Where did that 15 billion number come from?
Diocles’ lifetime winnings, as recorded in Roman inscription CIL 6.10048, totalled 35,863,120 sesterces (HS) over a working life of 24 years. From this, he would have been paid an unknown sum by his management team, or his owners; his status as slave or free is not certain, nor is the likely amount of his total share.
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Plugging that into this website: https://testamentpress.com/ancient-money-calculator.html, gives ~ 390 million USD
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Reading this stack exchange post, gives ~ 60 million USD
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Reading the wiki page on Sesterius “A loaf of bread cost roughly half a sestertius”, where bread now costs about 3 USD, so that’s ~ 215 million USD
Still a lot obviously, but where did that factor of 10-100 come from?
I initially saw that number on a Facebook post and when I checked the source [1] it also mentioned the 15 billion figure so I went with it. Looking at it closely, the author did some “creative” math to get that number
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. By today’s standards that last figure, assuming the apt comparison is what it takes to pay the wages of the American armed forces for the same period, would cash out to about $15 billion
Good catch, I should read the sources better and don’t trust the Facebook (especially the Facebook)
You have to do some extraordinary mental gymnastics to expect paying for all soldiers in the roman empire is comparable to paying for all soldiers in the US.
Yeah that is an absolutely ridiculous bridge of assumptions and comparisons to walk across
You probably shouldn’t compare the price of bread then vs the price of bread now. It’s $3 in the store, but that’s after decades of developing efficient methods to produce bread in gigantic quantities, which brings the consumer price down.
An artisan loaf of bread made fresh by a baker near to me costs closer to $9, for example. This would be closer to the way they made bread at the time, but even now we have modern efficiencies and easier access to ingredients.
Yeah, but back then there wasn’t “artisan bread” since it all was. Also no middle men or board members and ceo’s and property costs and such. You were just one or two guys buying flour and salt and wood, making bread every day, that you sold every day.
I’d also be interested how this salary compares to salaries of other jobs. It doesn’t really matter if that number is correct if also a janitor earned close to that.
From the wiki link above:
… soldiers of the Rhine army who rose against Tiberius… demanded to be paid a denarius a day, and they got it.[3]
One Sistertius is worth 1/4 of a Denarius, and 1/2 a Sisterius can buy a loaf of bread.
So 1 Denarius a day = 4 Sisterius = 8 loaves of bread a day
If we assume 3 USD is the price of a loaf of bread now, then these soldiers were being paid 24 dollars a day. Seems pretty low, but I guess bread was maybe more expensive back then?
Soldiers now make around 60 USD a day (random googling), so we’re dealing with a factor of 3 error which doesn’t seem so bad
AFAIK bread was quite a bit more expensive in the past, since baking involved getting up hours in advance to start a fire inside the massive earthen oven, not to mention that all the other parts of making flour were also way more difficult than they are now…
I think it might be comparable to meat these days? Something that everyone eats, but at the same time most people on some level realize that it’s actually pretty fucking expensive and they should eat less of it, but it’s just so normalized and tastes good so they just keep eating it every day.
(And for reference meat in the past would have been much more of a luxury, not in that people were vegetarians or anything but they’d just have less meat in every meal and they wouldn’t turn their nose at organs and “low quality” stuff like we do.)
Sesterius “A loaf of bread cost roughly half a sestertius”, where bread now costs about 3 USD, so that’s ~ 24 million USD
Could you explain this math? If 0.5 Sestertius = 3 USD, we have a factor of 6. So then 35,863,120 Serterces should be 215,178,720 USD? What am I missing?
35,863,120 sesterces = (times by 2) 71,726,240 loafs of bread = (divide by 3) 23,908,746 USD
Isn’t that right?
no, you are dividing loaves of bread by 3 to get USD, that would only be right if a loaf cost 1/3 of a dollar.
The sequence should be money in Sestertius / (Sestertius per loaf) = loaves
loaves * (USD per loaf) = money in USDoh, doy! blinded by the numbers, fixed now
Let me know if you spot any more goofs
Ah, I see you already got it. 😄👍
Why are you dividing by 3?
Even calculating based on the silver content when sestertius is 2.5g silver gives 90M grams of 90 metric tons. Each gram is valued around $1 so that’s a 90M USD there.
Do these figures include earnings from garum endorsements?
This was if he had invested in Bitcoin right away.
They probably converted it using the BigMac index
Not sure but everywhere I look they say $15 billion
https://greekreporter.com/2025/05/16/diocles-15-billion-athlete-ancient-world/
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[off topic]
I’m not much of a fan of ‘inflation calculators.’
