¹ Herodotus' attitude may be nicely paralleled from the Primary Chronicle's account of the conversion of St Vladimir. The prince's decision to adopt the Greek faith was, we are told, largely determined by the enthusiastic description of Byzantine ritual (as compared with Bulgarian (Moslem) and German (Catholic)) submitted by the envoys whom he had dispatched a religious study tour; doctrine is treated as a matter of minor importance.

² It may be thought captious to complain that where publications in Russian are cited in the footnotes, the names of their authors (and the place of publication) are left in the Cyrillic alphabet. But it is not always possible to arrive at the correct spelling of proper names without some background information, and a scholar publishing in English ought to take responsibility transliteration.