Were ancient Athenians more fit than modern man?

They didn't have metabolic diet boosters or form-fitting footwear, but the ancient athletes may have been genetically superior in endurance sports.

And who knows: if the research is correct, it may make man-on-man oil rubdowns and expressions like "Row, you Saracen dogs," popular at the gym again.

Harry Rossiter of the University of Leeds measured the metabolic rates of modern athletes rowing a trireme, a fast, 37-meter-long ship powered by 170 rowers. The ship helped Athens become the dominant power in the Mediterranean from about 550 B.C. to 300 B.C.

Rossiter compared how his modern rowers did to descriptions of how ancient triremes performed, according to historians like Thucydides. In one account, a trireme made it from Athens to Lesbos in the Eastern Mediterranean in 20 hours.

"If the historians are correct, we would struggle to find enough people at that level of fitness today to power the ships at those speeds," Rossiter said in a prepared statement. "Ancient Athens had up to 200 triremes at any one time, and with 170 rowers in each ship, the rowers were clearly not a small elite. Yet this large group, it seems, would match up well with the best of modern athletes. Our data raise the interesting notion that these ancient athletes were genetically better adapted to endurance exercise than we are today," Rossitier is quoted as saying.

Other factors, such as diet, youth and a life given to harsh servitude may have also played a role. But it certainly burnishes the image of ancient athletes. The modern version of these athletes is a greased-up Kirk Douglas ducking so his head isn't whacked by a rotating two-by-four in Spartacus.