
The highest paid athlete of all time was a Roman Charioteer - hckr_nj
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/18/the-highest-paid-athlete-of-all-time-was-a-roman-charioteer-if-he-had-lived-today-he-would-have-been-worth-15-billion/
======
ThrustVectoring
When comparing across time periods as broad as this, pretty much the only
thing that matters is how you compare purchasing power and adjust for
inflation. If you compare something that hasn't gotten appreciably cheaper
over time - say, gold, or skilled labor - you wind up with an extremely large
number. Compare something that _has_ \- like grain or clothing - and you wind
up with a much more reasonable number. Going based off agriculture, back-of-
the-envelope math gives about 400k people in Rome and $1000/yr expenses on
staple foods for about $400m, which is significantly less than the probably-
gold-based conversion scheme the article's source uses.

And if you want to be really persnickety, no amount of money in Rome would buy
antibiotics, televisions, etc, etc.

~~~
c3534l
Comparisons beyond 100 years or so are largely meaningless. You're right about
purchasing power, and that leads to your last point which is that what could
actually be bought was so fundamentally different that attempting to do so is
almost always going to mislead the public and be irresponsible. But it's one
of those things that reporters and journalists can't help themselves from
doing.

~~~
greggman3
Is 100yrs that hard? I recently watched "The Little Giant" (1933) where the
main character claims to have over a million dollars and is kind of retiring.
I found it fun to look up what that million dollars would be worth today.
According to one site it is $18 million. He went to a hotel in Santa Barbara
where he was paying $45 a night for a giant suite. That comes out to over $800
a night which sounds like it might be in the correct ballpark. He gave is
girlfriend who he was breaking up with a check for $25k which came out to
about $500k in todays terms it seems. He rented a 20 bedroom 12 bathroom
mansion for $1450 a month which is apparently $25k today. Sounds reasonable
for a 20 bedroom mansion?

Those all seem like reasonable numbers.

PS: not recommending the movie. It was cute but not great.

~~~
winter_blue
$1 mil in 1993 is not worth $18 mil today (ie. in 2020).

Inflation has averaged 2% during this time, so over 27 years: (1.02)^27 =
1.7069

$1 mil from 1993 would be worth no more than ~$1.71 today.

~~~
unnouinceput
He said 1933, not 1993

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papeda
Wikipedia [1] has a more sober figure than the $15 billion claimed from the
featured article, which is far below the wealth of modern athletes:

> In equivalent basic good purchasing power, Diocles' wealth would be between
> approximately $60 million and $160 million.

This appears to be supported by the table at the bottom of this page [2],
which claims that a seaside villa in Naples cost about 3mil
sesterces/sestertii. That makes the featured article's claim that 35mil
sestertii is $15 billion questionable. Adjusting using seaside villa prices,
35mil sestertii (Diocles' wealth) is more like $7mil.

The $15bil figure appears to come from the "enough to pay the whole army for
1/5 of a year" stat multiplied by the modern-day USA figure [3] (by the way,
[3] appears to be the source for much of the featured article).

As far as the "enough to pay the whole army for a few months" stat goes, the
most common figure I can find for "annual pay for a legionary" during Diocles'
life is 1200 sestertii, or 240 for 1/5 of a year [4]. 36mil/240 is 150,000,
which does sound like a plausible (even high) number for the size of the Roman
army. On the other hand, [2] claims that 1200 sestertii buys about 100 lbs of
pork, so that means a soldier could expect to get paid about 1 Roman pig per
year?

Cross-era price comparisons are hard!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles)

[2]
[http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~lac61/ASSIGNMENTS/SectionOne/R...](http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~lac61/ASSIGNMENTS/SectionOne/RomanMoney.html)

[3] [https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/greatest-all-
tim...](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/greatest-all-time)

[4]
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/40310480](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40310480)

~~~
GuiA
At 1200 sest. per year, a 3M sest. villa would be 2500 years of labor.

A $7M villa, on the other hand, would be only ~230 years of labor for a US
solider paid $30k a year.

A pound of pork at Safeway today is ~3/lb. 100 pounds would be $300, which
would be quite a meager yearly pay.

My main takeaway is that pork has likely gotten much cheaper, but not seaside
villas.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> A $7M villa, on the other hand, would be only ~230 years of labor for a US
> solider paid $30k a year.

Your parent comment says that, adjusted to modern villa prices, Diocles'
entire wealth -- 35 million sestercii, enough to buy 12 standard seaside
villas -- would amount to $7M. This would put the price of one villa at only
$600,000, or 20 years' labor at $30k / year.

~~~
GuiA
Oh! Indeed I misread. Things do align better that way.

