Ancient Roman charioteers used to earn far more than even the best-paid footballers and international sports stars of today, according to academic research.
While golfer Tiger Woods was heralded last year as the first athlete to earn over $1 billion— the figure would apparently have been small beer for the fearless entertainers of the Circus Maximus.
One charioteer, named Gaius Appuleius Diocles, amassed a fortune 35,863,120 sesterces in prize money the equivalent of $15 billion, claims Peter Struck, a professor of classical studies.
The 2nd century “champion of all charioteers” made his fortune even without the sponsorship and marketing fees that bolster the pay of his modern counterparts in the sporting world.
In fact, the extent of his riches is recorded on a monumental inscription erected in Rome in 146AD by his fellow charioteers and fans.
Struck, from the University of Chicago, calculated that Diocles’s wealth would have been enough to fund the entire Roman Army for more than two months at the height of its imperial reach.
“By today’s standards that last figure, assuming the apt comparison is what it takes to pay the wages of the American armed forces for the same period, would cash out to about $15 billion,” the Telegraph quoted Struck as saying.
“Even without his dalliances, it is doubtful Tiger could have matched it. Tiger was never all that well paid when compared with the charioteers of ancient Rome,” he added.
Writing in the history magazine Lapham's Quarterly, Prof Struck, undergraduate chair of classical studies, said: “The very best paid of these in fact, the best paid athlete of all time was a Lusitanian Spaniard named Gaius Appuleius Diocles.”
“Twenty-four years of winnings brought Diocles likely an illiterate man whose signature move was the strong final dash the staggering sum of 35,863,120 sesterces in prize money.
“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,” he added.
