January 31, 2019 • 28 mins
Today, most people probably don't remember the career of once-famous charioteer Gaius Appuleius Diocles -- however, in his day we was a cultural icon, one of the most famous athletes in Rome. Join the guys as they explore the story Diocles and trace one professor's quest to figure out exactly how much cash Diocles made in modern terms.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Ye confession. I believe that I may have the perfect
socks for today's episode. There's some socks that a friend
(00:32):
of mine got me from his travels in Japan, and
they have separations in the in the fabric for the toes.
I feel much more agile than I would be wearing
just normal socks bands. So they're like Ninja socks. Yeah,
that's that's the way to put up. Yeah, it's like
the division for the sandals. Picture every Western film you've
(00:54):
seen in the nineties or something that featured ninja. Yeah,
so I've got the I've got these. Uh, it's weird.
I took my shoes off and showed showed you and
our super producer, Casey Pegram these socks before we hit
the air. I feel somewhat more athletic in these. Well, Ben,
(01:14):
we are in a tiny shipping container type box. Did
you put your shoes back on? Yeah? Yeah, you can
tell Noll, you can tell that I put my shoes
back on. I think I think being in a small
area with your shoes off like that in a work environment,
it would be kind of rude. No, it's poor. It's
poor podcast etiquette, to be sure. Yeah, like loudly eating
or something. Gosh, Ben, are you being passive aggressive to me?
(01:37):
I'm a loud on Mike eating. No, you're not eating something.
I'm not right now. But you know, I've been known
to have a snack occasionally, but I try to do
it off my contract. You usually do it when we're
not on air. That's true. That's a good point. Although
I gotta say sometimes I find it charming when I
when a podcaster has a little snack on there. I
think it's a personal choice, personal preference. So back to
(01:57):
this this idea. I am not a professional as fleet
and you and I know each other pretty well. You
are currently not a professional athlete. I'm barely a professional anything.
We're barely professional podcasters right. Actually updated my my Instagram
bio to be a semi pro podcast geek. So that's
that's what I consider my safe semi pro. There you go.
(02:19):
We do know that the world of professional athleticism is
obviously an enormous, enormous deal. It's a huge industry. Billions
and billions of dollars are spent every year, and billions
of dollars are generated every year through various athletic endeavors
(02:40):
around the world, and for Peak Behind the Curtain is
the three of us record today's episode of Ridiculous History.
We are on the verge of two very big and
unusual things for our fair metropolis of Atlanta. The first
is a definite that's the super Bowl, and the second
is possible storm, a snowstorm. So we're looking for the
(03:04):
the snowpocalypse super Bowl traffic jam coming our way pretty soon, right,
which became a Facebook event that a lot of people
in town checked in on. Right, did you do that?
Not yet? So we started thinking about the world of
professional athletes, and we kicked around the idea of maybe
doing the history of Super Bowls, which could be a
(03:28):
cool notion for a future episode. But we also asked
ourselves a surprisingly fascinating question, who was the highest paid athlete,
not not just this year, but in history. Yeah, it's true,
And it turns out that somebody else, uh, someone with
a little bit more of a historical pedigree than we have,
a guy by the name of Dr Peter struck who's
(03:50):
professor at the University of Pennsylvania UM. In an article
he wrote for Laham's Quarterly, struck Um went into great
detail about his discovery that turns out, the highest paid
athlete of all time was not like a footballer or
or a basketball or wasn't you know some some football player.
(04:10):
Wasn't Michael Jordan's, wasn't Joe Montana. Joe Montana. That's a
football players remember him from from video games, mainly I
like he had. He was known for his effective but
just very ugly throws. But he had a big old arm, right,
He was like an armed guy. Most of them do.
They are very few. Peyton Manning, he's a he's a
(04:31):
good He's worth a lot of Jakins. And then the refrigerator.
But no, none of those guys. Turns out it was
a I'm gonna say, charioteer. Yeah, a charioteer named gas
Apollius Diocles. Well done. Well, we'll probably shift around in
that in that pronunciation times. Uh. This is a very
(04:55):
very interesting guy. He was from an area of what
is now modern day Spain in Portugal. He was most
likely illiterate, but man, his chariot game was on fire.
So there's an inscription set up in the city of
Rome that was originally created in one forty six CE
(05:17):
or a d however you prefer, uh, And it tells
us exactly how much this charioteer from the province of
Lusitania earned during his oh what was it an old
twenty four years as an athlete, as a charioteer. Yes,
and let's not sweep under the rug the fact that
that is an awful long time to survive in such
(05:40):
a intense and brutal and strenuous and dangerous for even spectators,
let alone the people right in the thick of it
profession I mean, we're talking like these chariots being drawn
by up to ten horses. He had like the reins
tied around his waist, you know, and I can imagine
a mishap, you know, tearing him him from limb. But
(06:01):
he was able to maintain this career twenty four years,
which is, oh gosh, at least four times the length
I would say of an average you know, football or
basketball player's career. Yeah, even in these our modern days,
ongoing studies show us that being an athlete can be
tremendously damaging to the body and punishing to the mind,
(06:26):
especially when you get in the world of boxing and
US football, which you know, leave the door wide open
to concussions, you know. And I just kind of pulled
that out of my ear. But it's about apparently, according
to Business Insider, the average span of an NBA basketball
player is about four point eight years, right, right, It's true.
