The highest paid athlete of all time was a Roman Charioteer | Hacker News Reader

The highest paid athlete of all time was a Roman Charioteer

thevintagenews.com

240 pointshckr_nj151 comments

When comparing across time periods as broad as this, pretty much the only thing that matters is how you compare purchasing power and adjust for inflation. If you compare something that hasn't gotten appreciably cheaper over time - say, gold, or skilled labor - you wind up with an extremely large number. Compare something that has - like grain or clothing - and you wind up with a much more reasonable number. Going based off agriculture, back-of-the-envelope math gives about 400k people in Rome and $1000/yr expenses on staple foods for about $400m, which is significantly less than the probably-gold-based conversion scheme the article's source uses.

And if you want to be really persnickety, no amount of money in Rome would buy antibiotics, televisions, etc, etc.

We also need to adjust for the supply of gold available at the time, which I would think is much less than the amount available now. That way we can estimate a reasonable percentage of global wealth. Though it's still a guess, since gold buying power fluctuates and then we are back to trying to estimate a basket of goods ala CPI.

Also, this guy is a G and reminds me that my life has no meaning. Or at least less meaning than a dude who rode a chariot and chucked spears at dudes.

Edit: Oh, looks like he didn't even chuck spears, just raced. I assumed gladiator for some reason. Didn't even know this chariot racing thing was a big deal. Interesting.

Have you never seen Ben-Hur? It's an amazing movie with a classic chariot racing scene.

I haven't. Maybe I just ignored the chariot racing part of history because it didn't seem interesting.

Chariot Racing was huge.

The largest stadium ever built was the Circus Maximus which could hold over 150,000 people. The stadiums in the world right now don’t even come close.

It seems like the modern equivalent is NASCAR or F1. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway fits over 250,000 people.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway isn't in the middle of Washington DC though! The Circus Maximus is right at the bottom of the Palatine hill in the centre of Rome.

> isn't in the middle of Washington DC though

1) the speedway is far bigger in overall size than Circus Maximus

2) They likely didn’t have the same concerns over safety, noise (which is far louder with cars than chariots), traffic flow in/out, etc

3) didn’t likely have the same NIMB issues we’d have today

Re: #1, decided to look it up to get the exact difference. Based on km² data from Wikipedia, Indy is over 30x larger than Circus Maximus.

Even if we leave aside race tracks, there's a few stadia over 100k, especially college football in the US. Michigan college is at 107k apparently. Camp Nou (Barcelona) is close to a 100k as well.

They used to be bigger, in the 150k/200k range in the 20th century, back before safety concerns were really a thing.

Not just huge as a sport, but enormously important to politics as well. They nearly brought down Constantinople: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots

That's not remotely true. The 1950 world cup final (the famous Maracanaço), for example, had 200,000 people in the seats.

Ahh that’s true. I stand corrected.

I incorrectly assumed that the largest sports stadium since that time would be around today.

I also did not consider race tracks which do cross that bound.

Yes, the thing is stadiums in those days were massively unsafe and uncomfortabe: cramped all standing sections, no amenities, etc. Over time safety standards improved and so even if stadiums are physically the same size or even bigger, the density is much lower. The biggest football stadium nowadays I believe is Camp Nou, short of 100,000. The new Maracanã seats only 80,000 :p

Chariot racing was big for a long time in the classical world. The Nika Riots of Justinian were sparked during a race. The Blues and Greens were almost psuedo religions in Constantinople, giving out food and healthcare in some cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots

> And if you want to be really persnickety, no amount of money in Rome would buy antibiotics, televisions, etc, etc.

True, but there’s plenty of things that could have been bought in ancient Rome that simply aren’t for sale today.

I know there was a plant that acted as a birth control the the Romans used until it was extinct.

Silphium, a drug that induced abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium

What are some examples?

Fiat currency.

You can buy fiat currency today without any problems. You'd have a harder time buying those in Roman times.

Slaves would be the most obvious.

I think at that level of wealth you could simply use paid labour to do anything you want, no slavery required.

There are a few unspeakable things that you can not do with paid labor but can do with slaves, you would have to be extraordinarily evil to pursue any of them which is unlikely but is a possibility nonetheless.

Romans were far more tolerant of official corruption for one. Appointment to government positions and influence over government officials were pretty much blatantly for-sale.

Really? This doesn’t sound very different to me.

LOL, agree, from all the examples he could give, he chose the worst one. That has not changed at all.

People

> plenty of things

What other than slaves?

Far more animals available today. A far greater selection of meat and vegetables today. Far more selection of sexual services available today. Far more medicines (plus they work).

sexual services? I bet the Romans were not lacking anything in that department.

Definitely still for sale today

It's kind of like the difference between marijuana in California vs marijuana in Singapore. Yes, you can get weed in Singapore, but in California it's not just legal, it's an essential business in a pandemic. Similarly, you can run an Epstein-style sex trafficking operation in the 2010s West, but in ancient Rome you don't have to hide it or worry about getting "caught."

