Ancient Hellas (Ancient Greece). History of Ancient Greece

At this time, the growth of cities took place, which the sea power of Crete allowed them to do without fortress walls. Located in narrow valleys, on hills and mountain slopes, these cities had an irregular layout, spontaneous buildings, and terraced houses. However, the cities of Crete, or more precisely, the archaeological excavations in its place, are currently not included in the UNESCO World Heritage List

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The centers of the largest cities of Crete, Knossos and Phaistos, are formed by the palaces of the rulers. Numerous flat-roofed buildings are concentrated around a large rectangular palace courtyard. The plastered walls of the Cretan palace buildings were decorated with carved and stamped reliefs, frescoes depicting plants and animals, acrobatic games, festivals, and harvesting. In the 15th century BC, after a devastating earthquake, Crete was captured by the Balkan tribes of the Achaeans - the ancestors of the Greeks. After the fall of the Cretan civilization, dominance in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea passed to a state in the south of the Balkan Peninsula, centered in the city of Mycenae (Peloponnese Peninsula), the capital of the Achaean military-political union. In Mycenaean settlements, the palaces of the rulers, together with the temples, formed a sacred site - the acropolis (“upper city”). The powerful walls of the acropolis were built from large, neatly hewn stone blocks and covered the hill of the citadel with a picturesque outline. The length of the walls of Mycenae is 900 m, and the thickness is 6-10 m; they are made of stone blocks weighing 5-6 tons. This masonry is called cyclopean, because. The ancient Greeks believed that huge stone blocks were carried by mythical characters - Cyclops (one-eyed giants). The entrance to the Mycenaean Acropolis is blocked by the Lion Gate (above its span there is a slab with a relief image of lions - the oldest in Europe).

The ruins of the palace and tombs of the Achaean kings have been preserved. One of them is the famous “treasury of Atreus,” to which an open gallery 36 m long and 6 m wide leads. An earthen mound was built above the tomb itself, which is a huge helmet-shaped chamber. Homer called Mycenae a “gold-abundant” city. Indeed, during excavations, archaeologists discovered royal masks, jewelry, weapons and vessels made of gold. Second big city Mycenaean culture was Tiryns, whose acropolis was fortified in the 13th century. BC. due to the invasion from the north of the Dorians. A “lower” city was added to the acropolis, and a complex system of entrances was erected. The center of the Tiryns Acropolis was occupied by a large megaron - an elongated rectangular structure surrounded by slender columns. The Mycenaean period of ancient times lasted from the 14th to the 12th centuries. BC. The collapse of the Mycenaean state and the decline of its culture were accelerated by the invasion of Dorian tribes from the north. Despite the death of the Kritomycenaean civilization, it served as an important step in the formation of the ancient culture of the Eastern Mediterranean.

From the XII to the VI centuries. BC. The Homeric and Archaic periods of the development of Greek culture continued. Archaeological sites near the city of Vergina (Macedonia) can be attributed to this time interval. The capital of ancient Macedonia, Eges, was discovered here, in the center of which was a monumental palace with a courtyard surrounded by columns. More than 300 burial chambers (tumuli) were found in the surrounding area, the earliest of which date back to the 11th century. BC. Among the later burials is the tomb of King Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. During the archaic period, the formation of Greek city-polies took place. At the same time, the main types of Greek temples and two order systems emerged, which served to connect columns with beam ceilings. More common was the strict Doric order, which embodied the artistic ideals of the harsh and warlike Dorian tribes. During the heyday of the Greek colonies in the Mediterranean, the Ionic order took shape. This more elegant style received its name in honor of the Ionian tribes, displaced by the Dorians from the Balkan Peninsula, and settled on the coast of Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean Sea. Samos is an island of the Sporades archipelago in the eastern Aegean Sea near the Ionian coast of Asia Minor.

During antiquity, the island was the center of Ionian culture and the birthplace of many great figures of Hellas: the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras, the thinker Epicurus, the astronomer Aristarchus. Since its heyday, the island has preserved the ruins of the Ionic Temple of Hera, built in the Archaic era, one of the largest in Greece. Currently, the ancient city of Samos has been renamed Pythagorea. Period V-IV centuries. BC. is called classic. This was the period of the Greco-Persian wars and at the same time the heyday of Greek culture. Most of the ancient monuments of Greece belong to this period. The most outstanding examples of classical ancient Greek architecture are concentrated in the ancient museum cities of Delphi, Olympia and Epidaurus, the museum island of Delos and the Greek capital of Athens. The most remarkable of the classical ensembles - the Acropolis of Athens (Attica) - dominates the city and its surroundings. The Acropolis is located on the high rock of Pyrgos, which has a length of 300 m and a width of up to 150 m. Here are four of the greatest masterpieces of ancient Greek art, created from snow-white marble - the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Nike Apteros. The construction of the Acropolis was carried out in the 5th century. BC. under the leadership of Phidias under Pericles, who proclaimed the unification of Greece under the leadership of Athens.

The central dominant of the ensemble is the Parthenon - the temple of the goddess Athena, combining the features of the Doric and Ionic orders, which demonstrated the unity of the Greek city-states. In the past, the temple housed a statue of Athena, made of ivory and gold, as well as the treasury of the Maritime Union of Greek cities, headed by Athens. The Acropolis ensemble is opened by the Propylaea (gate) with five passages, made in the Doric and Ionic orders. At the entrance there is a small Ionic temple of Nike Apteros ("Wingless Victory"). Behind the Propylaea previously stood a majestic statue of Athena the Warrior. Another Ionic temple - the Erechtheion - was built in that part of the Acropolis, where, according to legend, the dispute between Athena and Poseidon took place, and is dedicated to these gods. In one of the porticoes of the temple, the place of columns is taken by karyotides (figures of women). Delphi is an ancient city at the foot of Mount Parnassus (Phocis, central Greece), famous for its oracle, which determined many decisions in the political and religious spheres ancient Hellas. Only Pythian priestesses had access to the Delphic oracle, located in the innermost part of the Doric temple of Apollo. Also in the temple there was a sacred stone - omphalos (“navel of the earth”). From the 6th century BC The Pythian Games were held in Delphi - competitions of poets, musicians and athletes.