It's uh. Now, this can be longer for some some individuals,
(06:50):
and of course it can be longer in some sports, right, uh,
some Olympic sports, you may have a longer lifespan. But
professionally speak king again, we are at our best only humans.
So this guy is doing a tremendous job. Back in
his time as as a chariot's here roll? What what
(07:14):
exactly would his would his sport have been comprised? Well,
like I said, he would have been piloting a I
guess a two wheeled chariot, right, how many wheels around
to chariot? Is it four? I feel I pictured it
as being reared back on two wheels, two wheels with
a team of horses, like said, up to ten reins
used to kind of encourage them to go faster or
(07:37):
slow up. And like I said, he actually had them
tied around his body so he could use his whole
body to kind of control the horses. And he was
racing specifically and dirty tricks and in chariot racing. I
guess I think of maybe cartoon examples of chariot racing
where all of a sudden, like one of the wheels
would have like a blade on it or something like that,
and they'd kind of go up close to the other
(07:58):
participants and to that blade to kind of grind up
at their wheel. And I think people would stop at
nothing to uh to you know, defeat the competition, no
matter what it took, right. Yeah, And chariot racing was
a huge, huge deal. It was bigger than NASCAR is now.
The classes would be divided primarily by how many horses
(08:19):
were pulling the chariot. A two horse team, a four
horse team, a six horse team. The earliest account of
a chariot race occurs in Homer's description of the funeral
of Patrick Less. These these races were one of the
big ticket items of the ancient Olympic Games. They would
happen during religious festivals. Essentially, civilizations at the time view
(08:43):
chariot races as a really cool thing to add to
almost any public event, you know what I mean. It's
like a a a citywide festival or contest. And normally
these chariot races would proceed thusly, there would be four
to six different chariots they would compete in a single race,
(09:04):
and the race would usually be around seven laps around
what was called the circus, the circus maximus. These chariots,
we should emphasize, were very light affairs, because you know,
you wanted to get the maximum power in the minimum
amount of weight. This also means that they were super fragile.
(09:24):
So we're a collision to occur. You were up the
wrong creek without a paddle. Yeah. And to that end,
most of the folks that piloted these chariots um only
lived till about twenty four years old, whereas Diocles retired
which is very unusual at the ripe old age of
forty two, at which point he was worth a whole
lot of money. Doctor Struck found that diocles Is total
(09:51):
earnings would have equated to roughly fifteen billion dollars in
modern terms. Fifteen billion with the B. You can also
see another great write up of this in History Collection.
There's an article by Alexander Mettings that we would recommend this.
(10:12):
This is strange because these were all net earnings to
the charioteer didn't have to pay promoters didn't have to
pay you know, a marketing team or support is I
don't know, entourage or shell out cash for sponsorship. He
probably had it pretty good. You know, what would he
(10:33):
have what would he have done personally with that? And
how did professor Struck figure out this number? On that
inscription ban that you mentioned, It has his his earnings
in the currency of the time, which is sastercy, and
that would have been thirty five million, eight hundred and
sixty three thousand, one hundred and twenty And Struck figured
(10:55):
out that for the time that would have been enough
to buy grain to fee the entirety of Rome for
one year um and also was about five times higher
a salary than any of the highest paid officials in
the land and also could have paid for every single
Roman soldier for a fifth of a year. And that
(11:16):
was when Rome was at its peak in terms of
its military MTE. Yeah, running from Scotland all the way
in the far north, Egypt in the south, Spain in
the western, the Euphrates in the east. He clearly busted
his hump for this money. And to compare him to
(11:37):
let's say the highest paid governmental authorities in two months,
he would earn what Rome's highest paid provincial governor could
expect to earn in one year, and there was a
great amount of risk with this. We mentioned the horses
reins being tied physically to the athlete. When those fragile
(11:59):
vehicles collided with something, it often resulted in the death
or serious injury of a charioteer because the horses kept going.
That's right, there's a lot of a lot of trampling
um and ben we were trying to get to the
conversion method. We always plug numbers into our handy dandy
inflation calculator here on ridiculous history. But those um figures
that I mentioned earlier were on are on the Stone inscription,
(12:22):
listening the idea of being able to bankroll the Roman
army for a fifth of a year. So Struck was
able to extrapolate a modern estimate UM based on what
it would cost to pay for our military UM. So
it's obviously not a perfect one to one, but would
have been a pretty good educated guess. Absolutely, And oh
(12:43):
you know what we should do. We should read the
actual inscription. So here it goes. In the English translation,
it begins with gayas Appolus Diocles charioteer of the Red Stable,
Hallusitanian Spaniard by birth age forty two years, seven months,
twenty three days, and the monument says he raced four
(13:03):
horse chariots for twenty four years, so we get some
valuable numbers there. We also know that given his fame,
there was a snowball effect. He started turning down races,
you know what I mean. It had to be worth
his time, so he would race in the most high end,
high profile races that had the most potential to win
(13:29):
a large amount of money. He started in this, according
to the inscription, in four thousand, two hundred fifty seven
races he won one thousand, four hundred sixty three times,
and the inscription says that translates to him winning ninety
two major prizes. Of these, thirty two were of thirty
thousand sisters, three of them with six worse teams, two
(13:52):
in races with six worse chariots, one with a seven
horse chariot. Uh he tied with because they had these
different factions. Right, he was a red stable, right, and
he tied a Blue stable ten times, a Green stable
ninety one. And the the this inscription, the thing that's
invaluable about it is that it maps out his stats
(14:16):
the same way that a baseball card, back when those
were a big deal. A baseball card would map out
the stats of your favorite, uh, your favorite baseball player. Man,
would these have been like alongside gladiator events or would
those have been like two different things, because I feel
like this would have almost been like a like the
gladiator thing might have been the main event. This might
have been like a side event, or were they completely separate.
