Calcei boot pattern?

[Martin Moser]

Although suede boots may not like the wet grass so much as well-oiled leather faced ones

Hm, I wouldn't be that sure. It's not really suede AFAIK, as it still has the grain side (real, modern suede doesn't, I think), even though worn towards the inside. Well oiled it should do the job just as well, I could imagine.

Thinking about it, I can well imagine that in Roman times being water-proof was not that much of an issue for shoes - just look at the large number of shoes with some kind of openwork of some sort or another. You would get wet feet with those no matter how waterproof the leather.

It might also be that flesh side out was not the norm everywhere, the problem is that we have only a very small number of finds.

The only thing I am pretty sure about, though, is that the upper was cut in one piece, that's something that is just simply so universal among roman shoes that it would be surprising to find the calcei make an exception here.