The ruins of numerous treasuries, a theater, and a stadium have also been preserved. By the beginning of the 5th century. the city actually ceased to exist, thanks to which the ruins have been preserved to this day. Olympia (northwest Peloponnese) is probably the most famous ancient city in Greece. From the 10th century BC. the city became a place of worship of Zeus and Hera, and in the 5th century. BC. The famous Temple of Zeus was built here - an example of early classical architecture. In honor of Zeus were established Olympic Games- a symbol of the unity of the Greek city-states, according to which, starting from 776 BC, the Greeks kept their chronology. Olympia is a huge antique museum under open air, found here a large number of marble statues. In the middle of the 5th century. BC. The temple of Apollo Epicurean was built in Bassae (Arcadia, western Peloponnese). This temple to the god of the sun and health was dedicated to ridding the inhabitants of the city of Figalia from the plague. There was a 4-meter statue of Apollo in the temple. The Corinthian order was used in the design of the temple, but now this can only be determined from the ruins. Artistic image This most magnificent decorative order, according to legend, was borrowed from a basket through which the leaves of an acanthus bush sprouted.

Epidaurus (eastern Peloponnese)- an ancient city where the cult of the god of healing Asclepius (Aesculapius) was popular. In the 4th century. BC. a wonderful ensemble was created here, including a temple, a stadium, a gymnasium and a theater. The most famous is the Theater of Epidaurus, built taking into account the terrain and having excellent acoustics. 10 thousand spectators were seated on the stone steps of the theater, and each of them could hear any sound made on the stage (more precisely, the orchestra). Delos (Greek “I manifest”) is a sparsely inhabited island of the Cyclades archipelago in the western Aegean Sea. According to ancient Greek myths, the island arose by the will of Zeus, and the birth of Apollo and Artemis took place here. Delos served as a place of worship for Apollo, to whom sanctuaries were dedicated here. The Greeks gathered here four times a year, organizing various competitions in honor of God. The island later gained fame as the largest slave market in the Mediterranean. Now Delos is a kind of museum of antiquity; the ruins of three temples of Apollo, the temple of Artemis, the temple of Hera, the “Avenue of Lions” and many other sanctuaries have been discovered here.

Cosmocentrism of ancient Greek natural philosophy. The fundamental feature (characteristic) of ancient Greek, as well as Chinese and Indian, natural philosophy and natural science was cosmocentrism. Every scientist of that time was at the same time, or even more likely, a philosopher, thinking in abstract categories abstracted from specific facts, trying to imagine the entire universe as a whole. This was manifested in all cosmogonic ideas, primarily in the concept of the cosmos itself.

In ancient times, among the Hellenes, space meant “order”, “harmony” (and the opposite term “chaos” - “disorder”) and was originally used to designate the military system and government. But in the VI-V centuries. BC, an understanding of space as the Universe, as a place of human settlement, accessible to speculative understanding, appears. This meant that the image of the cosmos was endowed with either qualities inherent in living beings (as a huge humanoid organism), or social, public qualities. The cosmos was, as it were, a macroman, and man a microcosm. This united man and the cosmos into a single whole, ordered and harmonized the whole world (nature, the Universe). Man, as a microcosm of a single Universe, embodies all those forces and “elements” that form the cosmos.

“Elements” or “elements” became the development of the next stage of ancient natural philosophy. The teachings about the primary elements (elements, principles) appeared in Ancient Greece as independent entities due to the strengthening of cosmocentrism. The birth and organization of such primary elements as fire, air, water, earth, as a rule, occur under the influence of divine forces - parents. The idea of ​​primary elements in natural science is still relevant today and is far from exhausted.

Natural history of Ancient Greece (Hellas). The name Hellas (from the Greek - Hellas) refers to the territory of the ancient Greek states that occupied the south of the Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea, the coast of Thrace, the western coastline of Asia Minor and spread their influence during the period of Greek colonization (VIII-VI centuries BC .) on the territory of southern Italy, eastern Sicily, southern France, the northern coast of Africa, the straits and coasts of the Black and Azov seas. From 146 BC e. Greece (Hellas) actually found itself under the rule of Rome, and with the establishment of the Roman Empire in 27 BC. e. was turned into the Roman province of Achaia. From the 4th century n. e. Greece formed the state and cultural core of the Eastern Roman Empire - Byzantium.

Hellenistic teachings about the primary elements (Ionian or Milesian school). The first of the famous world philosophers, the philosopher of Ancient Greece (Hellas) Thales from Miletus (625-547 BC), was more likely a Greek than, as many do not exclude, a Phoenician from a noble family, and was the first in history world civilization, a man who can rightfully be considered not only the father of Greek philosophy (as Aristotle called him), but also the forefather of Greek, Western European and world science. The works of Thales have not reached us, but were widely cited in the works of later ancient Greek thinkers (Herodotus, Xenophanes, Aristotle); numerous philosophical reflections and scientific discoveries in astronomy, mathematics, meteorology and geography are associated with his name. He can safely be called the first scientist among people, and, as a scientist, he made the first fundamental assumption about the main component of matter, believing that the beginning (element, primary element) of everything that exists is water or moisture. Thales expressed this following Homer, who in the Iliad, and Hesiod, who in the Theogony, say that the source of the origin of all things is the titan Oceanus and the nymph Tethys. Aristotle assumed that Thales derived his view from observations that the food of all creatures is wet, the seed germinates in a moist environment, the dying always dries up, water is the basis of all liquid, the earth floats on water, etc.

At that time, philosophers were called physicists, physiologists (from the Greek word phisis (physics, phisis, sometimes fu-sis) - nature; in ancient times medical practice the concept of nature meant organic growth, applied to plants, animals and humans (compare with the modern word physiology)), trying to understand the essence, the substantial basis of nature. Aristotle later summarized the concept of nature as follows: “...nature in the first and fundamental sense is essence..., namely, the essence of things having a beginning of motion in themselves, as such.” It should be especially taken into account that phisis comes from the Greek verb meaning to give birth. (By the way, in the etymology and semantics of the Russian word nature, as noted earlier, lies the same verb - to give birth).

Thales is also known as an astronomer (it is believed that he predicted the solar eclipse on May 28, 585 BC, introduced a 360-day 12-month calendar), as a mathematician (he first measured the height of the pyramid by its shadow), as the creator of the doctrine of soul, consonant modern ideas about an information field that stores all events of the past and present and contains events of the future.

Thales' student Anaximenes (585-525 BC) recognized air as the primary element. He reduced the essential differences between water, fire and earth to the rarefaction and compaction of air: being discharged, the air becomes fire, condensing - the wind, then a cloud, then water and, finally, earth and stone. The earth, being flat, floats in the air like a leaf. The Sun, Moon and stars are also flat and move through the air so quickly that when they warm up, they begin to glow.