(14:38):
I'm just wondering, you know, there's that's a good question. Well,
there's probably a situation again wherein there were large public
events that involved this stuff, and they were definitely chariots
in gladiatorial combat. Its right, Sometimes there could have been
probably gladiator matches on chariot where they're like coming at
each other, swinging weapons as they pass. Right. So let's
(15:00):
let's go back for a second to the earlier comparison
in the world of animation and cartoons, right, how exaggerated
or how accurate was this depiction of chariot racing. It
turns out that it's not completely off base. It's not
completely cartoonish or made up, because these knives on the
(15:24):
wheels were a real thing, and the charioteers would attempt
to ram their arrivals into the media at the center
of the track called the spin at, and then they
would come crashing into these hairpin turns. They also I
thought you would find just the pure spectacle of this fascinating.
(15:45):
During races, it was very common for the three chariots
representing each faction to team up with one another to
bring down a very unpopular rival or a very strong
one like diac les, and bring down in this sense
means literally grind them into the dust. This violence is
(16:06):
part of why chariot races were so incredibly popular. Like,
think about how many people love the Super Bowl. I'm
sure there's an income brackett to get a ticket because
those things are thousands of dollars, But millions and millions
of people in this country watch the Super Bowl and
pull for a team they love, regardless of, you know,
(16:27):
their individual demographic. Chariot races were the same way. But
before television, that's true, and you can also probably expect
to see someone get really horribly injured, um, you know,
and and ideally that's less the case with modern American football.
Or they're trying to pase that out and make it
less of an attraction. But I still think that's largely
(16:48):
what people not not not to like taste blood. But
you it's all about the steaks, right. What's the point
of like being all in with this if there aren't
like real steaks. You don't feel like these people have
something to lose beyond just like glory or being shamed
or whatever. That's a great that's a great question. I
wrote a thing a long time ago that wasn't wasn't
(17:08):
part of how stuff works, about the social role of
sports as a substitute for actual warfare. It hits all
the same notes of tribalism, you know what I mean,
and identifying with something larger than oneself. This this is
making me a miss car stuff. No, because we have
to mention these chariot races were also dangerous for the
(17:31):
audience because the rivalry went beyond lighthearted competition. It became
as high risk as the races themselves. Think of soccer hooligans. Okay,
there were chariot hooligans, charioteer hooligans. One guy learned about
the death of one of the best charioteers in the
(17:51):
Red faction, and he threw himself on the funeral pyre
to be burned alongside his sports idol. Dude, that's like that,
like sports as a stand in for not only warfare,
but like religion. Yeah, yeah, good call. In sixty nine
a d or c e. The Emperor Vitellius had some
commoners executed because they talked trash about the Blue Faction
(18:14):
and the emperor loved them. He was personally offended, so
he had them put to death. And it also reminds
me of sort of the early days of auto racing,
like the Laman. Remember we did an episode on that
where it was absolutely very dangerous just physically to be
a spectator because if there was a fiery crash, bits
of flaming debris could go shooting out into the crowd,
(18:35):
potentially injuring or even killing people. There were several accounts
of folks being killed at those races, and such as
the case for these chariot races of you know, if
you'd have the potential for people in the stands getting
hit by you know, pieces of flying off of the chariots.
Twenty four hour Lament. Yeah, we have a ridiculous history
on that. We have something about the history of the
race in a series on car stuff too, if you
(18:58):
if you'd like to learn more about the oh my gosh,
the utter, utterly horrific accidents that happened in those races.
We have to say, you know, we we have to
speculate a bit on the psychology of the audience, because
(19:18):
maybe that was part of the appeal to be right
down there in the thick of it, as close to
the chariots as possible, despite the risk, or to have
this social identification that was so strong that you would
want to physically harm someone because they were a Green
and you were a Blue. It's strange too because Diacles
(19:38):
was chasing glory along with money, but he was definitely
chasing the glory, chasing the fame because he switched his factions.
He began his career as a White and then he
moved over to the Greens because of all the teams,
the Greens and the Blues were the most successful in
(19:59):
the most popular right and think of them like the
New England Patriots if you're a football fan. But then
he made a switch, He made a switch rue a
plot twist, you see, he transferred to the less popular
Red faction and this would have made pretty good financial
sense to him, maybe have given him some more time
(20:20):
to shine. You would have been a bigger fish in
a smaller pond. Because you see Diocles when he was
on the Green team, he was just one of many
very popular charioteers. You know, he was possibly a footnote
in history, but he could become a main character in
history if he went with the reds. And that's what
(20:41):
he did. And despite what you might assume, he was
not the he was not the charioteer who won the
most racist. He just got the most money. As Professor
Robert B. Keybreak points out, in the career of Diocles
room and charioteer, his victories paled in comparison to those
(21:01):
of other charity tears, such as Scorpus, who had two thousand,
forty eight victories, or Pompeius, most closest, who had three thousand,
five hundred and fifty nine victories. But he made it.
