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>Presumably as a gladiatorial slave you wouldnt need to worry about abstaining from food choices. It is worth noting that many gladiators, and Olympic competit

>Presumably as a gladiatorial slave you wouldnt need to worry about abstaining from food choices. It is worth noting that many gladiators, and Olympic competitors, were in fact not slaves and many were actually quite wealthy. Gladiators would do alright purely off of sexual relationships, rather high-class Roman maids and matrons like Hippia actually walked away from her family to be with a gladiator. There are many rumors from the time that allege various sons of powerful people to be bastard offspring of gladiators. There's even tell of some being 'the care and suffering of women' such as one byt he name of Hermes that Martial wrote of. You can tell how wealthy some were simply by looking at the fines issued to them. If you look at charioteers Theogenes and Porphyrius you can see good examples, Theogenes for example was once fined 2 talents for withdrawing from an event (about 250k dollars). If you look at a 2nd century prize table from Aphrodisias you see 500-3000 drachmas and there were several games referred to as 'the 3000-drachma Games', some would see prizes of 6000 drachma and in at least one instance of 30,000 drachma (about 100 years of a solderier's pay) being paid for a single athlete just to appear. At the Panathenaic games the lowest prize was 100 amphrae of olive oil, about 225k$ worth and winners were often fed by their home city for life if they won. Diocles, another charioteer, would compete for prizes up to 60,000 sesterces at a time which would be worth 2.5-3 million dollars today and if you look at his known life time winnings you get 35.8 million sesterces making him a billionaire and then some in today's dollars.

