What do Sarah Jessica Parker and the German national soccer team have in common?

What do Sarah Jessica Parker and the German national soccer team have in common? Their love of shoes, of course.

One thing the world has learned from "Sex and the City" is that shoes are much more than mere footwear. One doesn't simply wear one's shoes. One loves them. And one lives in them. Shoes are a world that fashionable men and women inhabit: a kind of portable apartment that children, pets and annoying relatives are not allowed to visit.

People who love their shoes live their life as if it were an expensive Caribbean vacation. That is why Sarah Jessica Parker alias Carrie Bradshaw always feels like she's walking not on air, but, much more literally, money.

Extensive research into the social structure of Ancient Rome has led some Classical scholars to reinterpret the old Latin proverb Omnia mea mecum porto. For centuries, this old saying was translated as "I carry all my possession with me." It implied that our intellect is our most precious possession.

New evidence, however, suggests two different ways of reading this ancient pearl of wisdom: "All that I have, I invest in my sandals" or "I wish I could carry all my sandals with me." In view of the newly discovered Roman obsession with shoes, stoicism is currently undergoing a radical reappraisal.