A research professor has pointed out that lengthening human lifespan threatens to turn us into living zombies unless we can cure dementia. That would have come as no revelation to the ancients.
They were well aware of the cognitive decline that set in at old age: but who did not want to be old? This provided an easy theme for the Roman satirist Juvenal. In his tenth satire (c. ad 120), known as ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ after Samuel Johnson’s imitation (1749), he mocked the false hopes raised by (among other things) a long life. The physical consequences were bad enough: wrinkled, baggy face, trembling limbs and voice, bald head, toothless gums, a limp and lifeless penis, no taste for food or wine, loss of hearing, dodgy shoulders and hips, failing sight. But worst of all, loss of mental faculties and all memory for names and faces.
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