warent 8y ago
Where did you learn all this? I feel like I could have kept reading this post forever. If you have any books to recommend, that would be amazing.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  A book titled "Manthropology: The Science of Why the Modern Male Is Not the Man He Used to Be" by Peter McAllister (bahahaha I just realized that's the same name from Home Alone). Everything in the book should be taken as liberal interpretation of history, however that being said he does cite where he gets facts and figures from so you can do your own research of the subjects. Here's a source of the 30k figure https://books.google.com/books?id=QMgsAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=30,000+drachma+inscription&source=bl&ots=xAAKo4aegQ&sig=vcQu_BUxGqNpnrBeaUVWG8jxTWA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj9q4nPlYTfAhUHvFkKHeB6Cz4Q6AEwBHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=30%2C000%20drachma%20inscription&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=QMgsAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=P... Here's an article that actually puts Diocles worth 15 billion https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942699/Wealth-of-todays-sports-stars-is-no-match-for-the-fortunes-of-Romes-chariot-racers.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/794...
will_brown 8y ago
>It is worth noting that many gladiators, and Olympic competitors, were in fact not slaves and many were actually quite wealthy. Hence my qualifier gladiatorial slave. Yes presumably a free gladiator had more choice than a gladiatorial slave. Your use of “many”, doesn’t shed much light on the subject, by all accounts most were slaves, free gladiators were definitely the exception not the rule. But yes some were the superstar athletes of their day and the wealth (women) that goes along with that status.
Someone 8y ago
Wikipedia On Diocles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles): His winnings reportedly totaled 35,863,120 sesterces, allegedly, over $15 billion in today’s dollars, an amount which could provide a year's supply of grain to the entire city of Rome
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I think this was brought up in another place on HN recently, and somebody argued it's probably a couple orders of magnitude off in the conversion to "today's dollars" apart from the accuracy of the figure in sesterces. My thought is $15 billion in today's dollars is an absurd amount for "a years supply of grain for Rome", since Rome was supposedly around a million people. $15,000 per person for food alone is more than the global per capita GDP in 2018!
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    >$15,000 per person for food alone is more than the global per capita GDP in 2018! So in the United States, one acre of wheat yields an average 37.1 bushels of wheat. That's about 210,000 kcals of flour per acre using modern machinery. If we look at https://livinghistoryfarms.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/grain-harvest-and-threshing-time/ https://livinghistoryfarms.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/grain-ha... we find that in the 19th century a skilled cradler could harvest 1 ½ -2 acres a day. Grain was harvest by hand until the first century when the vallus was invented so I'm going to just estimate a difficulty increase of 4 people being able to harvest an acre in a day without a vallus or a cradle. Beloch's 1886 estimate for the population of the empire during the reign of Augustus suggests there were 23 million European Romans, if we assume 'Rome' means the city I haven't a clue what the population would have been, if we assume the whole empire then Beloch's estimate was 54 million. Let's just assume 1 million people with 20% of their caloric intake being grain and assume an even 2000 kcals per person. So we need a bit over 1900 acres assuming no spoilage per million people. Wheat has a fairly narrow harvest window as you need to harvest it once it reaches a certain moisture level and if you leave it too dry too long it can easily be damaged/detached from wind and rain. Let's assume a team of 4 people can realistically harvest, and prepare for further drying, 5 acres in the window. That means we need 3800 people per million mouths fed a diet that gets 20% of it's kcals from wheat using ancient harvesting methods. Obviously this is an estimate but I tried to be generous in favor of the harvesting and my kcal number is likely low. Yields would also be markedly reduced back then without chemical fertilizer/herbicides/pesticides. So 3800 people per million mouths earning 800-1000 sesterces a year ( https://www.slideshare.net/javierredondas/jobs-salariesrome https://www.slideshare.net/javierredondas/jobs-salariesrome ) let's assume another 10% in cost for milling (probably low) so we'll assume 3,762,000 sesterces per 1 million people for 20% of their kcal needs. Converting sesterces to modern money is a bit tricky but at 1990 silver prices a single sesterce was worth about $1 and by mid 2010 would have been about $3.25 according to https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spqr/money-1.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spqr/money-1.h... So anywhere from 3-12 million dollars per million people. I'm guessing this would have been more like 15-45 million dollars per million people so even with that figure we're looking at maybe 2 billion dollars for all of the Roman empire. So yeah, I like the (IIRC) 1.5 billion dollar figure mentioned in the book I referenced elsewhere which is why I left it at 1 billion and then some in my comment.
goto11 8y ago
> It is worth noting that many gladiators, and Olympic competitors, were in fact not slaves and many were actually quite wealthy. Gladiators and Olympic competitors are completely different things. Olympic competitors were free men - I don't think slaves where allowed to participate. Gladiators on the other hand were mostly slaves. It was considered a dishonorable occupation - basically on the level of prostitution - and therefore not suitable for a free man. If a free man partook in gladiatorial combat he would lose a number of civil rights. Chariots were owned by wealthy free men, and presumably they would be the ones paying a fine.

warent 8y ago

Where did you learn all this? I feel like I could have kept reading this post forever. If you have any books to recommend, that would be amazing.

ryanmercer 8y ago
A book titled "Manthropology: The Science of Why the Modern Male Is Not the Man He Used to Be" by Peter McAllister (bahahaha I just realized that's the same name from Home Alone). Everything in the book should be taken as liberal interpretation of history, however that being said he does cite where he gets facts and figures from so you can do your own research of the subjects. Here's a source of the 30k figure https://books.google.com/books?id=QMgsAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=30,000+drachma+inscription&source=bl&ots=xAAKo4aegQ&sig=vcQu_BUxGqNpnrBeaUVWG8jxTWA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj9q4nPlYTfAhUHvFkKHeB6Cz4Q6AEwBHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=30%2C000%20drachma%20inscription&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=QMgsAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=P... Here's an article that actually puts Diocles worth 15 billion https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942699/Wealth-of-todays-sports-stars-is-no-match-for-the-fortunes-of-Romes-chariot-racers.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/794...

will_brown 8y ago

>It is worth noting that many gladiators, and Olympic competitors, were in fact not slaves and many were actually quite wealthy. Hence my qualifier gladiatorial slave. Yes presumably a free gladiator had more choice than a gladiatorial slave. Your use of “many”, doesn’t shed much light on the subject, by all accounts most were slaves, free gladiators were definitely the exception not the rule. But yes some were the superstar athletes of their day and the wealth (women) that goes along with that status.

