The highest paid athlete in all human history is thought to be Roman charioteer Gaius Appuleius
Diocles.
He retired at the age of 42, after racing chariots for 24 years.
This was somewhat rare as chariot racing was very dangerous and many charioteers died before
making it to retirement.
So although he wasn't the greatest racer, his longevity and exciting race style allowed
Gaius Appuleius Diocles to amass over 35 million sesterces over his life.
This figure is difficult to accurately convert to today's currency but it's thought this
would put Gaius Diocles' net worth in the ballpark of fifteen billion dollars.
In contrast, today's highest paid athlete, Michael Jordan, raked in a measly 2 billion
dollars - ah sure you wouldn't even bother picking that up if it fell out of your pocket.
So what happened to good old fashioned chariot racing?
I mean, basketball is fun too but I think given the choice to spectate a modern basketball
game versus an ancient chariot race, we'd all pick the latter.
You're sitting out in the Circus Maximus, drinking with your mates, the sun is beaming
down, the Sabine women are looking good and then someone gets thrown from their chariot
and trampled to death.
The crowd goes wild.
Life is good.
Well believe it or not it didn't go away for good.
In fact, a modern re-imagining of chariot racing is potentially even more dangerous
than the traditional incarnation.
It's probably a lot cooler though, the ancient masses would have been mesmerised by this.
So what's it all about?
Well, chariot racing was a very popular sport in the ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine
civilisations.
Generally, each chariot would house a driver, who was usually a slave or contract professional,
and this chariot would be pulled by four horses or sometimes two.
The racing required massive arenas and was very dangerous - a number of horses pulling
heavy rigs at high speeds colliding could result in serious injury and death for both
the horses and the riders.
Which is probably why people enjoyed it so much.
Despite the risk involved to riders, victories were almost always credited to the horses
and their wealthy owners, nobody really gave a shit about the bum in the chariot.
However, similar to gladiators, the charioteer could transform his lowly status by becoming
a celebrated and legendary champion of chariot racing, and this could net them a lot of money
too, as previously mentioned.
I guess it's not all too disimilar with racing today, there are a few big names that make
mountains of money but a lot of these fellas are overlooked for what car they're driving
until they make a name for themselves.
The popularity of chariot racing declined after the fall of the Roman Empire to the
point where it has basically vanished in modern times.
You can still see it in some form or another at the occasional festival or exhibition,
and harness racing is sort of in the same spirit, but chariot racing just doesn't exist
at the same scale it used to.
Probably because it's so dangerous.
Why is it so dangerous?
Well, I'd personally attribute it to all the horses.
Horses are incredibly strong, incredibly heavy and incredibly stupid and that's an incredibly
dangerous combination.
Sorry, horse lovers, I appreciate horses are beautiful, elegant creatures but they're also
really, really dumb.
I'm afraid of being paralyzed by a horse that fell on top of me at the shock of seeing a
balloon, or kicked me in the head because the patch of grass it was standing on was
a little too moist for its liking.
So if we get rid of the horses, we can make chariot racing safer, and thus a viable option
for a popular sport again, right?
So what if we replaced the horses with... let's say motorbikes.
No, wait a minute, that sounds somehow even more dangerous.
A horse may be dumb, but a motorbike?
Motorcycle chariot racing's origin is commonly attributed to the release of the silent movie
Ben-Hur in 1925.
It's thought scenes of chariot racing in the movie inspired people to have a go at reviving
the classic sport.
It's believed this began in Australia, the Australians I guess not satisfied with the
volume of ways to die in their country.
Now, drawing a man riding a chariot being pulled by one or more motorcycles is just
about the last thing I want to be doing over and over and over again, and yes, that is
how these videos are made folks, I really do have to draw this shit, but thankfully
there are photographs and even footage of this.
Early rigs consisted of the driver on the motorcycle, pulling a chariot and charioteer
that were little more than ornament.
As the sport gained popularity outside of Australia and spread to Europe and America,
more convoluted rigs appeared, consisting of two driverless motorcycles and a charioteer
who controlled them from the chariot with some configuration of reigns.
Sometimes the steering was done just by making one bike go faster than the other, other times
it was done by a rigid extension attached to the handlebars of the bikes.
Here's some footage of the mad bastards actually racing in the 1930's.
Looks pretty cool, although probably not particularly safe.
Then again, what was back then?
If you're gonna die I supposed you'd might as well do it in a motorbike chariot race
rather than succumbing to lead paint poisoning or inhaling asbestos or owning a watch....
They painted the hands with radium.
Actually they put radium in a lot of things, this is kind of what I'm talking about, y'know,
back then they just kind of did things like the first cavemen figuring out which berries
were ok to eat.
Sometime in the late 30's, we thought motorcycle chariot racing simply wasn't dangerous enough
and decided to do something else.
Chariot racing's popularity once again declined, however, it has not disappeared altogether.
Motorcycle chariot racing does still exist today, with the added benefit that you can
see how people have set up their rigs on the internet, just in case you too thought 70
was too high a number for life expectancy.
On an unrelated note, just like chariot racing, my Twitter account has also been revived after
a long period of extinction.
I guess they finally *ahem* saw sense.
Let this be a warning to everyone else.
So go follow me on there before I inevitably fall out with the new management too, and
also buy a channel membership for added perks like exclusive emojis.
And if you're not arsed going to another website or spending any money because you're a cheap,
lazy bastard.
Well, I can respect that.
You can just subscribe, it's free, which means it's pretty good value.
Thanks.