Roman Soldier's shoe found in Germany

[Imperial Dave]

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/roman-soldier-shoe-found-in-germany-2570999

That's a very old soldier...

[Ian61]

Foot massage - my foot! More like torture of any imperfection occurs.😟

[Imperial Dave]

Socks are the answer. 

[Erpingham]

Why does it say there were no women soldiers in the Roman army?  It doesn't seem to connect to anything else.  Unless the implication is only a male soldier would throw away a kaputt boot?

[Imperial Dave]

Beats me...a rather nebulous statement as you say

[Denis Grey]

Why does it say there were no women soldiers in the Roman army?  It doesn't seem to connect to anything else.  Unless the implication is only a male soldier would throw away a kaputt boot?

Possibly to forestall anticipated criticism for using a male pronoun (even though it is a direct quote).

[Jim Webster]

I seem to remember somewhere reading that they took the nails out and reused them?

[Imperial Dave]

That would not surprise me...

[Ade G]

Why does it say there were no women soldiers in the Roman army?  It doesn't seem to connect to anything else.  Unless the implication is only a male soldier would throw away a kaputt boot?

I read as a comment about the small size?

[Erpingham]

Why does it say there were no women soldiers in the Roman army?  It doesn't seem to connect to anything else.  Unless the implication is only a male soldier would throw away a kaputt boot?

I read as a comment about the small size?

Maybe, though the small size comment is several paragraphs later.  It may be an orphan from an edited passage on the small size of the boot which originally appeared earlier in the piece, I suppose.

[RichT]

I too read it as a comment on the use of 'he' to refer to the boot's owner.

We take it for granted that of course there were no (or vanishingly few) women soldiers in Rome. But for a non subject expert, it might not be so obvious. Anyone under 30 has grown up with the idea that armed forces contain both genders (or more!) as a matter of course, and might not immediately assume that the same wasn't true in the ancient world (or for most of history).

Plus the writer, Vittoria Benzine, "is a Brooklyn-based journalist covering contemporary art with a focus on storytelling, counterculture, and magic" so will have rather different knowledge, expectations, and outlook from a bunch of old farts like us. Different enough to warrant a parenthetical, seven word comment on the use of 'he'.

[Erpingham]

a Brooklyn-based journalist covering contemporary art with a focus on storytelling, counterculture, and magic

The ideal journalist to cover a story on the Roman military, of course  But, point taken, we should not assume that the general public know much about our subjects of interest.