A painting about Romans and Ancient Rome
Just like in the modern world, people in Antiquity were already concerned about how to live a long and healthy life. Find out how to age well, according to doctors from ancient Greece and Rome.
The Greeks and Romans had already heard fantastic stories about distant people who lived well beyond 100 yearsalbeit exaggeratedly.
The Greek essayist Luciano (ca. 120–180 AD) writes: “In fact, there are even entire nations that are very long-lived, like the Beings [chineses]who is said to live 300 years: some attribute his old age to the climate, others to the soil, and still others to his diet, for they say that this entire nation drinks nothing but water. The people of Acts are also said to live 130 years, and the Chaldeans are reported to live more than 100, using barley bread to preserve the sharpness of their vision.”
Whatever the truth of these stories, many ancient Greeks and Romans desired long, healthy lives. Here’s how they thought it could happen.
An ancient doctor’s perspective
Ancient doctors were interested in what people who lived long lives did every day and how it might have helped.
The Greek doctor Galen (129–216 AD), for example, tells of two people he met personally in Rome and who lived to old age.
First, there is a grammarian (someone who studies and teaches grammar) called Telefuswhich lived to almost 100 years old.
Second Galen, Telephus I only ate three times a day. His diet was simple: “Papaya cooked in water mixed with raw honey of the best quality, and that alone was enough for him at the first meal. He also had dinner at the seventh hour or a little earlier, eating vegetables first and then tasting fish or poultry. In the evening he usually ate only bread, dipped in wine that had been mixed.”
Galen also tells us that Telefus had some bathing habits that today might seem unusual to us. Telefus preferred to be massaged with olive oil every day and take a shower just a few times a month: “He had the habit of bathing twice a month in winter and four times a month in summer. In the intermediate seasons, he bathed three times a month. On days when he did not bathe, he was anointed around the third hour with a brief massage.”
Secondly, there was an elderly doctor named Antiochuswho lived until his 80s. According to Galen, there was also a simple diet.
In the morning, Antiochus normally ate toasted bread with honey. Then, for lunch, he ate fish, but usually only fish “from the rocks and those from the deep sea”. At dinner, I ate “or porridge with oxymel [uma mistura de vinagre e mel] or a bird with a simple sauce.”
Alongside this simple diet, Antiochus took a walk every morning. Also I liked being driven in a carriageor had his slaves carry him around the city in a chair.
Galen also said that Antiochus “performed exercises appropriate to an elderly man”: “There is one thing that elderly people should do early in the morning as exercise: after the oil massage, make them walk and perform passive exercises without getting tired, taking into account the elderly person’s capacity.”
Galen concludes that Antiochus’s routine likely contributed to his good health well into old age: “Tending himself in this way in old age, Antiochus continued in this way to the end, without prejudice to his senses and soundness in all his limbs.”
Galen points out that Telefus and Antiochus had some obvious things in common. They ate only a few times a day; their diet consisted of wild animal meats, whole grains, bread, and honey; and they remained active every day.
What can you do?
Not all of us can live to be 100 or more, as the Greeks and Romans knew well.
However, Luciano offers us some consolation in his essay On Octogenarians: “In all soils and in all climates, People who get adequate exercise and the most health-appropriate diet have been long-lived.”
Luciano advised that we should emulate the lifestyles of people who have lived long, healthy lives if we want to do the same.
So if you lived in Rome in the second century AD, people like Telefus and Antiochus, who had a simple diet and stayed active throughout their liveswould be good models to follow.
