At the beginning of our era, after a battle on the Ionian Sea, Antony and Cleopatra took their own lives in Egypt, and Augustus was made an imperator by his senators. Roman emperors had sexual access to those senators’ daughters and wives, and to thousands of slaves. But they ran governments with help from their cubicularii, castrated civil servants. And they enforced an Imperial Cult: subjects made sacrifices to the emperor's genius, or procreative spirit; or they got disemboweled by wild animals, or decapitated. Then Constantine moved off from the Tiber to the Bosporus, and Europe was ruled over by a few. Lords covered the countryside with bastards, but passed on estates on to their oldest sons. Daughters and younger sons were put away in the Church, where some became parents, but most were reproductively suppressed: they were ἄνανδρος or anandros, or without a husband, and ἄγαμος or agamos, or without a wife. Heretics who objected got burned at the stake. Then the Crusaders expanded Europe to the East, and Columbus went off to the West, and politics, sex and religion became more democratic. Power was more widely distributed; more men and women had families if they wanted them, and monasteries emptied out. The Reformation followed the Roman Church, which had followed the Imperial Cult.

在我们这个时代之初，在爱奥尼亚海的一场战斗之后，安东尼和克利奥帕特拉在埃及结束了自己的生命，奥古斯都被他的元老们任命为元首。罗马皇帝可以与这些元老的女儿和妻子以及数千名奴隶发生性关系。但他们在被阉割的公务员的帮助下管理政府。他们还推行一种帝国崇拜：臣民为皇帝的天才或生育精神献祭；或者他们被野生动物开膛破肚，或者斩首。然后君士坦丁从台伯河迁往博斯普鲁斯海峡，欧洲被少数人统治。贵族们在乡村布满了私生子，但将庄园传给了他们的长子。女儿和小儿子被送进教堂，其中一些成为父母，但大多数都受到生殖抑制：他们是ἄνανδρος或anandros，或没有丈夫，ἄγαμος或agamos，或没有妻子。反对的异端分子被烧死在火刑柱上。随后十字军东征，欧洲向东扩展，哥伦布西行，政治、性和宗教变得更加民主。权力分布更广泛；更多的男人和女人有了家庭（如果他们愿意的话），而修道院却空无一人。宗教改革跟随罗马教会，而罗马教会又跟随帝国崇拜。