Now that new drugs have allowed the government’s Fat Controller to celebrate a nation of skinnies – let us hope the drugs are not too temptingly tasty – he will not have to adopt the Spartan custom of checking their naked young men every ten days for signs of excessive thinness or corpulence.
In Greek eyes, obesity was particularly associated with luxury. On their tomb paintings, Etruscans tended to depict aristocrats at dinner as very fat and even more contented. Ptolemy Alexander, a Greek king of Egypt, needed two people to support him when he left the room to relieve himself. The vast Dionysius, tyrant of Heraclea (coast of north Turkey), was in danger of choking if he fell deeply asleep and had to be pricked awake with very fine needles long enough to locate the nerves under the rolls of flesh. Yet he lived to 55 and was tyrant for 33 years, ‘excelling all in gentleness and decency’.
The great 5th-century BC Greek doctor Hippocrates knew that sudden death was more common in the fat. Both he and Aristotle thought that obesity in women caused sterility (a disaster in ancient eyes, when half of all children born would be dead before their fifth birthday). But they were well aware that losing weight could cause problems. Slimming, however, was not associated with female desirability. Anorexia was unknown.
One recommendation was to ‘exercise on an empty stomach and eat when out of breath… and take only one meal a day, go without baths, sleep on hard beds and wear as little clothing as possible. The people who want to get fat should do exactly the opposite’. The Roman doctor Celsus, taking walking for granted, recommended thin men put on weight through rest, constipation and big meals, and the fat take it off through late nights, worry and violent exercise. Others recommended that men should walk quickly in winter, more slowly in summer, and that fleshy people should walk faster, thin people more slowly.
All that now remains is for the BBC to celebrate the new drugs with a suitably humiliating Come Slimming gameshow, hosted by all those hysterical chef-comedians.
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