There are the illegal services, yes.

But then there a lots of legal ones, like sex with a sex worker without getting an STD for life.

You don't have a car or plane so they will all be the same down the road in your small town aka Rome. Rome would have been very homogeneous with ethnicity (Yes it would)

You have better soap and washing powder now. Today you can chose someone with good dental.

The past wasn't this imaginary movie using 21st century props everyone thinks it was. It was shit. It was boring.

Rome was bush weed. Today is MDMA

Power was more concentrated and was more absolute and that gave you way more advantages. A run-of-the-mill Roman patrician had more power and influence then than let's say Jeff Bezos today.

Tickets to a life or death battle at the Colosseum for one.

that’s still a boatload of duckets (ducats, for the intelligentsia). it would have bought basically anything you wanted. $400MM is roughly what lebron james has made from basketball (aside from side hustles), so the comparison of best athlete of his time is likely apt at least.

> And if you want to be really persnickety, no amount of money in Rome would buy antibiotics, televisions, etc, etc.

Apparently they had advanced plastic surgery using obsidian blades, and must have had some type of antibiotics for all that surgery.

https://bulletin.facs.org/2018/02/the-history-of-the-scalpel...

Unfortunately they didn't. They didn't have anaesthetic either, beyond the usual drugs and alcohol.

Plastic surgery is as old as civilization and possibly older, there are recorded procedures for doing rhinoplasty in ancient Egypt. I’d attribute the reason for this being certain bones in the face breaking and mending easily.

Comparisons beyond 100 years or so are largely meaningless. You're right about purchasing power, and that leads to your last point which is that what could actually be bought was so fundamentally different that attempting to do so is almost always going to mislead the public and be irresponsible. But it's one of those things that reporters and journalists can't help themselves from doing.

Is 100yrs that hard? I recently watched "The Little Giant" (1933) where the main character claims to have over a million dollars and is kind of retiring. I found it fun to look up what that million dollars would be worth today. According to one site it is $18 million. He went to a hotel in Santa Barbara where he was paying $45 a night for a giant suite. That comes out to over $800 a night which sounds like it might be in the correct ballpark. He gave is girlfriend who he was breaking up with a check for $25k which came out to about $500k in todays terms it seems. He rented a 20 bedroom 12 bathroom mansion for $1450 a month which is apparently $25k today. Sounds reasonable for a 20 bedroom mansion?

Those all seem like reasonable numbers.

PS: not recommending the movie. It was cute but not great.

Well... That's less than 100 years ago so....

This isn’t some threshold below which results are meaningless, it’s a time period approximation.

Given the lack of computerised record keeping at the time compared to now, it’s more important to have a reliable metric from the period than hit the 100y mark exactly

That's measuring the monetary value while ignoring actual utility. No amount of money could have bought a polio vaccine or advanced cancer treatments or genetic testing or microelectronics in 1933 but these are common things across the world now. Purchasing power doesn't just grow in quantity, it grows in technological sophistication that make any comparison between now and even the early 20th century more than useless - they're actively misleading. The biggest growth is in industrial production and distribution of goods and it isn't really quantifiable.

It has footage of Santa Barbara from the 30s? I'd love to check it out - was born and raised there and worked at the Hotel Santa Barbara briefly which is the only hotel old enough to fit this bill!

$1 million then is not $18 Million today in purchasing power IMO. Maybe it is in inflation. Probably relative to GDP /stock market is a better way to measure it

$1 mil in 1993 is not worth $18 mil today (ie. in 2020).

Inflation has averaged 2% during this time, so over 27 years: (1.02)^27 = 1.7069

$1 mil from 1993 would be worth no more than ~$1.71 today.

He said 1933, not 1993

1933, not 1993.

How do you meaningfully compare a hotel or mansion in 1933 to one today though? The reasons you'd travel would be very different, and so would the experience of the hotel. Those 20 bedrooms would presumably have blankets rather than duvets; the variety of food you get in a budget hotel today would have been virtually unimaginable then. The very concept of a girlfriend back then is hard to compare to what a girlfriend means now. Etc.

The food is a good example - you could buy handmade quilts at a surprisingly cheap rate, but you could not buy fresh Lychee from Asia at any price. You could buy an encyclopedia, but couldn't buy a single Google search. A Roman emperor could wear a handcrafted sword of the finest exotic steel, but could not get a single AK-47 in his army.

$800 is more in the good 5 star room than opulent suite territory tho, given the location

I think the answer to this is basically that the further you go back, the harder the comparisons become - or at least you have to think much harder about why you're comparing things.

Over a few years, it's pretty easy to talk about the amount of money to maintain a certain standard of living. Some things cost more, some less and it averages out to a comparative number.

