Ancients Thread

The average ancient Graeco-Roman was more ripped than the average modern man in every part of the world

while that's most likely true, I think the strong nowadays are stronger than the strong of old. Nutrition was very poor

>Nutrition was very poor
For the other people yes
But for Graeco-Romans ?
No they had a very rich nutrition

Fish, Olive oil, puls, Goat Cheese, Beef, Lamb, Goat meat, Royal gelly, Fruits etc

And they had no test pertubartors

Except when they had food shortages from persistent famine and war.

For sure, everyone was leaner and there were no lardarses. However, the average Greco-Roman was a dyel twink.

maybe in the good times. When were the greek states not at war?

Bump for interest

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Yeah they had that stuff occasionally, but their diets were mainly grain and cereal based.

Does a cereal and grain based diet destroy your body?

Olive oil, goat cheese and fish was not occasionaly

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Based fit diet

youtube.com/watch?v=RPzx-wmorOw

methods vary massively by civilization. I'll list the ones I know about:

british germanics (scots, northern irish) trained mostly by lifting and throwing weights like boulders or logs. When mustering armies, they also tested recruits by having them lift certain stones. Highland games are a remainder of this.

Central and nordic germanics did no specific mucle training, instead they sparred a lot (according to greek and roman sources). By medieval times, it was common to practice basic strikes with overly heavy weapons.

Chinese used a massive number of methods, mostly organized through martial arts schools. "72 arts of the shaolin" describes several (as well as body hardening and sense sharpening exercises), mostly boiling down to isometrics, plyometrics and wearing weights during regular movements. This is mostly representative for the "outer" (buddhist-influenced) styles
The "inner" (daoist) styles hardly ever used weights, relying more on complex, integrated movements (ex. pushing heavy carts) and drugs (which usually didn't work, were poisonous or addicting). the modern invention of "qi gong" derives from their systems, though it has been softened to be more attractive to middleaged western women.
In the chinese army, they used heavy weapons for practice and fitness tests. Some surviving examples (guan daos, basically a giant saber on a metal spear shaft) weigh more than 50kg.

Finally, the Ryukyu (who created Te, the predecessor to karate) used stone weights similiar to club- and kettlebells and filled clay jars (grasped with the finger tips around the mouth) in plyometric exercises.

Sounds like a carb rich diet with little protein. Greeks confirmed as dyels

bullshit, this is an idealised vision

it's like saying the average american eats a breakfast of pancakes and blueberries and a dinner of barbecue and grits every day

Depends on what time period you are talking about. Greece is a mountainous country with barely any arable land so most of their nutrition were based on goat products, if we are talking height of the roman empire then yes, most plebeians subisted from grain.

>he said, "even you, my child?"

This is not historically true, it's just part of the Shakespeare play. It is cool, but not factually true.

How can I have that diet in modern times

> reminder

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>As a young man, Milo dreamed of Olympic glory and to that end, he reputedly carried a young bull on his shoulders every day for four years. As the bull grew older and larger, Milo’s strength increased. His crude strength training was not in vain: over the course of his athletic career, Milo won six Olympic gold medals. The bull’s fate was not as rosy — Milo supposedly ate the bull on its fourth birthday!
Sounds like a good method. Has anyone tried it?

literally the Mediterranean diet
It has a wonderful amount of solid scientific literature behind it

People dismiss it as another fad diet, but even the rotation of fad diets hits on the right eventually

It's basically introducing the concept of plant-focused instead of meat-focused as the main dish, with meat as a side dish

importance:
Main dish: plants (roasted veggies, salads, what have you)
lots of olive oil
Fish
grains (lentils, chickpeas, whole grain; not talking generic pasta and breakfast cereal here)

side dish/less of:
dairy
meats
everything else

and the whole glass of red wine with dinner, but the importance of that is probably way less than the meal itself. But if you drink alcohol with dinner, might as well make it red wine

Followers of the Med diet (in Crete, where the research was originally done) traditionally followed a lot of religious fasting, ate their largest meal at lunch and so on, it's more than just the diet. Fish is meat by the way.

Here's a list of exercises used by gladiators, as reported by Galen.

oldstylemuaythai.blogspot.com/2008/11/ancient-gladiator-exercises.html?m=1

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American diet has reduced meat and dairy consumption and increased vegetable and grain consumption over the past 30 years, health has only declined and obesity has only gotten worse

I'm doing pic related unironically since gyms' lockdown. Forearm an shoulder gains have been noticeable

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Runned

Post the full statue you coward

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Socrates isn't real dude

Socrates was real. We have accounts from students Plato and Xenophon that describe his life in depth. Aristophanes also talks about him extensively. Every historian accepts that Socrates was an Athenian philosopher put to death by the dikasteria in 339 BC.

Also Socrates was probably ripped because he was a war hero and Alcibiades thirsted after him.

t. Classicist

pic related for the meaning

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yeah we know socrates was ripped but he was uncommon in this regard, hence his disdain for the levels of fitness in the military

If you don't exercise wearing just a kynodesme then you will never get ancient Greek gains.

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It's not just about civic duty though. You can look up the text yourself, all of Memorabilia Book 3 Ch 12 is Socrates criticizing his companion, Epigenes, for being in poor health. Epigenes replies, "what does it matter? I'm not an athlete."; Socrates replies with a long list of why it matters.

Yes, one of Socrates' main points is about serving in the military. However, he says the end goal of military service isn't just purely to serve Athens, but to also win glory for oneself.

