was evidently material as well as political, as two unusual inscribed
stones from Athens, a dedication by Dionysios, which illustrates a
cobbler’s workshop, and another by Silon, showing a giant sandal,
amply illustrate.^121 Shoemakers were among the most indispensable
civic craftsmen in Plato’s ideal state. Yet we know surprisingly little
about the kinds of shoes that were worn at this time, or indeed about
any other contemporary leather products.
Leather is the most familiar type of animal product. Edible animal
products are the subject of Chapter 7. Inedible products included sinews;
glue from boiled bones; horns and long bones used in decorative work;
and the smaller foot and toe bones of cattle, ovicaprids, and pigs,
particularly astragaloi, used for gaming and prophecy. By far away the
most important inedible by-products were skins or hides. Polybius refers
to cattle as among the key exports that were particularly desirable (to
Aegean Greeks) from the Black Sea area, that is, amongst commodities
travelling towards Byzantion and in transit (4.38.8–9). His statement
could refer either to hides or to live animals, or it could in theory also
mean preserved meat. As we shall see in Chapter 7, there are good
reasons for thinking that live animals may have played a more significant
role in this traffic than has usually been assumed. Here our focus is on
cured and tanned hides.
Current research on leather and tanning practices has focused heavily
on Roman military equipment, because most surviving examples of
leather from temperate zones belong to this category. Although cured
leather can survive in dry conditions, tanned leather has undergone a
process that alters the collagen of skin chemically, making it resistant to
water and bacteria. The development of curing and tanning practices is
still rather mysterious. The kind of tanning manufactory excavated at
Pompeii represents the culmination of experience that must have been
rather more widespread in those areas where cattle and other contrib-
uting animals were common, and the demand from urban or military
consumers high; we simply lack suitable evidence.^122 It is usually
(^121) Camp 2004, 130,figs 9.1–9.3 (Agora I 7396, Dionysios, second quarter of the fourth
centurybc); 135figs 9.6–9.7 (National Museum Athens, EM2565, Silon); Van Driel-
Murray 2008, 490–1, is more sceptical about the economic status of cobblers (491).
(^122) Van Driel-Murray (2002, 262,fig. 3; cf. Van Driel-Murray 2008, 484fig. 19.1) shows
a diagram of tanning procedures in Europe and the Near East, with cured leather common
in Egypt,‘barbarian’and northern Europe sometime between 1000 and 500bc, though
southern Europe appears uncertain—there is no time line for cured leather, but tanned
leather is identified as having begun there earlier than in Egypt (where it seems to be a
development of Ptolemaic rule). Her evaluation is undoubtedly stronger on the Roman than
the Greek evidence. Bravo and Trüpke (1970) 127–49, provide a comprehensive diachronic
188 Thelongue duréein the north Aegean