How do I compare my outgoings on a mobile phone to the 1980s/60s/40s? Should I? How do I compare international travel to a time before commercial flight? Before powered flight at all? Should I compare year round access to exotic fruits - something that would require royal wealth if even possible depending on how far back you want to go.

It doesn't mean we can't do it though, just that the comparisons come with more and more caveats and more ways of working it out make sense in different contexts.

One I think is quite interesting is "how many human hours can I direct with this sum?" or even "what portion of human output can I control?". It doesn't tell you what your salary would be in the 1200s but I think it's an interesting framing for looking at how the world has changed.

>I think the answer to this is basically that the further you go back, the harder the comparisons become

That's clearly true although I suspect it's rather non-linear depending upon the metric you're trying to compare.

Healthcare is certainly one big thing that money can only buy to some degree over time. Go back to the early twentieth century and a very wealthy person can largely be as comfortable as today. The fact that they don't have kitchen appliances, TV, and so forth doesn't really matter a lot. But they can't get polio vaccine or many medical treatments that are pretty routine today.

The whole nature of what property and ownership means tends to shift with large enough time frames. It wasn't that long ago that in many places it was difficult to be wealthy without being a noble. A mansion tended to come with tenant farmers and feudal obligations.

>... is almost always going to mislead the public and be irresponsible.

Yes, the author should be careful not to mislead anyone and inspire them to travel back in time to become a charioteer.

Laughed out loud here. But I still think there's more to the original argument: If someone takes this argument at face value, they may conclude that Roman society was a modern capitalistic one, with sponsorships for athletes, celebrities endorsing products and so on. Almost reminiscent of The Flintstones. It won't be of much consequence, but it would be a bit silly.

Comparisons in the largely static medieval and early renaissance periods in Europe can easily be made across centuries without even adjusting the numbers.

I think this is an important point. Life really wasn't improving much for the average person before the industrial revolution. GDP per capita estimates of the past before the industrial revolution give us something like 50-100% GDP per capita increase over 1000+ years.

The medieval period was much more dynamic than eg classic antiquity. See the 'Real World' section of https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasis for some writing on the topic.

To get to your point: comparisons work for a surprisingly long time, when you compare societies on metallic monetary standards.

It's not really obvious why using eg gold or silver as money should keep the prices of goods and services we actually care about so stable over long times. One explanation I read is that the real cost of mining more gold is relatively stable (in terms of real labour and resources expended).

So if the market price of gold in terms of those real resources goes up, more mines will open and existing mines will work harder, eventually restoring long running equilibrium.

Similar when relative gold prices are dropping.

Another fun fact: modern economies on fiat money spend more real resources on mining gold than classic gold standard economies (like Scotland). Perhaps because people feel more of a need to invest in gold as an inflation hedge?

See 'The Resource Costs of Fiat Money Exceed Those of a Gold Standard' https://www.econlib.org/the-resource-costs-of-fiat-money-exc...

On the gold mining in different countries, maybe historically gold-based countries did all their mining back in the day and now have none left?

Not sure. Gold has been exchanged on global markets since basically forever. So local exhaustion of mines doesn't make much of a differences.

I've always gauged it by cost of living expenses for working class people.

It's one reason why I love the road to wiggan pier so much. George Orwell breaks down the cost of living in many areas of Britain for the average person. I think when I calculated it out, even me living in the US at $12/hr with a 700 rent payment and all other expenses, I was still living a comfier life than those people. And they put in some LONG days too.

The most interesting thing he pointed out too was it wasnt the corporate places that had the worst landlords and rooms, it was the small or individual owners. Simply because they couldn't afford to fix anything or give you back your deposit.

And if you want to be really persnickety... let's see how much money it would take to get CO2 levels down to Roman times! It would cost $0 in Roman Times, and trillions now, so ... they were all rich?

Well...not $0:

https://www.livescience.com/23678-methane-emissions-roman-ti...

>researchers found that methane production was high around 100 B.C., during the heyday of the Roman civilization, and waned around A.D. 200 as the empire faltered. The methane was released when Romans burned down forest to clear land for crops and expanding settlements, Sapart said.

Yep! These were Little Ice Age prevention measures, or maybe Roman Warm Period investments.

Still expenses. State should have been involved, economic incentives, campaigns like "Burn the coal - stay Huns home" Everyone knew it, but then as now too little to late

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Warm_Period

CO2 levels now aren't great, but I'm not sure Roman-era lead emissions were an improvement: https://phys.org/news/2019-05-roman-polluted-european-air-he...

I grant you a city with all its subjects and a position in my government.

Your persnickety line is precisely why you would use Gold instead of commodities for the comparison.

The appreciation of Gold is perhaps the best stand-in for the value of technological progress since then (including financial technology, e.g. if the Roman held onto that gold to from then until day).

And to be really persnickety, staple purchasing power is hardly a ruler for enormous wealth.

Net worth per capita is another measurement worth considering. $400m at roman population size is nuts.

True to all you said, but no athlete can do (the equivalent of) this today:

“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”.

