calcei mulleus aka red shoes
Red shoes, their meaning now widely understood, trace back further than we often acknowledge, deeper than Andersen’s cautionary tale or Dorothy’s ruby slippers. Symbols, like people, are shaped by time, their forms changing across generations, but their core persists. Time, like the red of the shoes, is a thread that weaves through the ages, from the courts of kings to the dust of ancient cities.
Fast forward, and we find the echo of this symbolism in Rome, where emperors donned red shoes to stand apart. The color did not simply announce their rule; it carried the weight of life and death, the blood of conquest, the legitimacy of an empire stretching its reach across continents. Here, red shoes were the feet of gods, walking among mortals. The shoes of emperors became the shoes of popes, still red, still alive with meaning. Yet, now, the blood was not just of battles, but of martyrs, those who walked to their deaths in faith. The church embraced this color not for vanity, but for its connection to sacrifice, to the crucifixion itself.
We start with what we know. Red shoes in ancient Rome, worn by emperors, signified divine power, conquest, and rule. That’s documented. The emperor’s red boots, known as calcei mulleus, were made from red leather and dyed using costly pigments. These shoes, reserved only for the highest officials, broadcast status without needing words. But, like all Roman customs, it didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Rome absorbed from the cultures it conquered—Greece, Egypt, Persia. We can’t know exactly who first brought the red shoe into play, but there’s something older lurking beneath Rome’s well-documented tradition.
We dig deeper and find fragments in Mesopotamian cultures. The Sumerians, those masters of early civilization, left us not just cuneiform tablets, but a sense of colour, of status, and of power. Red, in the ancient world, was the color of life—of blood, of clay, of the earth itself. It was the color of vitality, but also of sacrifice. We know little of their shoes, the Sumerians, but we know they marked their elite with crimson dyes, precious and rare. In the Akkadian world, red became a symbol of authority. The rulers, draped in their finery, were vessels of divine right. If shoes existed in their ceremonial dress, red would have marked them as chosen. Red itself—rich with meaning in the Akkadian and Sumerian worlds—symbolized life, blood, and divinity. But were their kings and queens wearing red on their feet? That’s the question. No shoes survive from that time. Archaeologists have found pottery, jewelry, even clothing remnants, but no shoes. Maybe it’s because leather decomposes, maybe because footwear didn’t carry the same ceremonial significance in those early societies. Or maybe, simply, no one has found them yet.
This opens a space of debate among historians and archaeologists. Theories float around that the Sumerians and Akkadians, being among the first civilizations, might have passed along more than just their gods and architecture to later empires like Rome. But with so little material evidence, we’re left with educated guesses, drawing lines between culture, symbolism, and trade routes that spanned continents. Some argue that red’s association with royalty could easily have trickled westward through early trade between the Akkadians, Egyptians, and the Minoans—an idea, a color, traveling across seas and empires. But others counter that without direct evidence—physical shoes, carvings, or texts—it’s all conjecture.
What’s unknown is vast, and what complicates the story further is the gap between these early civilizations. The time between the Akkadians and Rome spans thousands of years, with minimal textual continuity. Who else wore red shoes in that era? Perhaps the Egyptians, with their intricate burial practices, did. But red in Egyptian culture had different connotations—chaos, destruction, but also protection. Their gods wore crowns with red inlays, but footwear? Scarce evidence again.
Some scholars speculate that Asian cultures might hold the missing link. China, for example, with its deep symbolism surrounding red, may have had similar traditions. Red has long represented prosperity and fortune in Chinese culture, and it’s possible that red footwear or adornments worn by nobility in Asia paralleled or even influenced the traditions we later see in Rome. The ancient Silk Road could have been the pathway for such exchanges, allowing ideas as well as goods to travel. But again, the evidence is fragmented.
And then there are the debates about red shoes in European court traditions, such as those of Louis XIV’s court in France. The debate here shifts to cultural transmission: did the royal red shoes of France, and later Britain, stem from Rome’s imperial customs? Or was it purely a fashion statement, a bold color choice to flaunt wealth? Some argue that the French adoption of red was simply a case of flaunting expense, given that red dyes were among the most costly to produce. Others insist that there’s a direct line from Rome’s emperors, through the Church, to the courts of Europe. Louis XIV’s red heels, after all, weren’t just fashion—they signified closeness to the king’s favor, a reminder that in court, your status could vanish with a single misstep.
What’s truly unknown, and perhaps will always remain so, is whether this color symbolism was a universal human understanding of red, or whether it evolved independently in different places. Did red shoes, like many other symbols, emerge simultaneously across the world due to red’s visceral connection to life and death? Or did it pass from one ancient culture to the next, carried across empires, eventually landing on the feet of popes and kings?
The connection between red and blood, particularly blood spilled in battle, is primal. It’s visceral, immediate. When we see red, our brains jump to danger, life, death, the essence of what sustains us, or what drains us. So, when we talk about red shoes, there’s an unshakable link to this imagery—blood underfoot, blood trodden upon. This idea, though symbolic, feels rooted in the gritty, brutal reality of ancient life.
Start with battlefields. In ancient times, battles weren’t fought at a distance. They were fought face to face, sword to flesh, arrow to bone. Blood soaked into the earth, mixing with the dust and mud where soldiers stood. For a ruler—whether a Sumerian king, a Roman emperor, or a European monarch—to wear red shoes could easily evoke the image of standing upon the blood of their enemies. It’s a visual metaphor for power. The ruler does not simply watch from afar; they tread on the bodies, on the lives, of those who would oppose them. There’s no escaping the message: I walk where others bleed.
