:17 A callus over the pain 09:05 The nail and the corn 10:42 The sound of iron on stone 13:33 Nail money and bare feet 16:08 Nine thousand miles 19:25 A trail of lost nails 20:35 The giant shoes of Magna 22:45 The floor that killed a centurion 25:36 Seven thousand pairs of feet 29:46 Two trumpets 30:45 The river of tired men 33:58 The last pair of boots Sources: Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 2.36–37), Celsus (On Medicine 5.28), Juvenal (Satires 3, 16), the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 60a), Tacitus (Histories 3.50), Suetonius (Vespasian 8), Vegetius (1.27), Josephus (Jewish War 6.1.8), Livy (27.43–51), the pay record of Gaius Messius from Masada; archaeology at Vindolanda and Magna on Hadrian's Wall and at Roman battlefield sites in western Slovenia. Subscribe to True Romans, and help us bring more of the real Romans back to life. #RomanSoldiers #AncientRome #RomanArmy #RomanHistory #RomanLegion #History