Greatest of All Time: Lifestyles of the rich and famous Roman athletes (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Greatest of All Time: Lifestyles of the rich and famous Roman athletes (2010)

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61 pointsacheron27 comments

In 2000 years, someone will write this exact same essay about American football.

The sport is enormously popular but professional football players are poorly paid compared to baseball and basketball, especially when considering their much shorter average career and the physical damage caused by the sport. Further, football players are forced to spend years earning billions for the NCAA and its TV partners in exchange for college tuition, whereas the best baseball players and basketball players can earn a market salary by turning pro after high school.

> best ... basketball players can earn a market salary by turning pro after high school

Not actually true, at least directly. They're currently required to play at least one year in NCAA, and the NBA commissioner is advocating for two years.

You're right for the most part, but there are a few exceptions for basketball which are becoming more popular.

International players can play professionally as early as 16 and then immigrate over. A few top US prospects have also gone overseas @ 18 for 6mo/1yr to bypass the NCAA restriction and start playing as early as 19.

It is funny, it was once true but the NBA added the year. As you get older the stuff you know becomes incorrect but you don't know it is wrong...factual atrophy.

I was surprised by your comment so I Googled it and it seems you are right: https://news.sportsinteraction.com/sports/how-to-make-money-...

Being the 6th man on a pro Basketball team is a generally a better move than being a starting Football player. Bonus is that you will probably have a longer lifespan.

Being the 15th man on an NBA team can be better than being a starter on an NFL team. The median NFL player only makes about as much as a 1st-round non-lottery pick NBA rookie. Moreover, for the most part, NBA contracts are fully guaranteed, unlike NFL contracts, that have all manner of byzantine bonus and base salary constructs.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/contracts/players.html

http://blog.futureadvisor.com/nfl-players-must-go-long-on-re...

Compared to the subject under discussion, their lot is not so bad: "After seven savage laps, those who managed not to be upended or killed, ..."

I'm pretty sure the salary differentials between football, baseball, and basketball are better attributable to the fact that football teams are an order of magnitude larger than the other two, meaning while there's more pie to go around, more people want a slice.

Or NASCAR

He compares Rome's military wages to the US. How many militairs where there in Rome?

Probably not that much as the author compares it to

The Roman army reached perhaps 640,000 under Constantine I. Compare, the current active duty US Army is about 475,000.

US has ~1,301,300 million active duty military. The army makes up ~1/3 of that.

Sure. But the population of the US is 320+ million. The peak population of the Roman Empire was probably in the region of 70 million. And that peak was in the 2nd Century CE, whereas the 640k figure is from the 4th Century CE.

"...assuming the apt comparison is what it takes to pay the wages of the American armed forces for the same period..."

Wait, what?

I know why they do it, but it's really annoying when authors compare sums of money in ancient societies to today's monetary system. It's probably the laziest way I can think of to describe differences between societies. Do some real effing research, fer chrissakes.

So 35 million sesterces can be roughly equated to $15 billion in todays monetary system. So what? You might as well be comparing apples to space aliens.

I disagree completely. It's helpful to make a reference comparison, as it's about disproportionate wealth. In fact the author goes so far as to comment on the purchasing power - grain for a year etc... And in fact doesn't make a 1:1 comparison but extrapolates based on funding the military. Knowing that makes it more relevant and worth reading.

Care to explain why the comparison is so troublesome, for the ignorant?

The bigger problem to me is the number was derived by assuming the modern American military could be equated to the ancient Roman military's expenses: If the charioteer could pay for 1/5 of Rome's annual military expenses, then his modern equivalent could pay for 1/5 of the US' annual military expenses.

It wouldn't surprise me if you could build ancient Athens from scratch for the cost of a single modern aircraft carrier. A quick google search shows 140,000 people in ancient Athens and 6000 staff on the biggest aircraft carriers, and it wouldn't surprise me if ancient housing were 23 times cheaper than military-grade ocean housing.

Not to mention we have vibrant financial markets and a strong economy. Ancient Rome had unusually strong rent control and price control laws:

"The Edict of Maximum Prices was an attempt to control runaway inflation and poverty in the Empire. The penalty for exceeding the prices of the Edict was severe: death. Not satisfied to execute just the seller, Diocletian decreed that the buyer was to be executed as well. As a final measure, if a seller refused to sell his goods at the stated price, the penalty was death."

If ancient Rome didn't have corporations, investment banks, revenue bonds, government-backed loans, etc. and had other terrible economic policies like above, then being rich(in terms of buying power for specific goods) wouldn't go as far as in our modern economy.

He was not equating total military expenses, he was equating ordinary soldier's pay.

That should be fairly apples-to-apples. The top charioteer, over his career, earned enough to cover all ordinary soldier's pay for 1/5th a year. Using the figure above of 600,000 ordinary soldiers in Rome's army, that equates to 120,000 soldier-years of pay. It's reasonable to treat that number as somewhat of a constant over the last 2000 years.

Now, I am a little skeptical that a US soldier makes $125,000 / year. The pay rates I can find online range from $25,000 / year for a newly enlisted soldier to $90,000 / year for an E-9 soldier with 40 years experience. That produces a lifetime earnings for our charioteer of $3-11 billion, depending on what the average pay for a soldier actually comes out to.

That doesn't seem so bad. It would be valid to say that the top charioteer's share of the total wealth of the world is comparable to someone with $15 billion today. As long as you think of it as wealth relative to peers, the comparison stands. By your logic, inflation adjusted numbers for say, box office hits like Star Wars and Gone with the Wind are meaningless because people couldn't use the money to buy cell phones or laptop computers.

I hadn't considered that, but it's probably true. A Disney movie turning revenue of $10 million with a sequel is probably more valuable than a no-name company turing revenue of $10 million with a surprise hit. So $10 million isn't even the same amount as $10 million, because the banks or potential investors won't necessarily assume that you could repeat it. Or if you found $100 million in a briefcase and asked Donald Trump to build you a skyscraper, it would go further than if you tried to do it yourself, because he could stick his name on it and get more funding.

This doesn't really apply to small amounts of money(less than $1k), because all you can buy there are consumer goods(i.e. commodities). So to a consumer, $50 is as good as any other $50. And cost-of-living estimates for ancient Rome are probably reasonably accurate when translated.

I guess what I'm saying is that wealth is dependent on what you can actually do with it. So descriptions like, "The charioteer had enough money to buy a quarter of all the farmland in Rome" is a better description of his wealth than "The charioteer had the equivalent of $x billion in USD", which doesn't convey how he could spend it.

The relative cost of goods has changed so much over the centuries.

For instance, clothing is the cheapest it has ever been, yet housing is relatively more expensive now.

Those athletes didn't have access to refrigerator, air conditioning, washing machine or Hacker News in their daily life.

But we also can't buy dozens of domestic slaves to act as air conditioner (leaf-waver), washing machine, story teller, and so on. Or have a low population so we don't need air conditioning because we own a villa on a (relatively) sparsely populated Mediterranean coast. Etc.

Slaves need food. It doesn't make sense to have slaves for leaf waving and laundry today because machines and electricity are cheaper.

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