Ancient tips for health and happiness
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Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. The science of health, well-being, and living a long life is one of the most contested and controversial topics of the modern age, and it was no different for the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, from what you should eat to how you should exercise. and when you should and shouldn't have sex, these cultures developed their own highly specific set of rules to live by to maximize health and happiness. In this episode, Claire Bubb examines the logic behind these rules alongside James Osborne and reveals what insights they can give us into the Greco-Roman mindset.
Claire, your book is a compilation of translations from writers and thinkers from ancient Greece and Rome, all on the subject of healthy living. I wanted to start with food and with something that I think will be really relatable for a lot of listeners. You write in the book that, especially with social media, A lot of us today are bombarded by constant and often contradictory advice on what to eat and what not to eat. I assume that this was a modern phenomenon, but it might not be.
Yeah, I think this is a surprising thing about thinking about antiquity. You know, it feels so distant and it's over 2,000 years ago it feels like, you know, could not be more remote from us. But actually We have so much material and so many voices from this period and you can really embed yourself in some places and sometimes in what it was like to live there. And I think food is really one of those, because this is something, you know, it's a daily human activity.
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