He won the game right he retired, as we said,
he lived a pretty sedate, fun life after that. You know.
(21:22):
From so he was born approximately one oh four CE,
and he passed away some time after one forty six CE.
But I believe his death was relatively peaceful or unremarked upon, Yeah,
especially given the profession. Right, so, um, by that point
he I think it was just kind of unusual for
(21:43):
anyone in such a violent, inherently violent line of work
to be able to retire. And even though he didn't
win the most maybe that's because he he was looking
he was playing the long game right then. I mean,
he was like protecting himself and maybe not being quite
as reckless, but he certainly knew how to show off
and have some flourishes. He had his own signature style
(22:05):
almost like you know, tiger style or like something out
of like a street fighter game, and it was called
the strong final dash. Oh nice, because he he could
just pull out all the stops in the end. That
maybe means he would bide his time a little bit
and stay out of harm's way and like protect himself,
but then at the end he would like come up
ahead of the pack. But yeah, it's crazy, man, that
he was able to just relaxingly drift away as an
(22:28):
old man of what was he like fifty years old.
He passed away on his estate in the Italian countryside
near modern day Palestrina, and he lived out the remainder
of his days in a quiet life. Live in the
quiet life. You know, he had a son and a
daughter who later erected a memorial to him at the site,
(22:51):
and there he remains in history as the highest paid
athlete of all time. But you know what, my spiky
sense is telling me that several of our fellow ridiculous
historians are having a come on you guys moment when
you say, Okay, so diakles was was really balling back
(23:12):
in the days of ancient Rome, But who is the
world's highest paid athlete? Now? It turns out we do
have the answer, or an answer, because some of this
depends on how you calculate it. Casey, help us out
with a drum roll here, if you would be so kind.
The highest paid athlete in the modern world is it's
(23:37):
it's Floyd Mayweather, who's um, non American boxer, problematic figure.
He's gotten some trouble with the law, but he's managed
to exceed the total of the other of himself and
the other two top earning athletes in the world, who
are Lebron James, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo UM and
(24:00):
that those three had a combined earning total of two
nine million dollars for a season's worth of work. Yeah. Yeah,
and that also includes like endorsements and partnerships and things
like that. And this is reported by Forbes magazine. But um,
Mayweather knocked all of that out of the water with
something that happened very recently, right, that's correct, that's correct.
(24:22):
He earned the top spot. You said a little north
of two and fifty mill total. For those other three
Between June one, seventeen and June one, eighteen, Floyd Mayweather
earned two hundred and seventy five million dollars. This comes
to us from a Great Money dot Com article by
Mike Ayers. Here's the kicker. He earned that not across
(24:45):
the year. Here in that for one night of work
when he fought Connor McGregor on August seven, two thousand eighteen. Uh.
Add in his total ten million dollars worth of additional
endorsements and we get up two hundred and eight five million.
This is not his first time topping the list. He
(25:06):
has topped at four times in the last seven years.
Of course, that's quite a princely sum. But all the
money in the world. UH, still, with our current level
of medical technology, will not help you fully recover from
uh decades of brutal concussions. So you win some, you
(25:29):
lose some. And at this point still according to doctors Struck,
no one has beaten the record that die at least
the charioteer established way back in ancient Rome. Makes you think,
would you do a chariot race? No, man, the two
wheel thing freaks me out. I would totally do it.
(25:50):
He always it seems like it would be so easy
to flip over. Those horses have to counterbalance the you
into the whole time, and if you if you lose
the slack on the reins, it seems like your whole
front end would go into the dirt, or if they've
reared up a little too much, you'd flip over backwards.
It just seems like a fool's Errand to me, sir,
you know, I I see where you're coming from. To
(26:12):
each their own, I think it would be a lot
of fun. So if you know where I could I
could just ride some chariots around. Please please let me
know you can. You can hit us on our Facebook
group Ridiculous Historians. You can hit me up on Instagram
directly at ben Boland. Surely there's some kind of chariot
simulator you could try before jumping full bore into the
(26:33):
circus Maximus. I want to go for the gusto man,
all right, Man, I respect that, I really do. Um.
You can check me out on Instagram at Embryonic Insider
and Ben, I think you had a comic recommendation today.
I do have a comic recommendation today. I am a
fan of a comic series called Britannia, which studies the
story of someone named Antonius Axia, the Empire's finest. You'll
(26:58):
love this word, folks, did tection er. He is applying
scientific scrutiny and rational thought too various mysteries, usually mysteries
that he is tasked with solving by the mad Emperor Nero.
It's a great read. It's highly recommended. Uh let us
(27:18):
know if you've read it and what you think about it.
In the meantime, of course, thank you for checking out
today show, and thank you to Casey Pegram. As always,
thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Thanks to
our amazing research associate Gabe Um and thanks to you
Ben Boland, my friend. Hey, thanks to you Noel Brown.
I got a question for you. Is this uh, this
(27:40):
comic recommendation is sort of an alternate historical account, kind
of like um like manifest destiny or one of those
kind of deals without all of the tinges of supernatural stuff.
