Caligae Construction

[Crispianus]

For those who know leather/shoe making, is there anything about the general design of the caligae that makes it simpler or cheaper to produce than previous styles of Roman or Greek military boots, calcei or Iphicrates style?

A few thoughts...

I would say with comparable designs probably No, but as the only thing there is to go on for Greek footware is sculptural representations it can be difficult to tell.

In terms of material, the less you use the cheaper the item is likely to be, since leather is likely to be a relatively expensive commodity, if you have to buy it in....
But then you also have to consider the quality of the leather eg the use of half tanned leather(tanning in this sense I use to cover mulitple techinque: tawed, cured, tanned etc)

In a Modern sense time is money so how long production takes is important to cost, but this also limits the amount of product you can produce, however with slavery (or the use of soldiers as shoe makers) would this really be so relevant...

So time may not be so important, however the more complex the design the more time it takes to make, whether this would actually be reflected in the cost in any meaningfull way is difficult to tell...

There may be external factors determining price, such as Laws, Concessions or Conventions....

Its perhaps easier to go by constructional types: simple Sandal, Solea, Carbatina, Caligae, Calcei etc, the further up the scale you go the less difference you might expect at least in production time, but this depends entirely on the detail and complexity of the overall design...