while Jacoby points out that among the Greeks, the Romans, and especially the Etruscans, it was usual to represent chaste and virgin goddesses with their feet covered, even though they might be otherwise nude.  Ovid, again, is never weary of dwelling on the sexual charm of the feminine foot.  He represents the chaste matron as wearing a weighted stola which always fell so as to cover her feet; it was only the courtesan, or the nymph who is taking part in an erotic festival, who appears with raised robes, revealing her feet.[17] So grave a historian as Strabo, as well as AElian, refers to the story of the courtesan Rhodope whose sandal was carried off by an eagle and dropped in the King of Egypt’s lap as he was administering justice, so that he could not rest until he had discovered to whom this delicately small sandal belonged, and finally made her his queen.  Kleinpaul, who repeats this story, has collected many European sayings and customs (including Turkish), indicating that the slipper is a very ancient symbol of a woman’s sexual parts.[18]

In Rome, Dufour remarks, “Matrons having appropriated the use of the shoe (soccus) prostitutes were not allowed to use it, and were obliged to have their feet always naked in sandals or slippers (crepida and solea), which they fastened over the instep with gilt bands.  Tibullus delights to describe his mistress’s little foot, compressed by the band that imprisoned it:  Ansaque compressos colligat arcta pedes.  Nudity of the foot in woman was a sign of prostitution, and their brilliant whiteness acted afar as a pimp to attract looks and desires.”  (Dufour, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol.  II., ch. xviii.)

This feeling seems to have survived in a more or less vague and unconscious form in mediaeval Europe.  “In the tenth century,” according to Dufour (Histoire de la Prostitution, vol.  VI., p. 11), “shoes a la poulaine, with a claw or beak, pursued for more than four centuries by the anathemas of popes and the invectives of preachers, were always regarded by mediaeval casuists as the most abominable emblems of immodesty.  At a first glance it is not easy to see why these shoes—­terminating in a lion’s claw, an eagle’s beak, the prow of a ship, or other metal appendage—­should be so scandalous.  The excommunication inflicted on this kind of foot-gear preceded the impudent invention of some libertine, who wore poulaines in the shape of the phallus, a custom adopted also by women.  This kind of poulaine was denounced as mandite de Dicu (Ducange’s Glossary, at the word Poulainia) and prohibited by royal ordinances (see letter of Charles V., 17 October, 1367, regarding the garments of the women of Montpellier).  Great lords and ladies continued, however, to wear poulaines.”  In Louis XL’s court they were still worn of a quarter of an ell in length.

Spain, ever tenacious of ancient ideas,