Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Gaius Appuleius Diocles: The Richest Athlete in History

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

Who do you think what the wealthiest athlete in history? Maybe Michael Jordan. Perhaps Tiger Woods or Roger Federer. Or maybe Lionel Messi or LeBron James? Well, historically speaking, if you added up the fortunes of all of those people, they probably couldn’t compare to one man who competed in ancient Rome. A man who put his life at risk far more than any golfer or tennis player. Learn more about Gaius Appuleius Diocles on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who do you think was the wealthiest athlete in history? Maybe Michael Jordan, perhaps Tiger Woods or Roger Federer. Maybe Lionel Messi or LeBron James. Well, historically speaking, if you added up the fortunes of all those people, they probably couldn't compare to one man who competed in ancient Rome. A man who put his life at risk far more than any golfer or tennis player. Learn more about Gaius Apaleus Diocles, the richest athlete in history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by the OutTravel the System podcast. I know you love to hear the story behind the story. so let me tell you why I think you might want to listen to the Expedia podcast, Out Travel the System. In this season alone, the show talks to someone on a mission to visit every country in the world.

And in case you're wondering, the tally stands at 194 out of 197 countries. There's a man who has visited and stayed at literally thousands of hotels who share some of his favorite unique accommodations and experiences. Or how about the woman who has reached some deep philosophical conclusions about travel and privilege in no small part because of the pandemic? Get all of this and more when you tune into the show, including larger insights about the future of travel, as well as tips and tricks to maximize your savings for your next trip, whenever you feel ready to head out into the world again. You can find Out Travel the System on your podcast platform of choice. If you're a top-tier modern professional athlete, you can make an astonishing amount of money. Just to give you an idea, the top athletes in their respective sports, assuming their popular sports,

can have net worths in the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars. The money comes not just from their salaries or competitive winnings, but also from endorsement deals. Determining the net worth of athletes is notoriously difficult, as they are under no obligation to disclose their financial status, and no one has any clue what they spend or the status of their investments. Nonetheless, using the best estimates available, there is one bona fide billionaire athlete, and that is Michael Jordan. He made the vast majority of his money off endorsement deals, primarily with Nike, and via investments, primarily his ownership of the Charlotte Hornets. Also close to billionaire status are Tiger Woods and soccer players Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi,

as well as boxer Floyd Mayweather. Those over the half-billion dollar mark include LeBron James, Roger Federer, Mani Pocchio, Phil Mickelson, and Lewis Hamilton. Almost all of the names I listed are either active or were competitive in the last 20 years. ultra-rich athletes may seem like a very recent phenomenon. The first athlete to be paid a million dollars in a single season was Nolan Ryan in 1980. He signed a $4.5 million contract for four years with no incentives. That same year, Dave Parker, signed a five-year $5 million contract with incentives.

Compare that to Lionel Messi, who in 2017 signed a contract worth almost $675 million for four years. The first $100,000 athlete was a baseball player named Hank Greenberg in 1947. In 1930, Babe Ruth had a salary of $80,000, and the President of the United States only had a salary of $75,000. When it was pointed out that he made more than the President, he replied, quote, I know, but I had a better year than Hoover, unquote. However, if we go back far enough, I mean really far, we can actually find a period that also had ultra-wealthy athletes. And that, of course, is ancient Rome. The biggest sport in ancient Rome wasn't gladiatorial games, despite the fact that they're what get the most attention in movies.

They were popular, to be sure, but the number of spectators that could sit in an amphitheater like the Coliseum was very limited. And given the nature of the activity, you couldn't really do it every day. The big sport was chariot racing. Chariot racing was huge, and in Rome itself, the primary venue for racing was the Circus Maximus, which could hold a quarter of a million people. You can still see where the circus maximus was located today, and you can still see the outline of the track. When the poet Juvenal spoke of appeasing the masses with bread and circuses, chariot racing was what he was talking about.

In an earlier episode, I talked about the Nika riots in Constantinople, which took place in the year 523, and the riots were all about chariot racing. Just to give an overview of Roman chariot racing, the common people and many aristocrats were fanatical about the sport. The chariots were divided up into teams, the red, the white, the green, and the blue. Each team would usually have three chariots in each race. On race day, there would have been 24 races consisting of seven laps each, and the majority of races were with Quadrigas, which are teams of four horses. There were an average 66 days a year that had races.

They would usually be organized by eight aisles, which was an elected position. An adyle that did a good job organizing games would have their name known by the public, and it would help them eventually achieve higher offices such as consul. Individual charioteers were recruited by teams and would win prizes based on their performance. Only charioteers placing in the top three would earn prize money. And this finally brings us to the subject of the episode. The man who is probably the most famous and successful charioteer in history, Gaius Apuleus Diocles.

Diocles was born in the Roman province of Lusitania, in what is now Lamego, Portugal in the year 104. He began chariot racing when he was 18 and what is today Yeda in Catalonia, Spain. He won some of his first races and was recruited by the White team to race in Rome. The whites weren't one of the top teams, and they often recruited charioteers from the lower classes of society and from the provinces to compensate. After some early success, he was recruited a few years later at the age of 24 to race for the Green team. The Greens were the premier team in Rome. They would have been the equivalent of the Green Bay Packers in both success and,

team colors. So why did Diocles make so much money? For starters, Diocles was good, really good. He was the winner or runner up in 75% of the races in his career. And remember, you only got paid if you're in the top three. However, he had something else going for him. Showmanship. What he often did is let himself get behind on the last lap, so he could then overtake the leader in a dramatic finish. He would do this all the time and became quite good at it. The crowds would go nuts, which drew more people, which resulted in larger purses. Because there were 24 races in a day, he could easily bring in as much money in a single day

as a Roman pro-curator could make in a year. The other secret to his success was longevity. And I mean this in the most literal sense. The life expectancy of a charioteer was very short. One famous charioteer named Scorpus won over 2,000 races, which is more than Diocles. However, he died at the age of 27 during an in-race close. collision. If you want an idea of how dangerous chariot racing was, just watch the race scenes from any of the three versions of Ben Hur, preferably the 1959 version.

The chariot racers literally had their wrists tied to the reins of the horses, and if there was a crash, they could be dragged around the track by their team. Diocles managed to have a 24-year career without any major accidents. He actually left the green team at the age of 27 for the less successful red team. The speculation is he did so so he could be the undisputed best on the Red team, whereas there were probably writers in comparable talent to him on the Greens. Most fans only followed teams, but when he switched to the Reds, many people still supported him because he was so beloved. In the end, he won 1,462 races and took second place in 1,438 more, out of a total of 4,257 races he competed in.

His total career winnings were 35,863,120 Roman Sestershees. Trying to make comparisons in wealth from ancient periods to today is extremely difficult to near impossible. Populations were different. Productivity has improved exponentially, and what you could buy with your money was totally different. However, we do know that Diocles was unquestionably one of the richest people in Rome when he retired. His wealth was only surpassed by a few senators and the emperor himself. he had enough money to feed all of Rome for a year or pay for the entire Roman military for several months. Using these purchasing power comparisons, it's estimated that his fortune would be worth around $15 billion today. When he retired at the age of 42, he purchased a villa in the Italian countryside and retired.

And from there, he vanished from history. The only reason we know so much about Diocles as we do was because of his fame and success on the track. So the next time you hear of some athlete making an obscene amount of money, just remember that they still can't hold a candle to the richest athlete of all time. Gaius Apaleus Diocles The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters,

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