Gaius Appuleius Diocles, The $15 Billion Athlete of the Ancient World:
There is much discussion about today’s highly paid athletes, be they football stars or Olympic competitors. According to Forbes, the top five highest-paid athletes in 2016 were Cristiano Ronaldo ($88 million), Lionel Messi ($81.4 million), LeBron James ($77.2 million), Roger Federer ($67.8 million), and Kevin Durant ($56.2 million). Yet to history’s highest paid athlete, these figures are a pittance. Even the few sports stars that have managed to break $1 billion in total revenues, such as Tiger Woods, cannot compete with the highest paid athlete of all time - Gaius Appuleius Diocles, a Roman charioteer who reportedly earned over $15 billion in today’s dollars.The 2 nd -century star did not make his money through sponsorships or marketing gambits. Instead, the earnings came solely from the prizes he won over a 24-year-long career. Of the 4,257 four-horse races he competed in, Diocles won 1,462 races and was placed in an additional 1,438 races (mostly finishing in second place). The ‘champion of charioteers’ is one of the best-documented ancient athletes, most likely because he was such a star at the famous Roman Circus Maximus. Many students of history know that the Circus was merely a way for the flagging Empire to pacify the masses of poor and downtrodden. Contemporaries, too, were aware of the ulterior motives behind the Emperor’s support of the weekly chariot races. Writing in the 1 st century AD, poet and satirist Juvenal wrote, “Long ago the people shed their anxieties, ever since we do not sell our votes to anyone. For the people – who once conferred imperium, symbols of office, legions, everything – now hold themselves in check and anxiously desire only two things, the grain dole and chariot races in the Circus” (Mandal, 2016).
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