Laudator Temporis Acti

Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder 9.5 (tr. David Sansone):

When reviling an obese man he said, "What use could the state possibly make of a body like that? Why, from gullet to groin there is nothing but belly."

τὸν δὲ ὑπέρπαχυν κακίζων "ποῦ δ᾽ ἄν," ἔφη, "σῶμα τοιοῦτόν τῇ πόλει γένοιτο χρήσιμον, οὗ τὸ μεταξὺ λαιμοῦ καὶ βουβώνων πᾶν ὑπὸ τῆς γαστρὸς κατέχεται;"

Aulus Gellius 6.22 (tr. John C. Rolfe):

The censors used to take his horse from a man who was too fat and corpulent, evidently because they thought that so heavy a person was unfit to perform the duties of a knight. For this was not a punishment, as some think, but the knight was relieved of duty without loss of rank. Yet Cato, in the speech which he wrote On Neglecting Sacrifice, makes such an occurrence a somewhat serious charge, thus apparently indicating that it was attended with disgrace. If you understand that to have been the case, you must certainly assume that it was because a man was not looked upon as wholly free from the reproach of slothfulness, if his body had bulked and swollen to such unwieldy dimensions.

nimis pingui homini et corpulento censores equum adimere solitos, scilicet minus idoneum ratos esse cum tanti corporis pondere ad faciendum equitis munus. non enim poena id fuit, ut quidam existimant, sed munus sine ignominia remittebatur. tamen Cato, in oratione quam de sacrificio commisso scripsit, obicit hanc rem criminosius, uti magis videri possit cum ignominia fuisse. quod si ita accipias, id profecto existimandum est non omnino inculpatum neque indesidem visum esse, cuius corpus in tam inmodicum modum luxuriasset exuberassetque.