According to most of them, $1 million in 1960 is $10 million today. But if you look at the actual prices, it makes no sense. $1 million in 1960 would buy two mansions, a fleet of cars, a nice boat, and you’d have enough left over to invest and have an income for several lifetimes.
It’s because the official inflation numbers have always been bullshit. We don’t care if TVs and beer are cheaper, we care if tuition and housing are cheaper.
Their idea of stimulating the economy is forcing the working class to invest in businesses if they want to retire at all. The burden of a tax always falls on whichever side of a trade is less able to pass on it. In our case, that means the cost of inflation is added to your credit card rates, to your mortgage, and to your student loans.
We’re the ones paying the bill, not the rich.
It’s more complicated than that. Electronics and appliances are the obvious examples of things that have inflated much slower than average (or even deflated). Apparel and tools have inflated much slower. Energy generally has inflated much slower than average, but has shown a ton of volatility. Food and cars have inflated slower than average, but individual items might have followed their own path. Healthcare, education, and housing have gone up much faster than average inflation.
And the ratios don’t stay consistent over time. When I was a kid, burger meat was cheaper than similarly sized chicken breasts. Now the ratio is flipped. A plane ticket between New York and London is much cheaper today than in the 70’s. Even a tank of gas for driving from one state to another is way cheaper today than in the 70’s, in large part because of better fuel efficiency.
And anything labor intensive is inherently at tension with itself. A seamstress or tailor can only make so many items of clothing per week. Those clothes will have to cost enough to justify their pay, and the raw ingredient textiles used to make the garments. So if their pay hasn’t kept up with inflation, then the labor-intensive items they make probably haven’t kept up with inflation, either. Ideally, increased productivity would allow raises to not be absorbed into the price of whatever is being produced, but that doesn’t always happen.
Looking at old menus and catalogs shows that some things have gone up a lot in price, while others didn’t experience the same effect.
Cars are an interesting example since even a cheap car today is significantly better in almost every way than the best car from the 60s.
However the very good cars have gotten much more expensive. So while we’ve been able to do more with less, we’re also doing A LOT more at the higher end.
For example, a Rolls Royce Phantom from the 60s was $6-8000. A new Nissan Versa for $20,000 is faster, more fuel efficient, safer. Maybe the leather in the Rolls-Royce is better.
My point is that it’s difficult to compare what you can buy over time since what is produced changes as well.
The Phantom VI (the Phantom available in 1980) cost nearly nearly half a million pounds new. The Silver Spirit (or Spur depending on where you were) is probably the rolls you are thinking of, and it had a MSRP of a little over $100k new.
According to the CPI inflation calculator the Phantom would be about $1.4 million today, and the Silver Spirit would be about $334k.
This year’s phantom starts at around half a million but (IMO) it’s more of a “luxury car” compared to the ultra high end Phantom VI. But I think the Phantom is less of a car you buy and more of a modular platform you build your car on top of so I imagine there’s so multimillion dollar phantoms rolling (hehe) around
Yeah the phantom might not be a good choice since its price varies hugely based on customization and didn’t have a MSRP. I was looking at the Phantom V though which was produced in the 60s.
I’d bet the resale value on the rolls Royce is better than the Nissan
The inflation in luxury goods is staggering. High school kids used to be able to afford concert tickets, football games, and Broadway plays. That Phantom was a year’s salary for a school teacher; now the most expensive cars are twenty year’s salary. It’s not that the products are so much better; there’s a larger pool of very wealthy people. In 1960, if a man’s wife had a job they were considered ‘poor.’ Today, even professionals need two salaries to keep up with the Joneses
Outside of issues caused by Ticketmaster, there’s also just a lot more people who want to see only a few performers. It seems like there’s always a couple of names that are so overwhelmingly popular. Add to that the ease at which people can travel hundreds of miles, and your demand outpaces supply.
Property costs are probably the biggest factor that is affected by a larger population. We’ve got more people but everyone still wants to live in the same areas (and we’re bad at increasing the density of housing in these areas).
Yeah the pricing of cars has really expanded. It used to be $1000-10,000 covered basically all the new cars in 1960. Now it’s closer to $10,000-$10,000,000. Although I wonder if the distribution actually looks about the same.
more like $11M today, and it still checks out, right? How much is a nice mansion or two today?
Along the lines of the original post.
Compare Angelina Jolie and Elizabeth Taylor, for example. On paper, Angelina is far wealthier, but in terms of day-to-day lifestyles, they are pretty comparable. Only the 0.01% of multi-billionaires have reaped any rewards.
That’s pretty rad. Had no idea we knew of a sports hero for chariot racing, but I guess I’m not surprised. Thanks for sharing.
Reds 4 lyf
If my daughter even speaks to a green team fan she’s in the streets
Your mother worships some fake preacher they executed in Iudea, you filthy red!
