Archaeologists excavating a Roman-era fort in northern England have unearthed several enormous ancient leather soles that measure more than 11.8 inches (30 centimeters) long.
The finds add to the archaeologists’ growing collection of supersized ancient footwear found at the ancient fort, known as Magna. The researchers now have eight of these extra-extra-large shoes — a quarter of the total found at the site.
The shoes were discovered at Magna — also known as Carvoran — a fort along Hadrian’s Wall, which was built around A.D. 122 to demarcate the northern extent of the Roman Empire. Magna is situated about 7 miles (11 kilometers) west of Vindolanda, the large Roman auxiliary fort that’s well known for the remarkable preservation of writing tablets, military medals and leather shoes.
The article says they are basketball player sized.
Maybe they were sending really big soldiers to the front. This is near the peak of the Roman empire, which spanned multiple continents and had over 100 million people.
Romans were (justifiably) terrified of Picts and Caledonians who were tall, strong, and very barbaric in appearance. It makes sense that they’d send their beefcakes up there to sort of even out the odds.
‘Barbaric’. A Roman word, possibly from the Romans saying about foreigners, along the lines of, “they were all like, “ba ba ba ba ba”, I couldn’t understand a thing they were saying”. “They’re ba ba barians! What do you expect”.
So being a ‘Barbarian’ is not about vicious behaviour, rather simply being a foreigner to Romans casts a person as being called that. It’s essentially rascism.
Source: Terry Jones’ Barbarians
I even found link to the whole book! https://archive.org/details/terryjonesbarbar00jone
And yes, they were terrified of them, in large part because Rome was well and truly sacked! (Can’t remember who by now). An act that ironically spurred the creation of the famous Roman empire.