This is basically the same problem that cross-cultural or -temporal IQ comparisons have.

He could fed megalopolis of his time (with what they expected), and pay soldiers of empire of his time, shouldn't we adjust this as well?

* Feed New York for one year, grocery expenses $500/month [1]

8000000 * $500/month * 12 month = $48 billion

18000000 * $500/month * 12 month = $108 billion // metro area

* Pay US Army soldiers for a fifth of a year [2]

$140 billion / 5 = $28 billion

Who have enough to pay that?

Contemporary athletes, even Michael Jordan ($2.1 billion [3]) absolutely can't.

But Bill Gates ($106 billion [4]) can! As well as Jeff Bezos ($114 billion).

Was antique inequality bigger? Yes! "It is believed that Marcus Licinius Crassus expanded his personal fortune to 170 million sesterces, while Pliny the Elder surmised his fortune to be valued even higher, at 200 million sesterces" [5]. That's five times bigger. And Augustus "personally owned all of Egypt". That's $898 billions [6]

[1] https://smartasset.com/mortgage/what-is-the-cost-of-living-i...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jordan

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wea...

Its funny how many comments in this article question that an athlete could have such absurd wealth, but don't pause to think that there are many modern people that have multiples of his claimed 15 billion in wealth, which is somehow completely not absurd...

I think you're confusing discussions about whether something is (or was) true and discussions about whether something should be true be some moral standards, the classic Hume's is/ought distinction. People in the comments here don't seem to be making any value judgements, just arguing about historical truth.

Bill Gates had huge factor in changing life of bilions people, how's that absurd?

He changed the way almost everyone lives

> Feed New York for one year

Economic comparisons across millennia are close to meaningless. For example, how does one compare modern New York City, with a population rivalling that of the ancient world’s human population, with a Roman urban centre?

The increased population is possible in part because staple prices have fallen enough to support that larger population. Not saying it's a perfect comparison but it can be used as a rough guide because there is no way that's perfectly accurate, the situation of the world has changed so much you can't account for every factor affecting any thing you try to use to create a meaningful baseline across centuries.

It is poetic comparison. Calculations performed out of curiosity.

My point was "comparison with greatest of its time, is it possible today?"

Your question based around "look how magnificent our civilization is."

And perfect counterbalance to your question would be "How does one compare biggest city of its time with New York City?" [1] [2]. I don't like such questions, they already contain judgement. And that I think is pointless.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_urban_community_siz...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities

> pretty much the only thing that matters is how you compare purchasing power and adjust for inflation

Or just compare it to the average salary at the time

Is there an athlete today that could pay for the entire Roman army (80 thousand people more or less, their salary, food, houses, equipment) for a year?

The 1,000$/year expenses on staple food is entirely made up, Roman food supply wasn't based on agriculture, at the dawn of Rome it was vegetables, catch of the day and the occasional meat bought at the market

When Rome became an empire the food started coming from all over the place as a tribute to the empire, so to establish how much it costs you have to factor in military expenditure and the cost of the political structure to sustain the logistic

Romans in fact rarely ate at home, they usually went to tabernas where they could buy their meals

Supplies were taken from the provinces and brought to Rome, that's why they also built roadways, harbours and other facilities to improve moving armies and good throughout the empire ("all roads lead to Rome" was born from that)

Now you have a better idea how much 5 times a local governor means. It means 5 times the amount of goods and troops a local governor could control.

It's like saying that an athlete today earned 5 times the GDP of an US State.

"Average salary at the time" was of course far lower than today's. It's like what we hear about folks in Sub-Saharan Africa that still have to subsist on $2 per day - the reality for most folks back then wasn't far from that.

Lower doesn't mean anything, when compared relatively

You have to compare the wealth of the rich guy with the average wealth at the time not with today's standards...

And even today, 2$ a day seem low but it's about how much the US government is giving away as aid too poor people to eat (it's about 3.4$ a day)

It doesn't mean anything if it's not compared with something that has the same base (hence my whole comment about Roman food cost that should include expenses for keeping the military state running)

> You have to compare the wealth of the rich guy with the average wealth at the time not with today's standards...

Well, maybe. It depends what question you're asking. If the question is a social one about "what would it have looked like, broadly speaking, to have someone so relatively wealthy back then?" then maybe that's a reasonable comparison. If you're trying to get at "what would the rich guy really have been able to buy, subsidize, control etc. with that kind of wealth?", comparing by consumption basket gives an interesting perspective that tries to reflect absolute differences in the standard of living.

The answer to the question is "he would be as rich as a modern billionaire in the tens of billions range"

Marcus Licinius Crassus, "The richest man in Rome" [1], net worth c. 170 million sesterces (five times athletes net worth), "joined Caesar and Pompey in the unofficial political alliance known as the First Triumvirate". Together they got end of Republic. That worth a lot.