Another student of Thales, Anaximander (610-547 BC), did not recognize any specific entity as the first principle, but considered something indefinite as such, which he called apeiron (limitless, infinite), meaning by this the endless “restlessness” of a material substance , i.e., as the movement of something that is infinite in space, material in essence, indefinite in sensations. Anaximander was also the founder of cosmology, believing that the Earth is the center of the Universe, which is surrounded by three rings of fire: solar, lunar and stellar. The earth, in his opinion, resides in cosmic space, not relying on anything. This idea of ​​Anaximander is perhaps the most significant achievement of the Ionian (Milesian) school.

The doctrine of the elements was also adhered to by Heraclitus from Ephesus (520-460 BC). He attributed the active principle to fire. His statement is known: “This cosmos, the same for everyone, was not created by any of the gods, none of the people, but it always was, is and will be an eternally living fire, gradually kindling, slowly dying out.” Speaking about Heraclitus, we should note his penchant for a dialectical vision of the world. Thus, Plato wrote: “According to Homer, Heraclitus... all things move like streams. And from rapid movement and intermingling everything is born, of which we say that it exists, but the name is incorrect: nothing never is, but always becomes.” According to Heraclitus, everything arises due to the opposites of things, and everything flows like a river (Heraclitus’s most famous sayings: “Everything flows, everything changes” and “You cannot enter the same river twice.”). The cosmos is born from fire and burns again in it. The dialectic of the variability of the element of fire, its pneuma (fiery energy) was then popular with many philosophers, including Aristotle two centuries later.

The ideas of the Ionian school were completed in the works of Empedocles (483-423 BC) and Anaxagoras (500-428 BC). If the Ionians, distinguishing between active (motion) and passive (matter), were unable to distinguish between them, then the philosophers mentioned above were able to achieve this. Thus, Anaxagoras took the mind as the active principle, and Empedocles - love and enmity; Anaxagoras considered homeomeriums or small particles similar to the substances that are obtained from them as the passive principle, and Empedocles accepted all four elements at once - fire, air, water and earth, which, mixing with each other, form all the wealth of nature. There were flaws in the concept being developed; the inconsistency of Empedocles' teaching was manifested, for example, in the fact that, while recognizing the existence of movement, he at the same time denied the presence of emptiness in space; all things can only change places, but it is not clear how movement can occur in a completely filled space. But much was received positively: mind or reason in Anaxagoras became the main conceptual concept in the philosophy of Plato, and subsequently in the philosophy, rather theosophy, of Augustine the Blessed (354-430), for whom the good of the Christian god consisted not only in goodness, but and in his reasonableness.

The cosmological concept of Anaxagoras is curious as presented by the early Christian author Hippolytus in the book “Refutation of all heresies”: “He considered mind as a creative cause, matter as a becoming one. All things were mixed up, but the mind came and organized it. Material principles, according to him, are infinite, and their smallness is also infinite. All things were set in motion by the mind, and like came together with like. Some of them are under the influence circular motion received a permanent place in the sky: dense, wet, dark, cold and all the heavy things converged in the middle (when they hardened, the Earth arose from them), and what was the opposite of this: hot, light, dry and light - rushed into the distance of the ether.” This is the picture of the formation of the cosmos according to Anaxagoras.

Eleatic school of physicists and logicians. The founder of this school was Xenophanes of Elea (580-485 BC, according to other sources, ca. 570-470), whose God was the entire Universe as a whole (everything is one, he said, peering into the starry sky, as Aristotle conveyed this thought of his), but not in its sensory perception, but in formal-logical comprehension, that is, arising from logical reasoning that became the basis for a qualitative analysis of natural phenomena. The key to Xenophanes’ understanding of existence (God, space, existence, universe) is the geometric sphere, the surface of which, although limited in space, is at the same time infinite. Indeed, all points of an infinite plane can be projected onto a sphere of finite radius.

The combination of opposites proposed by Xenophanes - finite and infinite, as well as the combination of movement and rest give rise to a paradoxical situation. Speculating on the extremely broad concepts of existence and non-existence, that is, being and nothingness, Xenophanes generates a certain linguistic form, the forerunner of formal logic. Xenophanes chooses earth and water as the material principle (primary elements).

Close to these thoughts were the ideas of Parmenides (540-470 BC) in meaning and form. He believed that the world existed forever, never came into existence and will never disappear in the future; it is motionless, spherical and homogeneous; he is one whole. He identified existence (God, being) and mind (reason, consciousness), considering it inaccessible to sensory perception: “For to think is the same as to be. You can only say and think what is.” The characteristics of the world then indicated relate more to thinking than to the real world of things. Descartes, 2 thousand years later, would say: “I think, therefore I exist.”

Parmenides argued that being could not arise either from being (since no other being preceded it) or from non-being (since non-being is nothing); This means that being is eternal and must exist always or never. He was sure that change was impossible, and attributed visible changes to the illusory nature of our feelings. This philosophy gave birth to the concept of an insoluble substance - a carrier of changing properties, a concept that has become one of the main concepts of Western philosophy and science. (An attempt to reconcile the views of Heraclitus and Parmenides soon led to the concept of the atom). The ancient Greek historian Plutarch (c. 46 - c. 127) wrote about him: “He also composed cosmogony; and told how through the mixing of elements, light and dark, all phenomena arise.” According to Parmenides, the earth does not move anywhere, it is in the center of space and remains constantly in balance due to its equal distance from all points on the periphery of space, but sometimes it can fluctuate (which, by the way, manifests itself as an earthquake).

Melissus of Samos (510-440 BC) reasoned similarly to Parmenides, saying: “If a thing exists, then it is eternal, since something cannot arise from nothing.” Parmenides and his school were the first to reveal the contradiction between two pictures of the world in the human mind; one of them is the one that is obtained through the senses, through observation, the other is the one that is obtained through reason, logic, rational thinking. This was especially clearly manifested in Zeno (490-430 BC), the most prominent representative of the Eleatic school. Little is known about his views on the physics of phenomena, since he relied more on thinking than on sensory perception.

Zeno's so-called aporia (difficulties) about the absence of movement became especially famous. Here, for example, is the “arrow” aporia. Everything that is in a space equal to itself is at rest, since movement can only come from somewhere. An arrow fired from a bow at each moment of time is in equal space, and, therefore, at these moments of time it is at rest. But then it is at rest during the entire time it flies. Thus, a moving arrow does not actually fly anywhere and only rests all the time. Also absurd is the running of Achilles, trying to catch up and overtake the turtle. Particularly famous is the aporia dichotomy (literally - cutting, dividing into two), in which Zeno demonstrates the impossibility of movement due to the need to make an infinite number of divisions of any segment in order to reach its opposite end. Amazingly, in the same ancient century, the Chinese thinker and sophist Hui Shi expressed two such propositions: “If half of a stick one chi long (about 0.33 m - author) is cut off daily, then even after ten generations its length will not be exhausted.” and “In the rapid flight of an arrowhead there is a moment when it does not move or stand still.” Feel the difference between pragmatic Chinese and abstract Greek thinking.

