From theage.com.au: Tablets tell all: ancient athletes flogged for sins.

An ancient training manual for Roman athletes — carved in marble
almost 2000 years ago — prescribes far worse punishments than a
sending off or a week’s docked pay if they performed badly in the
Colosseum.

The manual recommends a flogging to get them to perform better. And
the same went if they drank too much mead or behaved disgracefully
with the local maidens.

The marble tablet was found in 2003 in the town of Alexandria Troas in
Turkey, and deciphered only recently by academics at the University of
Muenster in Germany. Applied to professional football players today,
the whip would undoubtedly replace the half-time talk as the favoured
discipline of choice.

The 1.8-metre-high, 90-centimetre-wide tablet was inscribed with the
name of Hadrian, [continue]