It's uh, it's a mystery comic and it's it's a winter.
It's well done. Let us know what you think. Man,
Please be sure and join us for the next episode
of ridiculous History. See you next time.
Ye confession. I believe that I may have the perfect
socks for today's episode. There's some socks that a friend
(00:32):
of mine got me from his travels in Japan, and
they have separations in the in the fabric for the toes.
I feel much more agile than I would be wearing
just normal socks bands. So they're like Ninja socks. Yeah,
that's that's the way to put up. Yeah, it's like
the division for the sandals. Picture every Western film you've
(00:54):
seen in the nineties or something that featured ninja. Yeah,
so I've got the I've got these. Uh, it's weird.
I took my shoes off and showed showed you and
our super producer, Casey Pegram these socks before we hit
the air. I feel somewhat more athletic in these. Well, Ben,
(01:14):
we are in a tiny shipping container type box. Did
you put your shoes back on? Yeah? Yeah, you can
tell Noll, you can tell that I put my shoes
back on. I think I think being in a small
area with your shoes off like that in a work environment,
it would be kind of rude. No, it's poor. It's
poor podcast etiquette, to be sure. Yeah, like loudly eating
or something. Gosh, Ben, are you being passive aggressive to me?
(01:37):
I'm a loud on Mike eating. No, you're not eating something.
I'm not right now. But you know, I've been known
to have a snack occasionally, but I try to do
it off my contract. You usually do it when we're
not on air. That's true. That's a good point. Although
I gotta say sometimes I find it charming when I
when a podcaster has a little snack on there. I
think it's a personal choice, personal preference. So back to
(01:57):
this this idea. I am not a professional as fleet
and you and I know each other pretty well. You
are currently not a professional athlete. I'm barely a professional anything.
We're barely professional podcasters right. Actually updated my my Instagram
bio to be a semi pro podcast geek. So that's
that's what I consider my safe semi pro. There you go.
(02:19):
We do know that the world of professional athleticism is
obviously an enormous, enormous deal. It's a huge industry. Billions
and billions of dollars are spent every year, and billions
of dollars are generated every year through various athletic endeavors
(02:40):
around the world, and for Peak Behind the Curtain is
the three of us record today's episode of Ridiculous History.
We are on the verge of two very big and
unusual things for our fair metropolis of Atlanta. The first
is a definite that's the super Bowl, and the second
is possible storm, a snowstorm. So we're looking for the
(03:04):
the snowpocalypse super Bowl traffic jam coming our way pretty soon, right,
which became a Facebook event that a lot of people
in town checked in on. Right, did you do that?
Not yet? So we started thinking about the world of
professional athletes, and we kicked around the idea of maybe
doing the history of Super Bowls, which could be a
(03:28):
cool notion for a future episode. But we also asked
ourselves a surprisingly fascinating question, who was the highest paid athlete,
not not just this year, but in history. Yeah, it's true,
And it turns out that somebody else, uh, someone with
a little bit more of a historical pedigree than we have,
a guy by the name of Dr Peter struck who's
(03:50):
professor at the University of Pennsylvania UM. In an article
he wrote for Laham's Quarterly, struck Um went into great
detail about his discovery that turns out, the highest paid
athlete of all time was not like a footballer or
or a basketball or wasn't you know some some football player.
(04:10):
Wasn't Michael Jordan's, wasn't Joe Montana. Joe Montana. That's a
football players remember him from from video games, mainly I
like he had. He was known for his effective but
just very ugly throws. But he had a big old arm, right,
He was like an armed guy. Most of them do.
They are very few. Peyton Manning, he's a he's a
(04:31):
good He's worth a lot of Jakins. And then the refrigerator.
But no, none of those guys. Turns out it was
a I'm gonna say, charioteer. Yeah, a charioteer named gas
Apollius Diocles. Well done. Well, we'll probably shift around in
that in that pronunciation times. Uh. This is a very
(04:55):
very interesting guy. He was from an area of what
is now modern day Spain in Portugal. He was most
likely illiterate, but man, his chariot game was on fire.
So there's an inscription set up in the city of
Rome that was originally created in one forty six CE
(05:17):
or a d however you prefer, uh, And it tells
us exactly how much this charioteer from the province of
Lusitania earned during his oh what was it an old
twenty four years as an athlete, as a charioteer. Yes,
and let's not sweep under the rug the fact that
that is an awful long time to survive in such
(05:40):
a intense and brutal and strenuous and dangerous for even spectators,
let alone the people right in the thick of it
profession I mean, we're talking like these chariots being drawn
by up to ten horses. He had like the reins
tied around his waist, you know, and I can imagine
a mishap, you know, tearing him him from limb. But
(06:01):
he was able to maintain this career twenty four years,
which is, oh gosh, at least four times the length
I would say of an average you know, football or
basketball player's career. Yeah, even in these our modern days,
ongoing studies show us that being an athlete can be
tremendously damaging to the body and punishing to the mind,
(06:26):
especially when you get in the world of boxing and
US football, which you know, leave the door wide open
to concussions, you know. And I just kind of pulled
that out of my ear. But it's about apparently, according
to Business Insider, the average span of an NBA basketball
player is about four point eight years, right, right, It's true.