Socrates also talks about why fitness is necessary outside of war, "For you may rest assured that there is no kind of struggle, apart from war, and no undertaking in which you will be worse off by keeping your body in better fettle. For in everything that men do the body is useful; and in all uses of the body it is of great importance to be in as high a state of physical efficiency as possible. Why, even in the process of thinking, in which the use of the body seems to be reduced to a minimum, it is matter of common knowledge that grave mistakes may often be traced to bad health. And because the body is in a bad condition, loss of memory, depression, discontent, insanity often assail the mind so violently as to drive whatever knowledge it contains clean out of it."

I think the screenshot you post fundamentally misinterprets Memorabilia. Socrates doesn't want men to be fit to "contribute to a better society"; he was not a utilitarian philosopher like that. Socrates wants men as individuals to strive towards an ideal good, and to win virtue for themselves.

The answer to your question is Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.12.8. My answer discusses the context of the quote. By itself, it appears to be an endorsement of exercise for the purpose of enhancing one's looks.
However, when you read the whole dialogue, you find that this a relatively insignificant and shallow appeal to the listener's vanity.
The real reason to train your body, according to Sokrates (or perhaps more accurately, Xenophon), is that it is important for all men of leisure to be ready for war.
The defence of the community is the main argument in this dialogue, and Xenophon makes the same point throughout his entire body of work.
Plato, too, stressed at length in his Republic that it was essential for citizens to be physically fit for the sake of their inevitable participation in battle.
Physical beauty was a relatively immaterial ancillary advantage; it seems most likely that the Greeks in general admired a good balanced physique precisely because it indicated usefulness in war.
perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Xen. Mem. 3.12&fromdoc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0208

Important is, to keep yourself fit.
If not for war, then for society and if not for them, then for you.

One point is clear:
Don't be a fat lazy fuck fucking piece of shit.

Again, read the entirety of Chapter 12. The entire argument isn't hinged on war. Socrates also stresses the personal benefits of cultivating fitness, such as a sounder mind. And even when Socrates talks about fitness' usefulness in battle, he says it is useful because men who are fit will win glory for themselves in battle, not because being fit is utile and will lead Athens to victory, as you are stating. Being fit is not utilitarian to Socrates, it is personal.

Notice the quote which the screenshot translates: αἰσχρὸν δὲ καὶ τὸ διὰ τὴν ἀμέλειαν γηρᾶναι, πρὶν ἰδεῖν ἑαυτὸν ποῖος ἂν κάλλιστος καὶ κράτιστος τῷ σώματι γένοιτο.

Socrates not only wants the body to be κράτιστος, referring to its strength and thus its capability in war. He also wants it to be κάλλιστος, which has nothing to do with a body's utility and much to do with man's pursuit of the ideal of beauty. Socrates' ideas always never come back to "usefulness", as we see many times in the impracticability of the ideas of the Republic. They come back to the existence of forms, and man's quest to obtain true beauty and virtue.

I fucking hate when Yas Forums misinterprets Ancient Phil. No Classicist thinks Socrates makes utilitarian arguments.

thanks for the explanation
may I know you background for knowing this?

Classics PhD student at an ivy league university, currently writing a thesis on Plato.

Thanks for listening to my argument; Socrates' arguments always abstract to claims about the soul and forms. Be wary of interpretations from Plato/Xenophon that seem self-helpy or utilitarian.

thanks
I may update that pic here

based
Mega link you might be interested in (it's mine)
Latin/Greek - mega.nz/#F!9o4QEIIK!P3piz8Bfw-z7jgb7Q8NWDg
Don't run into many other classicists here, let me know what you think

based classics chad

>The dictator's last words are a contested subject among scholars and historians. Suetonius himself says he said nothing, nevertheless, he mentions that others have written that Caesar's last words were the Greek phrase "καὶ σύ, τέκνον;"("You too, child?" in English). Plutarch also reports that Caesar said nothing, pulling his toga over his head when he saw Brutus among the conspirators.

>thank you western diet

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration Weston Price
archive.org/details/NutritionAndPhysicalDegeneration/mode/2up

The modern western diet IS shit.
You are getting poisoned by getting told this is a "good" diet.

>lamb
>cardoons
>pomegranate
Why aren't you eating these?

I like the idea of knowing Latin and Greek but I'm too lazy to bother putting the effort. I just get a kick out of watching some Greek statues and quotes and move onto watching Youtube (at least I watch Youtube in English and Italian, which are not my mother tongues).
I also create pic related sometimes.

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i don't know where you get your stats but that's definitely not correct. Every developped country that saw an increase in meat consumption has also saw an increase in obesity hence why the chinese are getting fatter since a decade

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Sounds like bullshit.

>Every developped country that saw an increase in meat consumption has also saw an increase in obesity
and diabetes went up too together with meat consumption
which must mean, that meat is bad!

or maybe because of an extreme increase in grain, carbs, HFCS?

Nah, I think sugar and just caloric intake in general is the reason, not meat. The Netherlands also eats loads of meat and they have very little obesity. Likewise, the Maasai's entire diet is basically meat.
Americans actually don't eat that much meat, when you compare it to grains or just sugars. It's not the meat making everyone fat.
Also, Hong Kong eats the most meat per capita, and iirc they aren't that fat neither. Though I'm not sure about that.

this

lol
Chinese obesity increase is due to influx of sugar and other processed shit

That graph isnt per capita and Americans reduced beef and pork consumption while increasing chicken consumption, dairy meanwhile has plummeted in consumption. All because of bullshit about fat being bad for you. With the most satiating macro with the least insulin response being reduced they started eating more processed carbs and lean meats, causing them to overeat