Zeno's conclusions turn out to contradict our sensations; speculation is based on the physical concept of movement, which always occurs in space and time. While dividing space to infinity, Zeno forgot to fragment time to infinity. The overlooked relationships between space and time in all these cases are regulated by such a dynamic quantity as speed, and the infinite sums of finite quantities arising from division turn out to be in fact finite quantities. The problems of division and their inverse summation, posed in Zeno's aporia, led subsequently, in modern times, to the calculus of infinitesimals (differential calculus), integral calculus and the calculus of finite and infinite sums. But the very imperfection of Zeno’s logical analysis confused such important characteristics of motion as speed and acceleration for two millennia.

Pythagorean school. The name of Pythagoras (570-496 BC) is known to everyone who attended school. Pythagoras is not a first or last name, but a nickname, which means persuasive by speech. This great ancient Hellenic philosopher and mathematician, a contemporary of Thales, was the one who first introduced the words “philosophy” (philo - love, sophia - wisdom) and “cosmos”, and was also the first mathematician of Ancient Greece. For most, it is known by the famous “Pythagorean theorem,” which expresses the metric of Euclidean space (geometry), i.e., establishing the rule for calculating the distance between two points on a plane.

The teachings of Pythagoras and his students about the Universe were based on number (“The wisest thing in the world is number,” said Pythagoras). For the Pythagoreans, the cosmos was symbolically expressed by the tetractys (“quaternary”) - the sum of the first four numbers: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10, containing the basic musical intervals - octave (2: 1), fifth (3: 2) and fourth (4: 3). The unit was the basis of the number and at the same time, as a point, it was the generator of geometric objects: the two symbolized a line, the three - a plane (triangle), the four - a spatial volume (pyramid). The ball was the most beautiful (perfect) of spatial figures, and the circle - of flat ones. They tried to convey the beauty and complexity of the seemingly uniform natural series of numbers through the symmetry of geometric figures, thereby considering their algebraic properties, which are now dealt with in group theory, created by E. Galois at the beginning of the 19th century. The Pythagoreans called their method of analysis arithmetic.

Here is an example of the power of his analytical mind, taken from Papus’s book on the doctrine of the secret, the unseen: “One musical string,” says Pythagoras, “produces the same sounds as another string of double length, if the force pulling it in four grooves more; so exactly the attraction of a planet is four times greater than the attraction of another planet located at twice the distance from it. In general, in order for a musical string to sound in tune with a shorter string of the same kind, its tension must be increased in proportion to the square of its length. Thus, in order for the gravity of one planet to be equal to that of another, closer to the Sun, it must be increased in proportion to its distance from the Sun. If we assume that strings are drawn from the Sun to each planet, then in order to achieve consonance it would be necessary to increase or decrease the tension force, in accordance with the force of attraction of each of them” (my italics throughout. - V.S.). It’s amazing, but, firstly, Pythagoras 2000 years (!) before Newton formulated the main position (if not completely all) of the law of universal gravitation - a quadratic dependence (but not an inverse, but a direct dependence) on distance. Secondly, Pythagoras’s Sun occupies a central position among all heavenly bodies, long before similar thoughts among Aristarchus of Samos and Copernicus. From the explored musical similarities of relationships, Pythagoras derived his doctrine of the “harmony of the spheres,” which was held by many great thinkers and scientists of antiquity, including Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Aristotle and Ptolemy. It is also impossible not to mention the fact that Pythagoras was the first to point out the sphericity of the Earth.

The main thing is that the world of the Pythagoreans is discontinuous (discrete), movement is possible in it, and emptiness was accepted as the beginning of the world, along with number. It was in empty space that they moved a point to form a line, then moved the line to form a plane. A point, a line and a plane, some abstract (ideal) bodily entities, stood out against an empty spatial background. By the way, all this is incompatible with the views of the Eleatic school of logicians, which did not recognize either emptiness or motion.

Aristotle subsequently criticized the Pythagoreans for accepting pure mathematical entities as principles (primary elements); he also did not accept the Pythagorean speculative world of numbers and geometric figures as fundamental. In one, ten, seven (and in China the number five was always popular, in India - the number 24, Zoroaster believed in the number 3, etc.) Aristotle did not see any constructive beginning, so he fought against Pythagoreanism. Aristotle's logic, closely related to dialectics, sophistry and rhetoric, by its nature opposed the mathematics worshiped by the Pythagoreans.

School of atomists. In the V-IV centuries. BC e. The concept of the Milesian “elements” as the beginning of the world is replaced by a new concept - atomism. According to Aristotle, the first atomists - Leucippus (500-440 BC) and Democritus (460-270 BC) argued that “the primary elements are infinite in number, indivisible in size, from one many arise, from many - one, but everything is generated through their combination and interweaving. In a sense, these philosophers also consider all things to be numbers and to be made up of numbers, although they do not say this definitely.” And, further, about the essence of their teaching, Aristotle expressed himself in “Metaphysics” as follows: “They recognize corporeality and emptiness as elements, calling one of them existing (being), the other non-existent (non-existence)... Being does not exist any more than non-existence, since emptiness is no less real than corporeality. They call both the material cause of things. Just as those who recognize the basic essence as one, and deduce everything else from its properties, taking the rarefied and dense as the cause of properties, so Leucippus and Democritus argue that the differences of atoms are the causes of these properties. And they indicate three differences: form, order and position. Since beings, they say, are distinguished by “outline, contact and rotation”; Of these, outline is form, contact is order, and rotation is position. Indeed, A differs from N in shape (outline - Author), AN and NA - in order (adjacent - Author), N and Z - in position (rotation - Author). But the question of movement, where it came from and how things were communicated, they, like others, frivolously ignored.” Aristotle's last remark about the frivolity of atomists is not entirely fair, since Democritus considered the very presence of emptiness to be a sufficient reason for the emergence of movement.

“Atoms (indivisible) are eternal and unchanging, for they cannot experience the changes that people perceive,” said much later the ancient Roman physician and philosopher Galen (c. 129-216). The variability of the properties that we perceive arises from the continuous movement of atoms. Atomists considered motion to be one of the primary principles, such as emptiness and multiplicity. Democritus, rejecting the possibility of direct knowledge through sensations, argued that only atoms and emptiness are truly true, everything else is just our ideas (sensations, experiences). Being, according to Democritus, is atoms that move in emptiness (non-existence).