It's uh. Now, this can be longer for some some individuals,
(06:50):
and of course it can be longer in some sports, right, uh,
some Olympic sports, you may have a longer lifespan. But
professionally speak king again, we are at our best only humans.
So this guy is doing a tremendous job. Back in
his time as as a chariot's here roll? What what
(07:14):
exactly would his would his sport have been comprised? Well,
like I said, he would have been piloting a I
guess a two wheeled chariot, right, how many wheels around
to chariot? Is it four? I feel I pictured it
as being reared back on two wheels, two wheels with
a team of horses, like said, up to ten reins
used to kind of encourage them to go faster or
(07:37):
slow up. And like I said, he actually had them
tied around his body so he could use his whole
body to kind of control the horses. And he was
racing specifically and dirty tricks and in chariot racing. I
guess I think of maybe cartoon examples of chariot racing
where all of a sudden, like one of the wheels
would have like a blade on it or something like that,
and they'd kind of go up close to the other
(07:58):
participants and to that blade to kind of grind up
at their wheel. And I think people would stop at
nothing to uh to you know, defeat the competition, no
matter what it took, right. Yeah, And chariot racing was
a huge, huge deal. It was bigger than NASCAR is now.
The classes would be divided primarily by how many horses
(08:19):
were pulling the chariot. A two horse team, a four
horse team, a six horse team. The earliest account of
a chariot race occurs in Homer's description of the funeral
of Patrick Less. These these races were one of the
big ticket items of the ancient Olympic Games. They would
happen during religious festivals. Essentially, civilizations at the time view
(08:43):
chariot races as a really cool thing to add to
almost any public event, you know what I mean. It's
like a a a citywide festival or contest. And normally
these chariot races would proceed thusly, there would be four
to six different chariots they would compete in a single race,
(09:04):
and the race would usually be around seven laps around
what was called the circus, the circus maximus. These chariots,
we should emphasize, were very light affairs, because you know,
you wanted to get the maximum power in the minimum
amount of weight. This also means that they were super fragile.
(09:24):
So we're a collision to occur. You were up the
wrong creek without a paddle. Yeah. And to that end,
most of the folks that piloted these chariots um only
lived till about twenty four years old, whereas Diocles retired
which is very unusual at the ripe old age of
forty two, at which point he was worth a whole
lot of money. Doctor Struck found that diocles Is total
(09:51):
earnings would have equated to roughly fifteen billion dollars in
modern terms. Fifteen billion with the B. You can also
see another great write up of this in History Collection.
There's an article by Alexander Mettings that we would recommend this.
(10:12):
This is strange because these were all net earnings to
the charioteer didn't have to pay promoters didn't have to
pay you know, a marketing team or support is I
don't know, entourage or shell out cash for sponsorship. He
probably had it pretty good. You know, what would he
(10:33):
have what would he have done personally with that? And
how did professor Struck figure out this number? On that
inscription ban that you mentioned, It has his his earnings
in the currency of the time, which is sastercy, and
that would have been thirty five million, eight hundred and
sixty three thousand, one hundred and twenty And Struck figured
(10:55):
out that for the time that would have been enough
to buy grain to fee the entirety of Rome for
one year um and also was about five times higher
a salary than any of the highest paid officials in
the land and also could have paid for every single
Roman soldier for a fifth of a year. And that
(11:16):
was when Rome was at its peak in terms of
its military MTE. Yeah, running from Scotland all the way
in the far north, Egypt in the south, Spain in
the western, the Euphrates in the east. He clearly busted
his hump for this money. And to compare him to
(11:37):
let's say the highest paid governmental authorities in two months,
he would earn what Rome's highest paid provincial governor could
expect to earn in one year, and there was a
great amount of risk with this. We mentioned the horses
reins being tied physically to the athlete. When those fragile
(11:59):
vehicles collided with something, it often resulted in the death
or serious injury of a charioteer because the horses kept going.
That's right, there's a lot of a lot of trampling
um and ben we were trying to get to the
conversion method. We always plug numbers into our handy dandy
inflation calculator here on ridiculous history. But those um figures
that I mentioned earlier were on are on the Stone inscription,
(12:22):
listening the idea of being able to bankroll the Roman
army for a fifth of a year. So Struck was
able to extrapolate a modern estimate UM based on what
it would cost to pay for our military UM. So
it's obviously not a perfect one to one, but would
have been a pretty good educated guess. Absolutely, And oh
(12:43):
you know what we should do. We should read the
actual inscription. So here it goes. In the English translation,
it begins with gayas Appolus Diocles charioteer of the Red Stable,
Hallusitanian Spaniard by birth age forty two years, seven months,
twenty three days, and the monument says he raced four
(13:03):
horse chariots for twenty four years, so we get some
valuable numbers there. We also know that given his fame,
there was a snowball effect. He started turning down races,
you know what I mean. It had to be worth
his time, so he would race in the most high end,
high profile races that had the most potential to win
(13:29):
a large amount of money. He started in this, according
to the inscription, in four thousand, two hundred fifty seven
races he won one thousand, four hundred sixty three times,
and the inscription says that translates to him winning ninety
two major prizes. Of these, thirty two were of thirty
thousand sisters, three of them with six worse teams, two
(13:52):
in races with six worse chariots, one with a seven
horse chariot. Uh he tied with because they had these
different factions. Right, he was a red stable, right, and
he tied a Blue stable ten times, a Green stable
ninety one. And the the this inscription, the thing that's
invaluable about it is that it maps out his stats
(14:16):
the same way that a baseball card, back when those
were a big deal. A baseball card would map out
the stats of your favorite, uh, your favorite baseball player. Man,
would these have been like alongside gladiator events or would
those have been like two different things, because I feel
like this would have almost been like a like the
gladiator thing might have been the main event. This might
have been like a side event, or were they completely separate.