Lets return to "the richest man in Rome". Jeff Bezos, richest in USA, net worth $114 billion [2]. Is it enough to join triumvirate, influence senate? Donald Trump net worth estimated $3.1 billion, but he is party representative. How much is party supporters net worth? [4] lists $143 billion, $82 billion - families controlling Walmart (about $150 billion net), Johnson & Johnson (about $100 billion)... About same

Gaius Appuleius Diocles, net worth 35,863,120 sesterces. About fifth of Crassus. Assuming Rome had same inequality as in USA:

35,863,120 / 170 million * $114 billion = $24.05 billion

Original posters estimate

$400m * 5 = $2 billion

Assuming [8] New Yorkers grocery expenses should be $10-20/month. They would revolt. Or city should be about Tallahassee and that's not the power they compare with [9].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_of_Donald_Trump

[4] https://budgetandthebees.com/who-is-richer-democrats-or-repu...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_%26_Johnson

[8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777782

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

> Is it enough to join triumvirate, influence senate?

Crassus, Pompey and Caesar were not just incredibly wealthy relative to the average Roman. They were rich compared to Rome. They could buy the state. That’s simply not true in modern America, where D.C. can, in times of crisis, spend trillions unencumbered. (Something no individual, presently, can.)

By that logic Mukesh Ambani is the richest person on earth by about 1.5 orders of magnitude because he's from India.

But is he the richest man in history?

Don't forget that Rome was the largest empire of its times but also the most powerful military entity by a large margin.

Is India comparable?

The two big metrics I would use to measure inflation

* How many acres of average quality land could you buy?

* How many hours of average skill labor could you buy?

Maybe we should also have one taking improved efficiency into account

* How much food could you buy?

"Average skill labor" would not account for a reasonable comparison in standards of living. It takes the exact same amount of "average skill labor" to perform a string quartet in 2020 as it did in 1720, but the cost today is far higher than it was back then, if assessed via a reasonable consumption basket (perhaps involving chained comparisons over time, etc.). That's no coincidence, of course; performing a string quartet is the rare case of a good/service that has not been made cheaper by technological progress and growth.

Comparing by food prices, while ultimately a bit more reasonable, would plausibly err in the other direction since food prices have radically fallen in modern times. It's very helpful to expand the basket beyond food, and additional historical data helps take a guess at questions like "how much would good X have been valued in Roman times, if it was available on the market?"

But some things got more expensive over time. Human labor, manufacture, handicraft.

Wikipedia [1] has a more sober figure than the $15 billion claimed from the featured article, which is far below the wealth of modern athletes:

> In equivalent basic good purchasing power, Diocles' wealth would be between approximately $60 million and $160 million.

This appears to be supported by the table at the bottom of this page [2], which claims that a seaside villa in Naples cost about 3mil sesterces/sestertii. That makes the featured article's claim that 35mil sestertii is $15 billion questionable. Adjusting using seaside villa prices, 35mil sestertii (Diocles' wealth) is more like $7mil.

The $15bil figure appears to come from the "enough to pay the whole army for 1/5 of a year" stat multiplied by the modern-day USA figure [3] (by the way, [3] appears to be the source for much of the featured article).

As far as the "enough to pay the whole army for a few months" stat goes, the most common figure I can find for "annual pay for a legionary" during Diocles' life is 1200 sestertii, or 240 for 1/5 of a year [4]. 36mil/240 is 150,000, which does sound like a plausible (even high) number for the size of the Roman army. On the other hand, [2] claims that 1200 sestertii buys about 100 lbs of pork, so that means a soldier could expect to get paid about 1 Roman pig per year?

Cross-era price comparisons are hard!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles

[2] http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~lac61/ASSIGNMENTS/SectionOne/R...

[3] https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/greatest-all-tim...

[4] https://www.jstor.org/stable/40310480

At 1200 sest. per year, a 3M sest. villa would be 2500 years of labor.

A $7M villa, on the other hand, would be only ~230 years of labor for a US solider paid $30k a year.

A pound of pork at Safeway today is ~3/lb. 100 pounds would be $300, which would be quite a meager yearly pay.

My main takeaway is that pork has likely gotten much cheaper, but not seaside villas.

I'm with you on this analysis. CAFO or factory farms have made meat much cheaper; likewise with globalized supply chain. Abundant Florida waterfront real estate – and low cost of air travel – has contributed to a comparably increase in supply of seaside villa substitutes.

> A $7M villa, on the other hand, would be only ~230 years of labor for a US solider paid $30k a year.

Your parent comment says that, adjusted to modern villa prices, Diocles' entire wealth -- 35 million sestercii, enough to buy 12 standard seaside villas -- would amount to $7M. This would put the price of one villa at only $600,000, or 20 years' labor at $30k / year.

Oh! Indeed I misread. Things do align better that way.