The atomists, like the logical physicists (Eleatics), distinguished between sensory and mental experience. Democritus apparently realized that atoms are theoretical constructs rather than actually existing objects. If logicians argued that the world is a single, spherical, unchanging existence, then atomists, on the contrary, argued that the world is a multiple, any shape, changing existence. Democritus often called atoms ideas. “Idea” in Greek means “that which is seen,” but it is “seen” precisely by the mind’s eye (theoretically)!

What was seemingly missed by Leucippus and Democritus (according to Aristotle), it was the cause of movement, change in the world of atoms, that Epicurus (324-270 BC) introduced into atomism. He directly expressed the idea that the reason for the change in the direction of motion of atoms could be internal properties atoms. In contrast to the Eleans, Epicurus taught that everything sensory is true, since every sensation comes from what really exists. Epicurus also adheres to the principle of conceptual relativism: several theories may exist to explain the same natural phenomenon; any theory is true if it does not contradict sensory experience. The merit of ancient atomism is that it combined in one picture the rational aspects of two opposing teachings - the teachings of Heraclitus and Parmenides: the world of things is fluid, changeable, and the world of atoms from which things are made is unchanging, eternal.

The concept of atomism is one of the most heuristic, fruitful and inexhaustible programs in the history of natural history and science. She played a fundamental role in the development of ideas about the structure of matter and its structural levels. Atomism still remains one of the cornerstone foundations of natural science, the modern physical picture of the world.

Attic school. Platonism. The most outstanding thinker of Ancient Greece - Plato (427-347 BC) in natural science continued the methodological (read - mathematical) line of Pythagoras. He studied with Socrates, then with Cratilus, a follower of Heraclitus and Parmenides, and with the Pythagoreans. He combined the teachings of Heraclitus, Pythagoras and Socrates: he reasoned about the sensually perceived according to Heraclitus, about the intelligible - according to Pythagoras, and about the social - according to Socrates. From the past, Plato did not recognize only the atomism of Democritus. Both, being representatives of a constructive and discrete (in fact, mathematical) picture of the essences of the world, used fundamentally different approaches: Democritus mainly relied on ideas taken from the material world of physical bodies, while Plato used concepts supplied from the world of ideal essences and, in in particular, mathematics (it was not for nothing that on the gates of his Academy it was written: “Let no one enter who does not know geometry”).

According to Plato, the world of sensory things is not the world of truly existing things; sensible things arise and perish; there is nothing lasting or immutable about them. The true essence of sensory things, their causes, are incorporeal forms comprehended by the mind. He called these causes (forms, foundations, origins) of things types or, much less frequently, ideas (in Russian, “idea” is a thought, essence, concept, image, reason, model, plan, plan). Plato's ideas do not exist subjectively in our consciousness, but objectively, i.e. they are the real existence of things, their true existence, while material things themselves do not truly exist (exactly like the current situation in the world of elementary particles with quarks and gluons, which are fundamentally not observable by microobjects, due to the so-called concept of confinement (captivity)).

If you think in the categories of atomists, then for them the world of ideas is a world of emptiness, that is, non-existence, nothingness; according to the teachings of Plato, it is matter that is absolute non-existence, emptiness, nothingness, and only by combining with ideas does it manifest itself as such, so that an idea is the perfect existence of an object (matter), its true existence (its essence).

Based on the above provisions, Plato painted an impressive picture of the true world - the world of ideas, which is a hierarchically ordered structure. The world of things in which we live arises, imitating the world of ideas, from dead, inert matter; the creator of everything is God the demiurge, creation itself is subject to mathematical laws that Plato unambiguously established, thereby mathematizing the world, which revealed a great providence in natural science in future centuries (centuries of the New and Contemporary times).

In the same ancient times, Platonic nature (physics) was a set of speculative (theoretical) arguments about the connection between the structure of matter and space with geometric shapes(there was no other mathematics at the time of Plato and Aristotle). Thus, following the provisions of Pythagoras, the natural elements were given the spatial measure of five regular polyhedra - the tetrahedron (pyramid) for fire, the hexahedron (cube) for earth, the octahedron for water, the icosahedron for air, and the entire cosmos - the shape of the dodecahedron (these five Platonic solids later, in The Middle Ages played a decisive role in the creative quest of Johannes Kepler).

The result of Plato's work is that:

The natural world is an ordered cosmos and an ordered human mind, which opens up the possibility of rational analysis of the empirical world;

Speculative (theoretical) analysis reveals a certain timeless order in everything, and the essence of the world given to us can be expressed in quantitative relations of reality;

Knowledge of the essence of the world requires from a person the creative development of his cognitive abilities, the result of knowledge is the spiritual liberation of a person.

Attic school. Natural philosophy and natural science of Aristotle. The greatest scientist and philosopher of antiquity was Aristotle (384-322 BC), a student of Plato (who disagreed with him in many ways), teacher and educator of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC). The last circumstance gave the German philosopher Karl Marx reason to call him “Alexander the Great of Greek philosophy,” although Aristotle, as you might guess, does not need comparisons. Aristotle's creativity is unprecedentedly large and diverse; he covered all branches of knowledge available to his time. To understand Aristotle's physics and cosmology, it is necessary to become familiar with his logic. The word logic itself first appeared in Zeno (336-262 BC) from Kition, the founder of Stoicism, which in his time Aristotle understood as analytics, i.e. the theory of inferences. Its analytics is the main method of cognition, in which, first of all, you need to be able to determine the essence of an object.

Aristotle considered a wide variety of methods of proof. If through definition it is possible to reveal the essence of simple things, then through inference (conclusion) the analysis of complex things connecting matter and form is carried out. The characteristics of this logical method are given by Aristotle in terms of subject (essence) and predicate (properties), as a result of which the task of any proof is reduced to the conclusion (inference) that a certain predicate belongs to a given subject. This conclusion (conclusion) in Aristotle's logic is called a syllogism (from Greek - calculus). Definitions and syllogisms are each connected by the categories genus (general) and species (particular). So, for example, when defining a thing, the genus corresponds to the matter and the possibility of the existence of the thing, and the species is its form and reality. In relation to the concept of syllogism, Aristotle pointed out that “it is therefore impossible to carry out a proof by moving from one kind to another, just as, for example, it is impossible to prove geometric propositions by arithmetic.” Exploring the problem of proof (which will be extremely important for understanding all subsequent material teaching aid), Aristotle introduces three types of unprovable principles - axioms, assumptions and postulates. Axioms are unprovable propositions that apply to several types of sciences at once. For example, Aristotle points out, it is an axiom that two quantities remain equal if equal parts are taken away from them. In general, axioms are formulated within the framework of philosophy; it (as a genus) embraces special sciences (as species); therefore, all the axioms of philosophy will be valid, for example, for physics. Assumptions Aristotle calls propositions (beginnings) that are provable in themselves, but within the limits of this reasoning are accepted without proof. Assumptions are always subject to conditions. If this condition is not recognized, then the assumption becomes a postulate.