(14:38):
I'm just wondering, you know, there's that's a good question. Well,
there's probably a situation again wherein there were large public
events that involved this stuff, and they were definitely chariots
in gladiatorial combat. Its right, Sometimes there could have been
probably gladiator matches on chariot where they're like coming at
each other, swinging weapons as they pass. Right. So let's
(15:00):
let's go back for a second to the earlier comparison
in the world of animation and cartoons, right, how exaggerated
or how accurate was this depiction of chariot racing. It
turns out that it's not completely off base. It's not
completely cartoonish or made up, because these knives on the
(15:24):
wheels were a real thing, and the charioteers would attempt
to ram their arrivals into the media at the center
of the track called the spin at, and then they
would come crashing into these hairpin turns. They also I
thought you would find just the pure spectacle of this fascinating.
(15:45):
During races, it was very common for the three chariots
representing each faction to team up with one another to
bring down a very unpopular rival or a very strong
one like diac les, and bring down in this sense
means literally grind them into the dust. This violence is
(16:06):
part of why chariot races were so incredibly popular. Like,
think about how many people love the Super Bowl. I'm
sure there's an income brackett to get a ticket because
those things are thousands of dollars, But millions and millions
of people in this country watch the Super Bowl and
pull for a team they love, regardless of, you know,
(16:27):
their individual demographic. Chariot races were the same way. But
before television, that's true, and you can also probably expect
to see someone get really horribly injured, um, you know,
and and ideally that's less the case with modern American football.
Or they're trying to pase that out and make it
less of an attraction. But I still think that's largely
(16:48):
what people not not not to like taste blood. But
you it's all about the steaks, right. What's the point
of like being all in with this if there aren't
like real steaks. You don't feel like these people have
something to lose beyond just like glory or being shamed
or whatever. That's a great that's a great question. I
wrote a thing a long time ago that wasn't wasn't
(17:08):
part of how stuff works, about the social role of
sports as a substitute for actual warfare. It hits all
the same notes of tribalism, you know what I mean,
and identifying with something larger than oneself. This this is
making me a miss car stuff. No, because we have
to mention these chariot races were also dangerous for the
(17:31):
audience because the rivalry went beyond lighthearted competition. It became
as high risk as the races themselves. Think of soccer hooligans. Okay,
there were chariot hooligans, charioteer hooligans. One guy learned about
the death of one of the best charioteers in the
(17:51):
Red faction, and he threw himself on the funeral pyre
to be burned alongside his sports idol. Dude, that's like that,
like sports as a stand in for not only warfare,
but like religion. Yeah, yeah, good call. In sixty nine
a d or c e. The Emperor Vitellius had some
commoners executed because they talked trash about the Blue Faction
(18:14):
and the emperor loved them. He was personally offended, so
he had them put to death. And it also reminds
me of sort of the early days of auto racing,
like the Laman. Remember we did an episode on that
where it was absolutely very dangerous just physically to be
a spectator because if there was a fiery crash, bits
of flaming debris could go shooting out into the crowd,
(18:35):
potentially injuring or even killing people. There were several accounts
of folks being killed at those races, and such as
the case for these chariot races of you know, if
you'd have the potential for people in the stands getting
hit by you know, pieces of flying off of the chariots.
Twenty four hour Lament. Yeah, we have a ridiculous history
on that. We have something about the history of the
race in a series on car stuff too, if you
(18:58):
if you'd like to learn more about the oh my gosh,
the utter, utterly horrific accidents that happened in those races.
We have to say, you know, we we have to
speculate a bit on the psychology of the audience, because
(19:18):
maybe that was part of the appeal to be right
down there in the thick of it, as close to
the chariots as possible, despite the risk, or to have
this social identification that was so strong that you would
want to physically harm someone because they were a Green
and you were a Blue. It's strange too because Diacles
(19:38):
was chasing glory along with money, but he was definitely
chasing the glory, chasing the fame because he switched his factions.
He began his career as a White and then he
moved over to the Greens because of all the teams,
the Greens and the Blues were the most successful in
(19:59):
the most popular right and think of them like the
New England Patriots if you're a football fan. But then
he made a switch, He made a switch rue a
plot twist, you see, he transferred to the less popular
Red faction and this would have made pretty good financial
sense to him, maybe have given him some more time
(20:20):
to shine. You would have been a bigger fish in
a smaller pond. Because you see Diocles when he was
on the Green team, he was just one of many
very popular charioteers. You know, he was possibly a footnote
in history, but he could become a main character in
history if he went with the reds. And that's what
(20:41):
he did. And despite what you might assume, he was
not the he was not the charioteer who won the
most racist. He just got the most money. As Professor
Robert B. Keybreak points out, in the career of Diocles
room and charioteer, his victories paled in comparison to those
(21:01):
of other charity tears, such as Scorpus, who had two thousand,
forty eight victories, or Pompeius, most closest, who had three thousand,
five hundred and fifty nine victories. But he made it.