Yes, this seems mostly sourced from that Laphram's Quarterly article. I submitted it to HN a few years ago (although the article was a few years old itself) and there was a bit of a discussion back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12417179

A Polish numismatist, Zbigniew Żabiński, came up with trofa (from Greek trophe 'alimentation'), a universal measure of the value of money. One trofa is defined as an average person's daily ration of food typical for the given place and time. Altogether, it has 3000 kcal: 1800 kcal in 450 g of carbohydrates, 900 kcal in 100 g of fat, and 300 kcal in 75 g of protein.

For instance, in late 1970s' Poland, one trofa consisted of 400 g of rye bread, 100 g of wheat flour, 250 g of potatoes, 100 g of beef, 100 g of sugar, 80 g of butter, and 1/2 litre of milk. Assuming that its content has not changed, you take the cost of the food (8.70 PLN in 2016), add 20% for condiments and preparation, and get 10.50 PLN as the 2016 price of a trofa in Poland.[0]

In Octavian's times, one denarius could buy you 2 trofas (with content appropriate for ancient Mediterranean lands),[0] Judas's 30 pieces of silver were worth 60 trofas,[1] etc.

Unfortunately, Żabiński published in Polish behind the Iron Curtain so the trofa is virtually unknown outside Poland. The Big Mac index is its pale reflection.

More information in Polish:

[0] A table of trofa's price from Octavian's Rome to contemporary Poland: http://blognumizmatyczny.pl/2016/03/14/trofa-miernik-wartosc...

[1] Thirty pieces of silver: http://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media//files/Collectanea_Theologica/C...

[2] The purchasing power in medieval Balkans: https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/bitstream/10593/8080/1/11_Zb...

[3] Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=Żabiński+trofa

The Japanese have the “koku” unit of rice measurement - which is approximately the amount it takes to feed one person for a year.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koku

They don’t mention anything about the person’s appetite. :)

While it's an interesting idea, this only captures relative wealth. Places that have higher quality food as standard would be seen as less rich. It's much cheaper to get calories from staples such as rice and potatoes, but a lot more difficult to get it from protein. It's possible to survive on a diet of mostly carbs and little protein, but that can also make you more susceptible to malnutrition, especially if famines are abound.

Also, 3000 kcal per day means that everyone gets fat. The amount of intense physical activity you have to do for an average person to use up that many calories is on the level of modern athletes.

Just to mention that staples like grain have indeed much protein, so your sentence actually doesn't make much sense.

The conception of food consisting of vegetable + meat/fish + staple (rice, bread, potato, ..) is an utterly modern one.

All across history in most settled cultures will have lived principally of local plants of some kind, with meat being a rate treat. The exception being fishing villages but even there vegetables/grains will always have been a principal source of calories and nutrients.

Yes, and people nowadays are taller, smarter, and live longer. A large part of the Flynn effect is usually attributed to nutrition. Humans can survive with poor nutrition (not getting the right amount of nutrients they need) for a very long time, but it usually has consequences, especially when it happens during childhood.

Another thing to keep in mind is that humans didn't evolve to be farmers. We evolved to be hunter-gatherers. Just because for a slice of our existence people ate one way doesn't mean that that's the diet most suited for us.

By the way, there's a difference between animal proteins and protein in grain. They aren't quite the same composition of amino-acids.

Curious - why food? Why not clothing for a year, or transportation, or the cost of raising a child, or a night at an inn, or what it cost to bribe a Senator? So many simple comparables besides food-for-a-day.

The purpose is to compare pricing across history. Food prices is a good yardstick since everybody throughout history need food. You cant really measure the price of "a night at an inn" for a culture without inns, for example. The cost of transportation is not that useful when most people walk everywhere.

Well, you get the idea. Food is subject to very particular customs, environments and traditions. Much more so than other things. So likely a skewed measure. Got to be other things that make at least as much sense.

I read a while back where Joe DiMaggio was being interviewed in his later years. The writer mentioned the astronomical sums recent players got, while greats of the past played for much less.

"Some of today's players make millions a year. What do you think you'd be worth?"

"Oh, I figure I'd be worth close to a million. Maybe 8 or 9 hundred thousand."

"But you're Joe DiMaggio! One of the all time greats!"

"Yes, but I'm in my 70s...."

A fun thought experiment is what if you could go back in time to year nnnn, pick a time, and you could only take with you 1 lb of material, or X kg, name some reasonable amount you can carry by hand. What would you take with you ? Fun game. But for a time greater than say 120 years, I would argue 1lb of aluminum would make you a kajillionaire since it was not until around 1900 or so that it was possible to refine it, before then it was one of the rarest materials. You could also name things like a computer, a machine gun etc. This little thought game sort of highlights the issue discussed in this thread. Imagine how much you would have made if you had been able to race that chariot guy if you had say a modern 4x4 (assuming you could find gas) although that violates the 1lb rule:)

a gun, a solar panel, and a tablet with wikipedia.

perhaps a taser would be even more useful in this scenario since you'd be able to recharge it and not worry about ammo