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mci
A Polish numismatist, Zbigniew Żabiński, came up with _trofa_ (from Greek
_trophe_ 'alimentation'), a universal measure of the value of money. One trofa
is defined as an average person's daily ration of food typical for the given
place and time. Altogether, it has 3000 kcal: 1800 kcal in 450 g of
carbohydrates, 900 kcal in 100 g of fat, and 300 kcal in 75 g of protein.

For instance, in late 1970s' Poland, one trofa consisted of 400 g of rye
bread, 100 g of wheat flour, 250 g of potatoes, 100 g of beef, 100 g of sugar,
80 g of butter, and 1/2 litre of milk. Assuming that its content has not
changed, you take the cost of the food (8.70 PLN in 2016), add 20% for
condiments and preparation, and get 10.50 PLN as the 2016 price of a trofa in
Poland.[0]

In Octavian's times, one denarius could buy you 2 trofas (with content
appropriate for ancient Mediterranean lands),[0] Judas's 30 pieces of silver
were worth 60 trofas,[1] etc.

Unfortunately, Żabiński published in Polish behind the Iron Curtain so the
trofa is virtually unknown outside Poland. The Big Mac index is its pale
reflection.

More information in Polish:

[0] A table of trofa's price from Octavian's Rome to contemporary Poland:
[http://blognumizmatyczny.pl/2016/03/14/trofa-miernik-
wartosc...](http://blognumizmatyczny.pl/2016/03/14/trofa-miernik-wartosci-
pieniadza/)

[1] Thirty pieces of silver:
[http://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media//files/Collectanea_Theologica/C...](http://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media//files/Collectanea_Theologica/Collectanea_Theologica-r1973-t43-n2/Collectanea_Theologica-r1973-t43-n2-s65-75/Collectanea_Theologica-r1973-t43-n2-s65-75.pdf)

[2] The purchasing power in medieval Balkans:
[https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/bitstream/10593/8080/1/11_Zb...](https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/bitstream/10593/8080/1/11_Zbigniew_Zabinski_Sila_nabywcza_pieniadza_na_Balkanach_227-232.pdf)

[3] Google search:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Żabiński+trofa](https://www.google.com/search?q=Żabiński+trofa)

~~~
Mirioron
While it's an interesting idea, this only captures relative wealth. Places
that have higher quality food as standard would be seen as less rich. It's
much cheaper to get calories from staples such as rice and potatoes, but a lot
more difficult to get it from protein. It's possible to survive on a diet of
mostly carbs and little protein, but that can also make you more susceptible
to malnutrition, especially if famines are abound.

Also, 3000 kcal per day means that everyone gets fat. The amount of intense
physical activity you have to do for an average person to use up that many
calories is on the level of modern athletes.

~~~
notechback
Just to mention that staples like grain have indeed much protein, so your
sentence actually doesn't make much sense.

The conception of food consisting of vegetable + meat/fish + staple (rice,
bread, potato, ..) is an utterly modern one.

All across history in most settled cultures will have lived principally of
local plants of some kind, with meat being a rate treat. The exception being
fishing villages but even there vegetables/grains will always have been a
principal source of calories and nutrients.

~~~
Mirioron
Yes, and people nowadays are taller, smarter, and live longer. A large part of
the Flynn effect is usually attributed to nutrition. Humans can survive with
poor nutrition (not getting the right amount of nutrients they need) for a
very long time, but it usually has consequences, especially when it happens
during childhood.

Another thing to keep in mind is that humans didn't evolve to be farmers. We
evolved to be hunter-gatherers. Just because for a slice of our existence
people ate one way doesn't mean that that's the diet most suited for us.

By the way, there's a difference between animal proteins and protein in grain.
They aren't quite the same composition of amino-acids.

------
RickJWagner
I read a while back where Joe DiMaggio was being interviewed in his later
years. The writer mentioned the astronomical sums recent players got, while
greats of the past played for much less.

"Some of today's players make millions a year. What do you think you'd be
worth?"

"Oh, I figure I'd be worth close to a million. Maybe 8 or 9 hundred thousand."

"But you're Joe DiMaggio! One of the all time greats!"

"Yes, but I'm in my 70s...."

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zw123456
A fun thought experiment is what if you could go back in time to year nnnn,
pick a time, and you could only take with you 1 lb of material, or X kg, name
some reasonable amount you can carry by hand. What would you take with you ?
Fun game. But for a time greater than say 120 years, I would argue 1lb of
aluminum would make you a kajillionaire since it was not until around 1900 or
so that it was possible to refine it, before then it was one of the rarest
materials. You could also name things like a computer, a machine gun etc. This
little thought game sort of highlights the issue discussed in this thread.
Imagine how much you would have made if you had been able to race that chariot
guy if you had say a modern 4x4 (assuming you could find gas) although that
violates the 1lb rule:)

~~~
m463
a gun, a solar panel, and a tablet with wikipedia.

~~~
I-M-S
perhaps a taser would be even more useful in this scenario since you'd be able
to recharge it and not worry about ammo

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themodelplumber
"Diocles is also notable for owning an extremely rare ducenarius, a horse that
had won at least 200 races" \--Wikipedia

That seems pretty impressive, and it made me wonder how race horses compare
(or are treated differently?) today.