He won the game right he retired, as we said,
he lived a pretty sedate, fun life after that. You know.
(21:22):
From so he was born approximately one oh four CE,
and he passed away some time after one forty six CE.
But I believe his death was relatively peaceful or unremarked upon, Yeah,
especially given the profession. Right, so, um, by that point
he I think it was just kind of unusual for
(21:43):
anyone in such a violent, inherently violent line of work
to be able to retire. And even though he didn't
win the most maybe that's because he he was looking
he was playing the long game right then. I mean,
he was like protecting himself and maybe not being quite
as reckless, but he certainly knew how to show off
and have some flourishes. He had his own signature style
(22:05):
almost like you know, tiger style or like something out
of like a street fighter game, and it was called
the strong final dash. Oh nice, because he he could
just pull out all the stops in the end. That
maybe means he would bide his time a little bit
and stay out of harm's way and like protect himself,
but then at the end he would like come up
ahead of the pack. But yeah, it's crazy, man, that
he was able to just relaxingly drift away as an
(22:28):
old man of what was he like fifty years old.
He passed away on his estate in the Italian countryside
near modern day Palestrina, and he lived out the remainder
of his days in a quiet life. Live in the
quiet life. You know, he had a son and a
daughter who later erected a memorial to him at the site,
(22:51):
and there he remains in history as the highest paid
athlete of all time. But you know what, my spiky
sense is telling me that several of our fellow ridiculous
historians are having a come on you guys moment when
you say, Okay, so diakles was was really balling back
(23:12):
in the days of ancient Rome, But who is the
world's highest paid athlete? Now? It turns out we do
have the answer, or an answer, because some of this
depends on how you calculate it. Casey, help us out
with a drum roll here, if you would be so kind.
The highest paid athlete in the modern world is it's
(23:37):
it's Floyd Mayweather, who's um, non American boxer, problematic figure.
He's gotten some trouble with the law, but he's managed
to exceed the total of the other of himself and
the other two top earning athletes in the world, who
are Lebron James, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo UM and
(24:00):
that those three had a combined earning total of two
nine million dollars for a season's worth of work. Yeah. Yeah,
and that also includes like endorsements and partnerships and things
like that. And this is reported by Forbes magazine. But um,
Mayweather knocked all of that out of the water with
something that happened very recently, right, that's correct, that's correct.
(24:22):
He earned the top spot. You said a little north
of two and fifty mill total. For those other three
Between June one, seventeen and June one, eighteen, Floyd Mayweather
earned two hundred and seventy five million dollars. This comes
to us from a Great Money dot Com article by
Mike Ayers. Here's the kicker. He earned that not across
(24:45):
the year. Here in that for one night of work
when he fought Connor McGregor on August seven, two thousand eighteen. Uh.
Add in his total ten million dollars worth of additional
endorsements and we get up two hundred and eight five million.
This is not his first time topping the list. He
(25:06):
has topped at four times in the last seven years.
Of course, that's quite a princely sum. But all the
money in the world. UH, still, with our current level
of medical technology, will not help you fully recover from
uh decades of brutal concussions. So you win some, you
(25:29):
lose some. And at this point still according to doctors Struck,
no one has beaten the record that die at least
the charioteer established way back in ancient Rome. Makes you think,
would you do a chariot race? No, man, the two
wheel thing freaks me out. I would totally do it.
(25:50):
He always it seems like it would be so easy
to flip over. Those horses have to counterbalance the you
into the whole time, and if you if you lose
the slack on the reins, it seems like your whole
front end would go into the dirt, or if they've
reared up a little too much, you'd flip over backwards.
It just seems like a fool's Errand to me, sir,
you know, I I see where you're coming from. To
(26:12):
each their own, I think it would be a lot
of fun. So if you know where I could I
could just ride some chariots around. Please please let me
know you can. You can hit us on our Facebook
group Ridiculous Historians. You can hit me up on Instagram
directly at ben Boland. Surely there's some kind of chariot
simulator you could try before jumping full bore into the
(26:33):
circus Maximus. I want to go for the gusto man,
all right, Man, I respect that, I really do. Um.
You can check me out on Instagram at Embryonic Insider
and Ben, I think you had a comic recommendation today.
I do have a comic recommendation today. I am a
fan of a comic series called Britannia, which studies the
story of someone named Antonius Axia, the Empire's finest. You'll
(26:58):
love this word, folks, did tection er. He is applying
scientific scrutiny and rational thought too various mysteries, usually mysteries
that he is tasked with solving by the mad Emperor Nero.
It's a great read. It's highly recommended. Uh let us
(27:18):
know if you've read it and what you think about it.
In the meantime, of course, thank you for checking out
today show, and thank you to Casey Pegram. As always,
thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Thanks to
our amazing research associate Gabe Um and thanks to you
Ben Boland, my friend. Hey, thanks to you Noel Brown.
I got a question for you. Is this uh, this
(27:40):
comic recommendation is sort of an alternate historical account, kind
of like um like manifest destiny or one of those
kind of deals without all of the tinges of supernatural stuff.
It's uh, it's a mystery comic and it's it's a winter.
It's well done. Let us know what you think. Man,
Please be sure and join us for the next episode
of ridiculous History. See you next time.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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