I think the more interesting question isn't really what you carry but where you go. If you can control where you go (doesn't really matter when, as long as its >250 years ago) the obvious answer in my opinion is you take enough documentation to recreate the Bessemer process and steam engine, some historical prospecting maps, and as much gold as you can carry to pay for the manpower to build everything. If you pick the right spot (assuming it's populated) near known easily accessible iron, coal, and other mineral deposits, you'd be able to begin the industrial revolution centuries or millenia before it actually happened. The Romans had water wheels, rudimentary steam engines, steel, and coal but all of the easily accessible materials were spread out across several continents so there wasn't enough available to really develop towards industrialization. There's no real reason the technologies couldn't be bootstrapped with the right geography. It really isn't a stretch to add a section on gunpowder to the documentation and leap another age or two, bringing guns to the iron age. If my Empire Earth simulations are anything to go by, it would lead to total world domination in short order (which would then quickly collapse because long distance communication would still be centuries away).

The problem with taking something like aluminum is that until it was plentifully available, no one had any idea what to do with it and it wasn't really worth all that much. I've got a 1867 Scientific American with several articles/letters to the editor arguing back and forth over its future potential with one side emphasizing the fact that since it was so rare, few people had access to it to develop technology to use it and so there was little demand. You'd basically have to bring the rest of modern civilization with you to make the material useful and valuable in a human life time. Same with computers, anything that runs on refined fossil fuels like gasoline or electricity, and so on.

I'd take a pound of modern seeds. The plants we have today are amazing in terms of productivity compared to even a century ago. And to be pragmatic, although it's fun to fantasize about being the one to start the Industrial Revolution centuries earlier, one person in ancient times is very likely to just die of disease or violence before anything grand could happen.

But Farmers know what to do with seeds, and after the first harvest, the boon of plentiful crops will have spread no matter what.

"Diocles is also notable for owning an extremely rare ducenarius, a horse that had won at least 200 races" --Wikipedia

That seems pretty impressive, and it made me wonder how race horses compare (or are treated differently?) today.

It's also possible he had access to rare supplements that enhanced performance; a modern equivalent would be a banned PED or Performance Enhancing Drug.

I guess I'm morbidly curious how much better performance a doped horse has?

I would think much like doping does today, marginal but when all the competitors / animals are all at the top of their game, marginal gains can be the difference between winning and losing.

That makes sense, thanks

Maximum Security has won $11.8M so far in its racing career [0], and there are strong indications that it has been doped. [1]

[0] http://www.equibase.com/profiles/Results.cfm?type=Horse&refn...

[1] https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/239437/nava...

There were several horses for each charriot. It seems a little different to how the races are today.

One of the interesting things that stands out to me is that the age range of athleticism is still the same as today. I guess it's not that surprising that his career spanned from age 18 to 42, but the fact that lines up so closely with modern professional sport competitiveness is intriguing at least for some reason. Sample size of one of course, but I guess maybe that even for all the advancements we've made in terms of knowing about the human body, physical limits haven't changed to a drastic degree or something.

"According to Dr. Struck, chariot racer from Ancient Rome named Gaius Appuleius Diocles, amassed a fortune of 35,863,120 sesterces – the equivalent of $15 billion." ... “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”

So the highest paid provincial governors were typically getting paid $3B over 18 years? Sounds kind of high and makes me rather dubious of how the $15B figure is calculated.

It's also interesting that the Roman Army apparently ate five times as much as the entire city of Rome. Resource allocation was clearly very different back then (and apparently in our favor.)

Pay <> eat.

Food wouldn’t have been the military’s main expense. In a pre-industrial society weapons and equipment were extremely expensive.

I understand that roman governors weren't really paid, they were allowed (expected) to squeeze as much money as they could out of the provinces, and could keep any "extra" after the required taxes for Rome

$3B is a totally plausible modern equivalent

It helps if you think of Rome less as a modern democracy, and more as a kind of mafia state. These weren’t civil servants; it was very normal for them to make a fortune out of a provincial governorship.

A provincal governor was responsible for tax collection, law, security, etc. They got to keep a percentage of the taxes they collected. So if you were the governor of a very prosperous province you made a lot of money. This also incentivized the governor to make their province to generate as much tax revenue as possible (good for both the governor and Rome itself)

But in turn you have to remember that it was a political position and in roman politics money was everything. They most likely paid a crazy amount of money to get the post and had to keep paying to keep it. And any further advances in politics would just cost more.

Another thing to know is that they were the leader of the provinces legion. If there was a revolt and you failed to squash it you most likely ended up dead way before more legions would arrive from other provinces.

This was pre imperial era. After that the power of a governor came from the emperor directly. They had exactly as much power and/or money as the emperor wanted to give them.

