“Ultimately, it was the bacchanal’s smothering culture of sexual excess that proved to be the undoing of Greek dominance in the world. Historians from Thucydides and Heroditus to Himmelfarb and Schlossberg have documented that the social collapse of Hellenism was rooted in the moral collapse of Hellenism. The reason is as simple as it is universal.

Just as liberty and equality are opposite extremes often contrary to freedom, so sensuality and satisfaction are opposite extremes often contrary to happiness. There is, in fact, no real connection between the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of pleasure. Happiness and pleasure are indeed, in a sense, antithetical things since happiness is founded on the value of something eternal while pleasure is founded on the value of something ephemeral. (Grant & Horne, Unnatural Affection, p.2)