~~~
gargarplex
It's also possible he had access to rare supplements that enhanced
performance; a modern equivalent would be a banned PED or Performance
Enhancing Drug.

~~~
ludamad
I guess I'm morbidly curious how much better performance a doped horse has?

~~~
teruakohatu
I would think much like doping does today, marginal but when all the
competitors / animals are all at the top of their game, marginal gains can be
the difference between winning and losing.

~~~
ludamad
That makes sense, thanks

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akamoonknight
One of the interesting things that stands out to me is that the age range of
athleticism is still the same as today. I guess it's not that surprising that
his career spanned from age 18 to 42, but the fact that lines up so closely
with modern professional sport competitiveness is intriguing at least for some
reason. Sample size of one of course, but I guess maybe that even for all the
advancements we've made in terms of knowing about the human body, physical
limits haven't changed to a drastic degree or something.

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v01dlight
"According to Dr. Struck, chariot racer from Ancient Rome named Gaius
Appuleius Diocles, amassed a fortune of 35,863,120 sesterces – the equivalent
of $15 billion." ... “His total take home amounted to five times the earnings
of the highest paid provincial governors over a similar period – enough to
provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year, or to pay all the
ordinary soldiers of the Roman Army at the height of its imperial reach for a
fifth of a year”

~~~
qzw
So the highest paid provincial governors were typically getting paid $3B over
18 years? Sounds kind of high and makes me rather dubious of how the $15B
figure is calculated.

~~~
maxander
It's also interesting that the Roman Army apparently ate five times as much as
the entire city of Rome. Resource allocation was clearly very different back
then (and apparently in our favor.)

~~~
rsynnott
Food wouldn’t have been the military’s main expense. In a pre-industrial
society weapons and equipment were extremely expensive.

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dmix
This is basically a rewrite of the original article on Laphams Quarterly and a
better source (images aren’t miscaptioned and there’s an audio version)
[https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/greatest-all-
tim...](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/greatest-all-time)

------
7leafer
Seems like the highest paid athlete of these days is this:
[https://archive.org/details/37AsterixAndTheChariotRace/page/...](https://archive.org/details/37AsterixAndTheChariotRace/page/n13/mode/2up)

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zeristor
Perhaps slightly askew, I’ve read Norwich’s History of Byzantium and he talks
about there being the Green and Blue factions that kept squabbling some
thousand years later.

It seemed the White and Green had collapsed in previous centuries.

I was in the Blue team at my primary school...

~~~
tokai
You blues are so full of yourself, we greens are going strong thank you very
much.

------
peter303
I compute 35M sesterces = US$140M. A solidus of gold weighs 8 grams and was
worth 100 sesterces. A gram of gold $52 today. A sesterces would be about $4.

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boringg
Ok so whats the realistic number here? I was hoping to using this in the
virtual trivia game but it has lost its lustre in reading the comment thread.

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londons_explore
Romans didn't have television to broadcast these races to the whole nation.

The only way to become rich was through a share of ticket sales.

Ticket sales are limited by the size of the stadium and frequency of races.

With ~thousands of races in a career and ~thousands of people in a stadium,
something doesn't add up...

If tickets were expensive enough to amass such a fortune (remembering revenue
would also need to pay for other athletes and the venue), I would imagine not
that many people could afford to attend...

~~~
Gibbon1
Colosseum sat about 50,000 people. 2000 races would be 100,000,000 customers
served. Assuming it's alway full. Not a historian but consistently have heard
that the games were heavily subsidized by the wealthy. Kinda like the big boss
handing out season tickets to favored staff and business associates.

I think it's sometimes hard to imagine how important this stuff was. The
Byzantine had a revolt that involved Chariot Race factions. Seriously.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots)

~~~
doikor
These races weren't hold at the Colosseum but at an oval track. The biggest
one called Circus Maximus seated 150,000.

But in general these were free to attend. Some rich guy would pay for it to
become more famous/get political power.

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nkingsy
This seems to be using scale and price changes to mislead. The modern
equivalent would be Lebron James funding a school system, which seems like a
similar commitment. We can imagine Lebron eg paying the police force of
Cleveland for a quarter of a year. Perhaps more comparable numbers to Rome.

Nothing about the numbers for the globe or the us compare to ancient Roman
numbers.