Well explained

I'd add one point

> This also incentivized the governor to make their province to generate as much tax revenue as possible (good for both the governor and Rome itself)

That society was slave labour-based, so at some point of their history they needed lots of tax revenue, to support the army, for it to collect as many slaves as possible (or, in general, for it to protect their sources of slave labour). That particular arrangement with provincial governors was one of the solutions they tried. See also the progressive extension of the right of citizenship, first limited to the city of Rome and few other places, then after various intermediate phases, extended to the whole of the Empire: citizens were the ones who were taxed.

Roman taxes varied a lot over the course of ~2000 years, so it is implicitly complicated. On big difference is that Roman tax collectors bought the right to collect taxes, the publicani.

Basically, some Roman lesser-noble (equite) goes to an auction. He buys the right to collect taxes in some village or port or something else. They even give him a special stick so that all the plebs know they gotta pay this guy. Usually, the cost of this stick was about the amount of taxes generated. The money that the guy gives Rome is treated as a loan, and it accrues interest. So the guy gets the money back at the end of his term as tax collector, plus a little bit more. Critically, if the guy just lies to the people and takes more in taxes than what he paid for the stick, he get to just keep that too. Totally legal. Usually, this guy doesn't have the cash up front, so he goes to other people to gin up the money for the auction. If the port gets hammered by a storm or the village burns down, tough cookies for the guy with the stick. He's still gonna owe the money to his creditors at the end of his term.

Jesus even talks about this in the Bible. He uses the Publican as a foil to the Pharisee (a super religious person) and talk about needing forgiveness and praying humbly. Basically, the publican is the most hated person that even Christ could think of. Not the legionaries, not the Emperors, but the tax man.

Again though, these tax systems changed a lot over time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisee_and_the_Publican

> Usually, the cost of this stick was about the amount of taxes generated.

Over what time period? And was the cashflow discounted at the "risk-free" rate?

This is basically a rewrite of the original article on Laphams Quarterly and a better source (images aren’t miscaptioned and there’s an audio version) https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/greatest-all-tim...

Seems like the highest paid athlete of these days is this: https://archive.org/details/37AsterixAndTheChariotRace/page/...

Perhaps slightly askew, I’ve read Norwich’s History of Byzantium and he talks about there being the Green and Blue factions that kept squabbling some thousand years later.

It seemed the White and Green had collapsed in previous centuries.

I was in the Blue team at my primary school...

You blues are so full of yourself, we greens are going strong thank you very much.

I compute 35M sesterces = US$140M. A solidus of gold weighs 8 grams and was worth 100 sesterces. A gram of gold $52 today. A sesterces would be about $4.

Ok so whats the realistic number here? I was hoping to using this in the virtual trivia game but it has lost its lustre in reading the comment thread.

Romans didn't have television to broadcast these races to the whole nation.

The only way to become rich was through a share of ticket sales.

Ticket sales are limited by the size of the stadium and frequency of races.

With ~thousands of races in a career and ~thousands of people in a stadium, something doesn't add up...

If tickets were expensive enough to amass such a fortune (remembering revenue would also need to pay for other athletes and the venue), I would imagine not that many people could afford to attend...

Colosseum sat about 50,000 people. 2000 races would be 100,000,000 customers served. Assuming it's alway full. Not a historian but consistently have heard that the games were heavily subsidized by the wealthy. Kinda like the big boss handing out season tickets to favored staff and business associates.

I think it's sometimes hard to imagine how important this stuff was. The Byzantine had a revolt that involved Chariot Race factions. Seriously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots

Circus Maximus would easily draw a larger crowd than the Colosseum, too.

These races weren't hold at the Colosseum but at an oval track. The biggest one called Circus Maximus seated 150,000.

But in general these were free to attend. Some rich guy would pay for it to become more famous/get political power.

I'm probably repeating myself here but what doesn't add up is how they calculate an equivalent purchasing power in today's society. His earnings could buy X, translate that to today's stuff, and what you pick for X has a profound impact on his estimated wealth. Pick something that's cheap today - say, grain - and you wind up with a wildly different answer than if you pick something that's expensive today - say, highly productive modern labor, or gold.

AFAIK the games and races were free to attend, and were sponsored by the wealthy (especially the emperor) as a sop to the crowds. There was even a government office (quaestor iirc), whose job was essentially only to sponsor public games - holding the office was an important step in building your public image in the city, but also often meant borrowing incredible sums from even wealthier patrons. This is partly why Julius Caesar spent most of his career deeply in debt, for example.

Replying to myself with a correction as it’s too late to edit: the office I was thinking of was aedile. Quaestor was broadly more like treasurer, or maybe comptroller.

> The only way to become rich was through a share of ticket sales.

Did no body gamble on these races?

This seems to be using scale and price changes to mislead. The modern equivalent would be Lebron James funding a school system, which seems like a similar commitment. We can imagine Lebron eg paying the police force of Cleveland for a quarter of a year. Perhaps more comparable numbers to Rome.

Nothing about the numbers for the globe or the us compare to ancient Roman numbers.

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