This idea becomes sharper when you consider how ancient civilizations viewed warfare. For the Romans, victory wasn’t just a political goal—it was proof of divine favor. Mars, the god of war, demanded blood. His blessings weren’t abstract; they were real, measured in the bodies left on the battlefield. For an emperor to wear red, particularly on his feet, would signal that he stood with Mars, that his steps were those of a god, crushing beneath him the remnants of those who defied Rome. Blood, war, conquest—it all fused into one potent symbol. The shoes were not just adornment; they were a declaration of domination, an extension of the battlefield into the court.
And look at the Shriner’s fez, an example of how red continues to symbolize sacrifice and spilled blood, even today. The story goes that the red fez symbolizes the bloodshed of martyrs during the Ottoman Empire’s reign in Fez, Morocco. The red is not a casual color choice. It directly ties to the blood of those who resisted and died. This modern echo carries the same weight of ancient red symbolism—it’s a color worn to remember those who bled, often violently, in defense of something greater than themselves. Could the Shriner’s cap have inherited this from earlier traditions of red garments or shoes symbolizing blood in a more martial sense? Likely.
This theory of red shoes—rooted in blood—explains not only the Roman use of the color but also its spread to other ruling classes. The French aristocracy’s adoption of red heels may not just be a fashion quirk but an unspoken inheritance of the Roman tradition, a way of symbolically placing themselves in the lineage of warlike rulers who conquered, bled, and ruled. Even without explicit references to battle, the color red carried that historical weight—luxury tinged with bloodshed.
But why red shoes, specifically? Why place the symbol of blood beneath one’s feet? Because that’s where the conquered lie, beneath the ruler. Feet are the point of contact between the ruler and the earth, between the divine and the mortal. The color beneath your feet is the color of your foundation—your right to rule. For centuries, the idea of kings ruling by divine right or martial conquest was visually represented by their proximity to blood—both in lineage and on the battlefield. To wear red shoes was to declare, without words, that you had walked where others bled, and that blood affirmed your power.
Yet there’s more to the story, isn’t there? Because the idea of red as blood carries forward into religion, into sacrifice. Popes wear red shoes not to signify conquest, but the blood of Christ, the ultimate sacrifice. The shoes carry the same visual weight as they do for emperors, but here the message is flipped. Rather than domination, the red of papal shoes stands for humility, for the idea that this power—this divine right—comes from sacrifice, from suffering, from death.
But why is this unknown? Why don’t we have more direct evidence that links red shoes to the blood of battles? The answer might lie in the nature of symbolic power. Rulers, kings, emperors—they didn’t need to spell out why they wore red. The message was understood, implicit. In an age where power was seen, felt, and understood through symbols and rituals, it’s likely that no one bothered to record why red was chosen—it was too obvious to them to warrant explanation. For us, that leaves a frustrating gap. We speculate, but there are few written records detailing why certain colors held the power they did. Those who wore red didn’t need to explain it. Those who served them didn’t need to ask.
This is why what we don’t know is so telling. The absence of explanation doesn’t mean a lack of meaning. It means the meaning was so embedded in the culture that it went unquestioned. And maybe that’s why we’re left to wonder, why we still dig, metaphorically and literally, into the past. What survives is the symbol, passed down through generations, adapted by culture after culture. Red shoes, red hats, red robes—different objects, same idea. Blood and power, sacrifice and rule, always connected, always there, beneath our feet.
The people who might know are gone, their records buried, their stories untold. The high priests of Sumer, the emperors of Akkad, the artisans who shaped the shoes of emperors—they knew what red meant in ways we can only guess at. What survives are the echoes, the traditions that changed hands over millennia. The rest is lost in the gaps, the sands of time, and the scholars still piecing together fragments from ruins and tombs.
Then we reach Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, where the red shoes shift meaning again. No longer merely a symbol of authority or divine right, they become an object of obsession. The girl in Andersen’s story is undone by her desire for the shoes, her vanity driving her to ruin. It’s a reminder that what we crave can control us, that symbols, though powerful, can become traps. Red, here, is not just life or sacrifice; it is seduction, a descent into the uncontrollable. It is the same red that pulses in the veins of revolution, the same red that will later sweep across cinema screens in the ruby slippers of The Wizard of Oz.
When Dorothy clicks her heels together, those red shoes no longer symbolize obsession or privilege. They are tools of empowerment. Here, the shoes represent the journey home, a magical return, a reclamation of self. Red, which once marked kings and martyrs, is now a tool for a simple farm girl, giving her the power to travel between worlds.
And so, time turns again. The red shoe is not static; it moves as we move. From the courts of Sumer to the streets of modern cities, where red shoes are worn in protest. Red shoes became symbols of loss, of missing women, as in Elina Chauvet’s Zapatos Rojos installation, where shoes painted in blood-red are placed in public spaces, marking the absence of those taken by violence. In the modern world, the red shoe is a shout, a scream for justice, for visibility, for life that has been unjustly taken.
From the dust of ancient civilizations to the gleam of a Hollywood screen, the red shoe has carried meaning, shifting with the times, but always deeply human. Time itself—time that the Sumerians understood, that the Akkadians marked with their gods—wraps around the symbol of the shoe. The red shoe is both a beginning and an end, a step forward and a step back into history, tied not by lists or headings, but by the stories we pass on, orally, from generation to generation.
Time, red shoes, and the people who wear them—they are all connected. Across the centuries, from the divine to the ordinary, from power to protest, the red shoe walks through history, never stopping, never losing its meaning.
