The art and literature of Paul’s day provide ample evidence for the widespread practice of sexual immorality. When we read that “the sexual life of the Graeco-Roman world in NT times was a lawless chaos” (Barclay 1962:24), we only need to observe the chaos in our own world to understand the conditions in Paul’s day. In fact, a good case could be made that in the two millennia since the Roman Empire, our generation comes closer than any previous one to the blatant prevalence of sexual perversions that was characteristic then. And a study of the fall of the Roman Empire suggests that any society that tolerates the unchecked promotion of such perversions will inevitably fall apart from the rottenness within.
–G. Walter Hansen Galatians (Downer’s Grove: IVP Academic, 2010), pp.174-175