LATIN DICTIONARYLexicon Latīnum
Academy · Antiquities

Carbatina

καρβατίνη

Carbatina (καρβατίνη) probably in strictness means made of dried skin, connected with κάρφω; but is generally applied to shoes worn by rustics, with sole and upper leather all in one--ἀγροικικὸν ὑπόδημα μονόδερμον (or μονόπελμον)--Hesych., cf. Phot. s.v. Lucian, Alex. p. 246. It was, in fact, a piece of untanned ox-hide placed under the foot and tied up by several thongs, so as to cover the whole foot and part of the leg. The crepidae carbatinae, coarse ox-hide shoes, of Catull. 98, 4, are of the same nature. Thus there was no manufacture in it at all; and so we find it resorted to in an emergency by the Ten Thousand (Xen. An. 4.5, 14). The same term was applied to the covering put on the feet of camels when they got sore from the march (Aristot. Hist. An. 2.1, 27 = 499 a, 30); and also to a skin-covered structure used by besiegers (Philo in Math. Vet. 101).

From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.