See, that explains it: French, multiracial from the start, and Catholic-Pagan Syncretist. No wonder it's culturally decadent.

(Down with the city-states! If there wasn't any Athens, Socrates wouldn't have been able to corrupt its youth...)

Of course, when you start thinking about those Georgian-era WASPS with their neoclassicism, and their latter-day worshippers, and the sexual purity thing, it all goes very...*strange.* At least if you know anything about Ancient Greece and Rome... (IIRC there's also a bit in the Anabasis where Gen. Xenophon confronts someone in the army who's been trash-talking him as a traitor and tries to find out what his grievance is, and says "did I take some boy or girl away from you?" The ancients were a) pretty zealous defenders of one man for one woman [of respectable family], domesticated female broodmare sort of thing, Schlafly couldn't disapprove of their going on about modesty and chastity and all - but b) boy howdy did they enjoy their recreational sex for males, with as many of either sex (or none, eunuchs had their value too) as a freeborn man could afford.

Didn't seem to stop them from reproducing, *or* winning wars, either...