Someone 8y ago

Wikipedia On Diocles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles): His winnings reportedly totaled 35,863,120 sesterces, allegedly, over $15 billion in today’s dollars, an amount which could provide a year's supply of grain to the entire city of Rome

perl4ever 8y ago
I think this was brought up in another place on HN recently, and somebody argued it's probably a couple orders of magnitude off in the conversion to "today's dollars" apart from the accuracy of the figure in sesterces. My thought is $15 billion in today's dollars is an absurd amount for "a years supply of grain for Rome", since Rome was supposedly around a million people. $15,000 per person for food alone is more than the global per capita GDP in 2018!
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >$15,000 per person for food alone is more than the global per capita GDP in 2018! So in the United States, one acre of wheat yields an average 37.1 bushels of wheat. That's about 210,000 kcals of flour per acre using modern machinery. If we look at https://livinghistoryfarms.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/grain-harvest-and-threshing-time/ https://livinghistoryfarms.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/grain-ha... we find that in the 19th century a skilled cradler could harvest 1 ½ -2 acres a day. Grain was harvest by hand until the first century when the vallus was invented so I'm going to just estimate a difficulty increase of 4 people being able to harvest an acre in a day without a vallus or a cradle. Beloch's 1886 estimate for the population of the empire during the reign of Augustus suggests there were 23 million European Romans, if we assume 'Rome' means the city I haven't a clue what the population would have been, if we assume the whole empire then Beloch's estimate was 54 million. Let's just assume 1 million people with 20% of their caloric intake being grain and assume an even 2000 kcals per person. So we need a bit over 1900 acres assuming no spoilage per million people. Wheat has a fairly narrow harvest window as you need to harvest it once it reaches a certain moisture level and if you leave it too dry too long it can easily be damaged/detached from wind and rain. Let's assume a team of 4 people can realistically harvest, and prepare for further drying, 5 acres in the window. That means we need 3800 people per million mouths fed a diet that gets 20% of it's kcals from wheat using ancient harvesting methods. Obviously this is an estimate but I tried to be generous in favor of the harvesting and my kcal number is likely low. Yields would also be markedly reduced back then without chemical fertilizer/herbicides/pesticides. So 3800 people per million mouths earning 800-1000 sesterces a year ( https://www.slideshare.net/javierredondas/jobs-salariesrome https://www.slideshare.net/javierredondas/jobs-salariesrome ) let's assume another 10% in cost for milling (probably low) so we'll assume 3,762,000 sesterces per 1 million people for 20% of their kcal needs. Converting sesterces to modern money is a bit tricky but at 1990 silver prices a single sesterce was worth about $1 and by mid 2010 would have been about $3.25 according to https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spqr/money-1.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spqr/money-1.h... So anywhere from 3-12 million dollars per million people. I'm guessing this would have been more like 15-45 million dollars per million people so even with that figure we're looking at maybe 2 billion dollars for all of the Roman empire. So yeah, I like the (IIRC) 1.5 billion dollar figure mentioned in the book I referenced elsewhere which is why I left it at 1 billion and then some in my comment.

goto11 8y ago

> It is worth noting that many gladiators, and Olympic competitors, were in fact not slaves and many were actually quite wealthy. Gladiators and Olympic competitors are completely different things. Olympic competitors were free men - I don't think slaves where allowed to participate. Gladiators on the other hand were mostly slaves. It was considered a dishonorable occupation - basically on the level of prostitution - and therefore not suitable for a free man. If a free man partook in gladiatorial combat he would lose a number of civil rights. Chariots were owned by wealthy free men, and presumably they would be the ones paying a fine.