Credit: Image courtesy Egypt Exploration Society
Posted on 04/17/2014 3:15:49 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
...The contract includes a clause that Demetrius is still to be paid if the judges realize the match is fixed and refuse to reward Nicantinous the win. If "the crown is reserved as sacred, (we) are not to institute proceedings against him about these things," the contract reads. It also says that if Demetrius reneges on the deal, and wins the match anyway, then "you are of necessity to pay as penalty to my [same] son on account of wrongdoing three talents of silver of old coinage without any delay or inventive argument."
The translator of the text, Dominic Rathbone, a professor at King's College London, noted that 3,800 drachma was a relatively small amount of money — about enough to buy a donkey, according to another papyrus. Moreover, the large sum Demetrius would forfeit if he were to back out of the deal suggests his trainers would have been paid additional money Rathbone said.
The match fixing took place at an event honoring Antinous, the deceased male lover of the Emperor Hadrian (reign A.D. 117-138). After Antinous drowned in the Nile River nearby, the town of Antinopolis was founded in his honor, and he became a god, and statues of him were found throughout the Roman Empire.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Credit: Image courtesy Egypt Exploration Society
This should be displayed at WWE headquarters.
Relatively small amount? Only the upper crust can afford to play with that kind of money!!
I toldja wrastlin’ was fake!
Rome was deeply debauched by Hadrian’s age.
It said that it would have only paid for one donkey.
In a related story, archaeologists in Spain have excavated an unusual late medieval tomb containing a donkey. The name of the critter is actually carved on the tomb, it was “Hoe-Tay”.
I believe Ric Flair was actually present. BTT
The games at which this wrestling match took place were being held in honor and in memory of Hadrian’s dead teen catamite, Antinoos, who got chomped by a hippo or something while doing some limp-wristed swimming in the Nile. The empire had peaked when his mommy faked a will attributed to Trajan and put Hadrian onto the “throne”.
LOL!
The tough part was keeping track of rounds, the freakin’ Roman numerals on those signs the Roman babes paraded around.
They’re probably the ones behind this story. ;’)
WOOOOOOO!
“Nicantinous comes off the ropes and knocks Demetrius to the ground with a clothesline...now he’s attempting to apply the figure four....NO! Demertius kicks out and hits Nicantinous with a vicious forearm smash and now...WAIT A MINUTE! WHO IS THAT? SOMEONE JUST ENTERED THE RING AND CLOCKED BOTH MEN WITH A METAL CHAIR! IT’S.....IT’S.....I DON’T BELIEVE IT! IT’S ACHILLES! WHAT’S THAT HEEL DOING HERE?
He’s the reason I don’t watch tag-team anymore. ;’)
Too bad that most of this stuff didn’t survive elsewhere, we’d be up to our eyes in it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Oxyrhynchus_223
I know, I know, I shoulda listened.
Do you think there were good Roman citizens watching all this and opining on its slow motion train wreck horror? Are we the first in history to watch our country slip deeper into the cesspool?
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