Best Paid Athlete ever .
Andre Willers
13 Feb 2014
Synopsis :
After nearly 2 000 years Gaius Appuleius Diocles is
still remembered .
Discussion :
1.He won 34% of his races .
2.He lasted till age 42 and retired with his boots on in a notoriously
lethal professional sport .
3.He made the present equivalent of US $15 Billion .
A Super-Sportsman by any measure .
See Appendix A
and Appendix B .
4. The gene-pool is still there .
Ronaldo , Eusebio , Figo , etc .
Extremely fast reflexes , 0.5 percentile top hand-eye
coordination , cool tactical brain .
An interesting aside:
There is strong suspicion that this was inculcated by
paleo-hispanic language .
If this is correct , there should be a disproportionate number
of very good soccer players from south-western Portugal .
Phoenician ,to be exact . Thus , we would expect a higher
than normal number of talented soccer players from old Phoenician territories .
Look to the southern parts of Ireland and England , especially to the harbours
of the old flint mines .
Anybody here who can kick a ball and speaks paleo-hispanic ?
Regards
Andre
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Appendix A
Gaius Appuleius
Diocles
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Gaius Appuleius Diocles was an illiterate ancient
Hispano-Roman, a Lusitanian of
the 2nd century AD, notable for racing chariots.
At age 18, he began driving for the White team. After six years, at the age of
24, he switched to the Green team. After three years there, at age 27, he
finally began driving for the Red team until his retirement at
age 42. Diocles’ career was unusually long—many a charioteer died quite young.
He most commonly raced four-horse chariots,
and most of his races he came from behind to win. Diocles is also notable for
owning an extremely rare ducenarius, or a horse that had won at
least 200 races. Records show that he won 1,462 out of the 4,257 four-horse
races he competed in. His winnings reportedly totaled 35 863 120 sesterces,
an amount which could provide a year's supply of grain to the entire city of
Rome, or pay the Roman army at its height for a fifth of a year. Classics professor
Peter Struck describes him as "the best paid athlete of all time".
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Appendix B
Wealth of today's sports stars is 'no match
for the fortunes of Rome's chariot racers'
Roman charioteers earned far more than even
the best-paid footballers and international sports stars of today, according to
academic research.
Referendum: does Tiger Woods deserve a Ryder
Cup wild card?
Golfer Tiger Woods was heralded last year as
the first athlete to earn over $1 billion Photo: AP
Murray Wardop By Murray Wardrop11:30AM BST 13
Aug 2010
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 (£9.6 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.
The extent of his riches is recorded on a
monumental inscription erected in Rome in 146AD by his fellow charioteers and fans.
Prof 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.
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“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,” said
Prof Struck.
“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.”
The higher level of pay did not come without
its perils for Diocles and his contemporaries. With little more than a leather
helmet, shin guards and simple chest armour for protection, racers endured
seven gruelling laps of competition, which often ended in the deaths of rivals
unfortunate enough to be upended.
Competitors were affiliated to teams – not
dissimilar to those of today’s Formula 1 – which invested in training and
development of horses and equipment. Like Diocles, who retired aged 42, they
were usually drawn from the lower orders of society.
Writing in the history magazine Lapham's
Quarterly, Prof Struck, undergraduate chair of classical studies, says: “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.
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