The set of axioms, assumptions, postulates, definitions, syllogisms - all this is the sphere of mainly speculative activity, the subject of deductive science, which unfolds in the direction from the general to the particular. However, there is a reverse cognitive process from the particular to the general, which is the subject of inductive science. By private, or even individual, Aristotle understood, first of all, what is sensually perceived, that is, what physics (nature) supplies us with. Hence, induction allows us to build bridges between experimental knowledge and theoretical knowledge. Aristotle saw the goal of science in a complete definition of the subject, achieved only by combining deduction and induction: 1) knowledge about each individual property must be acquired from experience; 2) the conviction that this property is essential must be proven by a conclusion of a special logical form - a categorical syllogism.

Aristotle formulated three laws logical thinking: 1) the law of identity: every objectively true and logically correct thought or concept about an object must be definite and maintain its unambiguity throughout the entire reasoning and conclusion; 2) the law of contradiction: two incompatible statements cannot be true at the same time - two opposite statements or an affirmation and a negation - about the same subject in the same relation; one of them will necessarily be false; 3) the law of the excluded middle: two contradictory statements about the same subject, taken at the same time and in the same relation, cannot together be true or false (either A or not A).

The fourth law of formal logic - the law of sufficient reason - was formulated much later by the great German thinker Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716): every thought, in order to become undoubted, must be justified by other thoughts, the truth of which is proven or self-evident. But even earlier, in the 14th century, the English philosopher William (of Occam) said this: “Nothing should be accepted without reason if it is unknown either as self-evident or from experience.”

Aristotle builds his natural science exclusively with the help of syllogism, that is, formally logical inference, without relying on the arithmetic-geometric construction characteristic of Plato. By the way, here Aristotle made a mistake, asserting: “Mathematical accuracy should not be required for all objects, but only for intangible ones” (now we know that natural science as a science exists mainly in mathematical form). He obtained reliable knowledge as a result of the introduction of definition and deductive proof; premises of knowledge are found by induction or guidance, but probabilistic knowledge is found by dialectical means. For Aristotle, dialectics is a preliminary method of knowing reality; it only prepares the mind of the researcher to know the real truth. Having carried out a formal analysis of the concept of “beginnings” or “first principles”, Aristotle in Metaphysics identified four causes of being:

1) the essence or essence of being of a thing; form or prototype; for example, for a musical octave, the essence is the relation of two to one, thus the essence is what a thing is according to its basic definition, what remains of it after abstraction from matter, i.e. the formal cause;

2) matter or substrate of a thing; this is the content of a thing from which it arises, that is, the material cause;

3) the beginning of movement is where the first change or transition to a state of rest comes from, i.e. the driving, efficient cause;

4) end of movement or goal; good, i.e. that for the sake of which the action is performed; target reason.

Although Aristotle, as we see, recognized matter and considered it a certain essence, but passive (the ability to become something), he attributed all activity to the other three causes, and attributed eternity and immutability to the essence of being - form, and the source of all movement for him was God is the “prime mover” of the world, the highest goal of all forms and formations. Every thing is a unity of matter and form.

Aristotle's cosmos has a geocentric origin: the Earth, shaped like a ball, is at the center of the Universe; the Earth region is based on the four elements of the “elements”: earth, water, air and fire; The sky region has a fifth element - ether, from which the celestial bodies are composed. Aristotle's geocentric model of the cosmos, further revised and developed by Ptolemy, took a dominant position in the cosmology not only of late antiquity, but also until the 16th century, until the cosmology of Copernicus.

Aristotle was the first to consider the question of the shape of the Earth and celestial bodies based on observational data. Since during lunar eclipses the shadow cast by the Earth on the lunar disk always has a round shape, he came to the conclusion that the Earth and, by analogy, other celestial bodies have a spherical shape. At the same time, Aristotle recognized the Earth as a celestial body and, of course, the center of the Universe. The Sun and Moon in Aristotle’s world system are the celestial bodies closest to the Earth, the planets are located at greater (further) distances. The universe is limited by a sphere of stars nine times farther from the Earth than the Sun. At the same time, the Universe appears to be finite, and all bodies located inside it inevitably had to gravitate towards the Earth as the central body.

Ancient Greece, Hellas - ancient Greek civilization on southeast Europe, the highest prosperity which occurred in the V-IV centuries. BC. - a period called classical in its history. The origins of modern human civilization lie in the culture of Ancient Greece.

With its center on the territory of the Balkan Peninsula, the islands of the Aegean Sea and the western coast of Asia Minor, during colonization it spread to southern Italy, the island of Sicily and the Black Sea region. The history of Ancient Greece is considered in a chronological framework from the 3rd millennium BC. e. until the 1st century BC e., when the Hellenistic states lost their independence and became part of Ancient Rome. The Greeks themselves still call their country Hellas, and themselves Hellenes, having received the name “Greece” from the Romans.

Creto-Mycenaean era (before 12th century BC). In the 3rd millennium BC. Bronze Age culture arose in the Aegean region with its most important center on the island of Crete. The formation of classes began here (since the 21st century, the construction of palaces for kings). The economy (bronze production, maritime trade) and art (ceramics, painting) developed rapidly. Greek tribes (Achaeans, Aeolians, Ionians) from the northern regions around 1900 squeezed out the non-Indo-European local population of the Peloponnese and Hellas. They adopted (especially from the 16th century BC) many achievements of Cretan culture, including syllabic writing. Mycenae became the center of power, which from the 15th century spread to the islands of Crete, Cyprus and others. From the 12th century, the Dorians, who were still at a primitive stage, began to advance from the north. They defeated the Mycenaean class society and moved to the Peloponnese.

Homeric period (11th-8th centuries BC). After the so-called Dorian invasion, slavery in Greece experienced a decline, however, the use of iron caused a new boom in the economy. Around 1000 BC The Greek colonization of the western coast of Asia Minor began, which, thanks to constant contacts with the East, surpassed the metropolis. Here, around 800, Homer’s epic arose, which is a valuable source of information about the history of this period, despite the fact that the legendary Trojan War (13-12 centuries BC) is described.

