"Europe as a culture only came about in reaction to Islam; therefore Europe is ignoble in origin" - This silly idea was kicked into touch historically [it was after all an historical idea], and logically - how can something be degenerate all the way through; it has to have a point from which it can degenerate from, as this is a procedural term.

There is nothing 'good' or 'true' in the Psychopathic Achilles, or in the Blond Beasts of Ancient Rome; my affirmation of Master Morality has nothing to do with 'goodness' and 'truthfullness' and therefore cannot be traduced as 'black and white'; it goes beyond those antitheses, and rests on the DEGREE OF WILL TO POWER. That is the Criterion. I say that your perspective exhibits an antithetical weak will; - when all is said and done, I AM TALKING ABOUT ONE THING: THE WILL.Of course, an ascending, healthy culture will absorb, and reject, other cultures in the way that a beast of prey aborbs and rejects those below it in the food-chain. But a prissy 'learning from others' is less essential than conquering others, stealing from others, terrorising others, raping others, murdering others, and whatever else flows out of optimum Will to Power.

Yes, all healthy individuals think themselves superior, that is why CONTEST is so necessary [Greek Agon] to determine who, at this Moment of Becoming, has the Strongest Will. This goes beyond all the artificial antitheses of good and evil and grounds us in the fundamental oppositional feature: Strong Will vs. Weak Will.This is the polarity - the universe is Will to Power.

As to the slightly outre point that Nietzsche recognised that the Romans were healthy enough to live without philosophy; in the same essay he also suggests that, i) a philosophic culture may have weakened the Romans [i.e., made them less instinctual, less active, - hence the Roman repudiation of certain Greek philosophers as degenerates; ii) The Greeks were remarkable in that they had all the instinctive health and vigour, AND YET WERE STRONG ENOUGH TO PHILOSOPHISE ON TOP OF THAT! That is what makes the Greeks the superior world culture hitherto.Of course he was referring to the pre-Socratic period.

Hypocrisy is part of the art of life.All barbarian hands are rough and coarse; they thereby contrast to the soft, mollicoddled hands of his antithesis, the refined, subtle, degenerate.