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Monstrosity or Disability? Ancient Accounts of Accelerated Ageing

Ancient Greek and Roman accounts of accelerated ageing fall into two main groups. The first group consists of mythological accounts of entire races born with grey hair, and these accounts generally obtain metaphorical or allegorical meanings about man's degenerate nature. The second group is comprised of literal accounts of real individuals who have aged astonishingly early, displaying such traits as baldness, wrinkled skin, bleary eyes, drooping ears, and muscle atrophy. The Greeks and Romans, completely unaware of any natural causes for such deformities, viewed such races and individuals as monstrous. Early Greek ethnographic accounts of grey-haired races placed them at the edges of the known world, in keeping with the ethnocentric desire to equate the monstrous with the uncivilised. Later, the Romans embraced the monstrous, deliberately seeking out such “freaks” for show and profit. Both types of account are most probably based on observations of the then unknown disease progeria. Persons suffering from progeria, a rare genetic mutation with no known treatment, display the signs of premature ageing described above.