The period of the Great Colonization (8-6 centuries BC). The further economic development of Greece (specialization of crafts, expansion of the use of slave labor, export of wine and oil, growth of ceramic production, maritime trade) had certain social consequences. Large landowners from among the tribal aristocracy, having eliminated the power of the king-leaders, simultaneously placed small landowners in a dependent position, sometimes the latter fell into debt slavery. At the same time, new layers of slave owners arose: wealthy merchants and owners of craft workshops. Cities arose in small Greek valleys, turning into economic and cultural centers, and the final formation of state institutions to ensure the class dominance of those in power. In many states, demos significantly weakened the position of the aristocracy. The leaders of the demos often ruled as tyrants. Tyranny, however, in most cases was soon replaced by a polis system, in which rich slave owners (oligarchy) or all full citizens (democracy) could participate in government bodies.

Period of Macedonian hegemony (4th-2nd centuries BC). After the victory of the Theban democrats (379), Thebes took over the leadership of Greece (BC). Political fragmentation of Greece in the 4th century BC. contributed to the stagnation of the slave economy and the impoverishment of the poor. Social struggle weakened the policies. The crisis could only be overcome through state centralization. This task was completed by Macedonia, whose king Philip II defeated the Greeks led by the Athenian democrats (Demosthenes) at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC). Philip's son Alexander the Great conquered the Persian kingdom and created the preconditions for economic and cultural growth, in which not so much Greece as the Hellenistic states took part. Greece was under Macedonian rule until the 2nd century BC. Independent political opposition was defended by the Achaean and Aetolian unions, as well as Sparta. Rome gained influence in Greece primarily as an ally of the Greek city-states against Macedonia. After the victory over Philip 5 (197 BC), the Romans proclaimed the slogan “return to freedom.” In 168 BC After the Battle of Pydna, Macedonia was defeated in 148 BC. declared a Roman province, to which in 146 BC. all of Greece was annexed. During the division of the Roman Empire (395), the Greek regions passed to the Byzantine Empire.

* Homeric society has not yet emerged from the primitive communal system. There was no state apparatus of class oppression. Contradictions between individual social groups were not yet so aggravated that such institutions as a standing army, prisons, and courts were required in order to keep the exploited and oppressed social classes in obedience. However, at this time the gradual separation of the organs of the clan system from the mass of the people had already begun. Tribal leaders govern their tribes almost without the participation of popular assemblies. The Achaean militia near Troy is led by a council of basileans; the role of the meeting of soldiers is actually reduced only to confirming the decisions of this council. And during the 20-year absence of Odysseus, no public assembly met in Ithaca. In fact, all matters were decided by the nobility. In the description of the picture of the court found in the epic, the verdict is passed by the elders, and the people only shout out sympathy for one or the other of the disputing parties.

The Greek city-states varied in size and population. There were very large policies. For example, Lacedaemon, or Sparta, had a territory of 8400 square meters. km, and the population is about 150–200 thousand people. The Athenian polis had a total territory of about 2,500 thousand square meters. km with a population of 120–150 thousand people, but there were very small policies with a territory of 30–40 square meters. km and with a population of several hundred people, such as the Phocian city of Panopeia (on the border with Boeotia).

* Ancient Greek law, in its influence on the further legal development of Europe, cannot in any respect be compared with the law of another main representative ancient world, Rome. Not developed theoretically by Greek jurists, and due to the fragmentation of Greece not receiving the meaning of a unified Greek law, it did not result in a coherent system of norms suitable for reception in other countries. This explains the incomparably smaller share of attention that fell to his share from Western lawyers. Legislation played an extremely small role in the creation of Greek law. Sparta did not have written laws at all, and although Athens had them, they were compiled at a very distant time and have not reached us in the original. The developed Greek law of orator time was never codified in any complete form. Greece did not leave us any records of law in the works of its jurists, whom (in our or the Roman sense) it did not know at all.

*More soft shapes paternal authority, which took on the character of protection and patronage of the subordinates rather than actual power; * recognition of sons as full rights upon reaching adulthood; * largely independent property status of the wife; * significantly greater proximity of communal forms of land ownership (stated with sufficient convincing in the poems of Homer) to the historical period of Greek history; * the undoubted and strong influence of the social principle on the organization of private property, in relation to real estate, sometimes reaching the prohibition of the sale of hereditary plots of land divided between families of indigenous citizens; * much freer forms of obligatory relations than in Rome, expressed primarily in a free (informal) contract; * the absence or at least a significant limitation of testamentary law and, finally, a whole series of specific legal entities unknown to Rome, only later receiving some of them (for example, the mortgage system), these are the main material differences between Greek law and Roman law, usually emphasized by researchers .

The coat of arms of Ancient Greece is the state symbol of Greece and consists of two main elements of an azure shield with a silver cross (a fragment of the flag), and a laurel wreath around the shield. The shield with the cross symbolizes military glory and at the same time the main Greek religion, Orthodoxy. The laurel wreath symbolizes ancient history Greece, because such wreaths were awarded to the winners of the ancient Olympic Games.

During the times of Ancient Greece, there were no state flags as such (flags were used in the navy to give various signals). Instead, various emblems and symbols were used as identification marks. They were placed on the shields and sails of ships belonging to the army of a particular policy

Anthem of Greece in the native language ν όψη που με βια μετράει τη γή. ?? ίρε, ω χαίρε, Ελευθεριά! Anthem of Greece in Russian I recognize the blade of retribution, blazing with a thunderstorm, I know your winged gaze, Enveloping the globe! The pride of the ancient people, reborn again, Hello, proud Freedom, Hello, Hellenic love! Hymn to Freedom (Ύμνος εις την Ελευθερίαν) IPA: [ˈ imn ɔ s is tin ɛ l ɛ fθ ɛˈ rian] a poem written by Dionysios Solomos in 1823, consisting of 158 quatrains. In 1865, the first 24 verses were declared the anthem of Greece, but in practice, as a rule, the first 2 quatrains are sung. The music for the anthem was written in 1828 by Solomos' friend Nikolaos Mandzaros; subsequently he revised it twice (in 1844 and 1861)

The ancestor of ancient Greek culture was the Crete-Mycenaean culture, which arose on the island of Crete around 2200 BC. e. and flourished until 1450 BC. The island of Crete in the middle of the Bronze Age (2700-1400 BC) became the center of the Minoan civilization, named after the legendary king Minos, who reigned on the island of Crete.

royal headband, Fr. Crete

According to Greek myth, the king of the island of Crete Minos (Mycenaean mwi-nu - Minu) was the son Phoenician princess of Europe And god Zeus (in Minoan - Di-ve = di-we - “Diy”, which comes from Vedic Sanskrit from “Dyaus pitar” - ), Zeus (ancient Greek Ζεύς, turning into a white bull (Tav-Ros), kidnapped Europe and went with her to the island of Crete to the Dictaean cave, where he himself was born.

