As a result of Russian laws against propagating homosexuality, there are calls to boycott the 2013 Winter Olympics in Sochi and 2018 Fifa World Cup due to be held there. The West’s first historian Herodotus (5th century bc) would not have sympathised.
Herodotus’ magnificent Histories of the wars fought between the Persians and the Greeks (491-479 bc) regularly digress into lengthy discussions of the culture and customs of the peoples with whom the expanding Persian empire came into contact.
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