With all the money being raked in by guys like Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, and Alex Rodriguez, you'd expect the highest paid athlete ever to be from the modern times, right?
Wrong.
Gaius Appuleius Diocles, a roman charioteer, has made more than Tiger, Kobe, and A-Rod combined. That's right, with a career earnings of 35,863,120 sesterces (ancient Roman coins), Diocles blows today's superstars out of the water.
Called "the most eminent of all charioteers” during his time, Diocles career started in 122 A.D. at the ripe young age of 18, a career that spanned two decades and 24 years.
He won 1,462 of his 4,257 races, a 34% winning percentage, and made nine horses 100-time winners and one horse (Pompeianus) a 200-time winner.
According to Discovery.com, it is estimated "that Diocles’s total earnings of 35,863,120 sesterces were enough to provide grain for the entire population of Rome for one year, or to fund the Roman Army at its height for more than two months."
Translate that kind of money into today's world, and Diocles's career earnings was $15 billion. That's some serious dough.
**You can reach the author of this post at gazzy@gacksports.com
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