Laudator Temporis Acti

I've haven't read Vicki León, Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World (New York: Walker & Co., 2007), but I saw this excerpt on National Public Radio's web site:

The dream job for a female house slave was that of sandaligerula, a post that took more time to spell than to do. High-born Romans and Greeks engaged in shoe rituals with rigid standards as to where they could be worn. A man who wore a toga with sandals, for instance, would be laughed out of the Senate.

To guarantee that her mistress was properly shod at all times, the sandaligerula accompanied her mistress to dinner parties. Once there, the sandal-slave took off her owner's street shoes and replaced them with party slippers. Removing one's own footgear was so declassé that even the humblest guest brought along a sandal-slave. After the partygoers went in to dinner, the shoe-schleppers enjoyed a little downtime until the event broke up. At deluxe events, guests got their feet bathed as they reposed on dining couches; this job, however, was carried out by the host's special toe-cleaning, oil-'em-down slaves.

Taking its cue from León's book, another web site asserts that the sandaligerula "made sure her mistress was wearing the proper shoes at all times, not unlike the personal stylists of today." But I don't think the ancient evidence supports the idea that the sandaligerula was a fashion consultant.

Sandaligerula is a compound formed from sandalium = sandal, slipper, and the feminine of gerulus = bearer, carrier, and means, as you'd expect, "sandal-carrier," "slipper-bearer." Otto Gradenwitz, Laterculi vocum Latinarum: voces Latinas et a fronte et a tergo ordinandas (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1904), p. 503, lists other compounds with the suffix -gerulus: damnigerulus, famigerulus, munerigerulus, nugigerulus, plagigerulus, rumigerulus, salutigerulus, and scutigerulus.

The word sandaligerula is a hapax legomenon, a word that occurs only once in ancient literature, in Plautus' play Trinnumus, at line 252, in the midst of a catalogue of slaves who formed the entourage of a courtesan (251-254). The other slaves in the catalogue are dress-folder (vestiplica), anointer with oil or perfume (unctor), money keeper (auri custos), fan-carriers (flabelliferae), singers (cantrices), jewelry box keepers (cistellatrices), messengers (nuntii), and go-betweens (renuntii).

Although the word sandaligerula is rare and its masculine counterpart sandaligerulus is nowhere to be found, there are other references to "shoe-slaves" in ancient literature. In Plautus, diners call for their shoes at the end of a meal (cedo soleas mihi at Mostellaria 384 and Truculentus 363; cf. Horace, Satires 2.8.77 soleas poscit). From these and other passages we know that diners reclined barefoot. Ovid advises the would-be lover to act the part of a slave to his mistress (Art of Love 2.211-212):

Don't hesitate to place the footstool in front of the smooth couch, and put her shoe on or take it off her soft foot.

nec dubita tereti scamnum producere lecto,
  et tenero soleam deme vel adde pedi.

Similarly, in Plutarch's Life of Pompey 73.6-7 (tr. Bernadotte Perrin), a free man undertakes the office of a slave, even going so far as to take off Pompey's shoes for him:

Wherefore, without waiting for argument or entreaty, he took Pompey on board, and also all whom Pompey wished to have with him (these were the two Lentuli and Favonius), and set sail; and shortly after, seeing Deiotarus the king hurrying out from shore, they took him on board also. Now, when it was time for supper and the master of the ship had made such provision for them as he could, Favonius, seeing that Pompey, for lack of servants, was beginning to take off his own shoes, ran to him and took off his shoes for him, and helped him to anoint himself. And from that time on he continued to give Pompey such ministry and service as slaves give their masters, even down to the washing of his feet and the preparation of his meals.

Martial 14.65 (tr. D.R. Shackleton Bailey) is a little poem written to accompany a gift of woolen slippers:

If by chance there's no slave to hand and you want to put your slippers on, your foot will be its own slave.

defuerit si forte puer, soleasque libebit
  sumere, pro puero pes erit ipse sibi.

Shackleton Bailey explains in a footnote, "I.e. you can put your feet in the slippers without using your hands."

Martial elsewhere (12.87, tr. D.R. Shackleton Bailey) mocks a man so poor that he can only afford one slave to attend him:

Cotta complained that he had twice lost his slippers, as he brought with him a careless slave-attendant, whose single self provides and makes up his staff, he being a poor man. Sagacious, cunning fellow that he is, he thought out a way to avoid a repetition of such loss. He started going to dinner barefoot.

Bis Cotta soleas perdidisse se questus,
dum neglegentem ducit ad pedes vernam,
qui solus inopi praestat et facit turbam,
excogitavit—homo sagax et astutus—
ne facere posset tale saepius damnum:
excalceatus ire coepit ad cenam.

Vicki León claims that the job of sandaligerula was a "dream job," but in fact it was probably one of the lowest among the hierarchy of slaves. So W.A. Becker, Gallus, or Roman Scenes from the Time of Augustus, tr. Frederick Metcalfe (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1895), includes among that class of slaves known as vulgares, "under which name are to be understood those who had one low and definite occupation, either in or out of the house," the slaves who "took charge of their master's clothes and soleae" when he dined out (pp. 211, 214-215).

Certain passages in the New Testament support the idea that the servant responsible for sandals held a despised post. At Luke 3.16 (cf. Matt. 3.11, Mark 1.7, John 1.27, Acts 13.25), we read:

John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose.

John the Baptist means that Jesus is so far above him that he isn't worthy to do Him even the lowliest service.

In Diogenes Laertius 6.44 (tr. R.D. Hicks), the philosopher Diogenes the Cynic criticized a man who couldn't even put on his own shoes by himself:

To a man whose shoes were being put on by his servant, he said, "You have not attained to full felicity, unless he wipes your nose as well; and that will come, when you have lost the use of your hands."

Related post: The Work of Servants.