Harappa, Mahenjo-Doro. Great Mother Goddess accompanied by bulls

We find a similar ritual cart on which the Great Mother of the Gods sits in Mahenjo-Doro on the island of Crete, in the Minoan culture Bronze Age (2700-1400 BC)

About the constellation Taurus Ovid wrote: “ On the night before the Ides [May] the bull all strewn with stars rises» (Ovid. Fast. V 603-618). The myth of the abduction of Europa by Zeus is based on ancient mystery Mother Earth and the universal fertilizing principle - heavenly rain, sky, pouring out life-giving moisture to the ground.

Creto-Mycenaean civilization - Great Mother Goddess - 16th century BC.

In the Minoan civilization of Crete, the god Zeus is the Sun-bull , and Europe was initially perceived not only as a symbol of fertility and the Eternal Tree of plant life - Mother Earth, but was also a symbol animal life - how the lunar cow married to the Sun-bull.
Sitting on a bull, Europe holds in one hand wild flower , and with the other hand holds for the bull's horn, ancient symbol fertility and abundance. The two bull's horns represent the curved crescent of the Moon.

Being the element of earthly animal and plant life, Europe covers the whole space world, found on the horns of a bull, she personifies the “broadly luminous” Moon.

In the zoomorphic myths of Crete, “wide-eyed” and "Hair-eyed Selena" - Europe became an image identified with the single element of earthly and cosmic life. Europe not only has the eyes of a cow, but is also a cow: “ Selena (the moon) is the bull, and the bull (i.e. the constellation Taurus) is the highest position of Selena the Moon "(Porphyr. De antr. nymph. 18). Poets have many epithets indicating the horniness of the Moon-Selena.

Numerous coins of Crete, dating back to the Minoan civilization, contain on one side an image of a bull, and on the other - an image of Europa on a plane tree and the inscription: « Ti-sy-roi" - "ti-se- Roi" - "You are Rhea".

In Crete-Mycenaean texts there is an inscription: te-i-ja ma-te-re - “te-i-e ma-te-re” - “that is the Mother of the gods.” Mother of Zeus, the goddess Rhea - Supreme (Mycenaean. O-re-i = o-re-i = mountains: orei - 'in the mountains', (cf. o-re-a) = orehās; O-re-ta = o- re-ta = oreta - supreme (Greek Ορος - 'mountain').

The Minoan religion contains elements Proto-Indo-Iranian culture from the Northern Black Sea region - veneration of the Great Mother Goddess with snakes, who in Iranian language group called Ishtar or Astarte.

sign of Mokosh - horns and grains of a sown field

In the Northern Black Sea region, speakers of various dialects called the Great Mother of the gods - Api, the Minoans on Crete call Athena, and Asirai - Asirai - Asi-Reya, “paradise, in the hands of the Mother.”

In the Mycenaean language the name of the goddess Rei is also referred to as “A-ro-a = a-ro-a”; « A-ro-e = a-ro-e"; "A-ro-yo = a-ro-jo" , which means " Arius, " - and in the Vedic Sanskrit dictionary it means “arioa, arioes” - excellent, best, good; (Greek aristos - αριστος - ‘excellent, the best’; ayaphos - αγαθός - ‘good’).

Name of the Minoan goddess Api-Rei, or Asirai, may be the equivalent of the Sanskrit name of the god - Asura, the Avestan - Ahura, the Scythian goddess - Api, Hellenic - Athens.

Thus, Europa is a primordially chthonic (i.e., earthly) deity associated with the entire cosmos, including heaven, earth and the underworld.

In Crete, the name of the invisible god of the underworld Aida (ancient Greek Ἀΐδης – AIDIS, - “A-Vidis” - “invisible” ).

The very name of Europe Hesychius interprets how Eyropon - “dark, sunset land”, and Euripides (Iphig. T.626) speaks of Europe: “black (eyröpon) abyss of rock», perhaps a grave, a cave. Zeus gave Europe the dog Argos, the "guardian of Europe" , there is a legend that later Zeus raised the Dog Argos to the stars, recognizing him as worthy of this, and so it appeared in the sky constellation Canis.

Lucian associates the Sidonian Princess Europe , daughter of Argiope and Agenor from Phenicia, with Assyrian Astarte and Selena:

« There is also another great sanctuary in Phenicia, which is owned by the inhabitants of Sidon; as the Sidonians say, it is dedicated to Ashtoreth. It seems to me that Astarte is the same Selena. However, one of the Phoenician priests told me that this temple is dedicated to Europa, the sister of Cadmus and the daughter of King Agenor.»

In ancient times, Europe was called Hellotia, from the word helein, ["to take"], because it was, according to myth, "taken" by a bull, as the Phoenicians say.(Etym. Μ.- Hellötis). From the word helein - “to take”, the name of Helen the Beautiful comes from.

Other stories by ancient Greek writers tell about Cretan commander Tavre, who attacked Tire and took captive, among others, the royal daughter Europa and then married her.

Linguistic transformation of the name of the Taurian and Scythian goddess of earth and fertility Api to the Cretan-Mycenaean goddess Athena It is quite possible, since in the Greek language there are quite a few examples of the sound “P” on “F”. For example, in the Minoan language “po-ni-ke = po-ni-ke - ‘date palm’, Greek is modified into “phoinikē” - φοινιξ - ‘date palm’.

Api-Athena Promachos (Foremother ) with a spear and shield - 580 BC, o. Crete

IN Creto-Mycenaean culture Athena portrayed as Scythian goddess Api with his hands raised up and surrounded by snakes.

Owl symbol of Athena, inscription AFI = API

In Greek A-fi-na = A -“theou-nesis” - "divine mind" The Greeks call Athena Ethona - “Ethonoe” = “ en thoi ethei knowledge" – "this is the divine mind" , and depicted her surrounded by snakes, as in the Cretan-Mycenaean era.

Over time, the Cretan-Mycenaean mother goddess Athena began to acquire new functions, the Hellenic goddess Athena became the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, as well as just war, strategy, mathematics, art, crafts and craftsmanship.

In Corinth, the goddess Athena was called Helotis - Hellötis, from the word helein - “to take”, and in her honor they held the festival of Gellotia, as well as the festival Athens-Europe on Crete :

« Gellotida was a wreath woven from myrtle with a circumference of 20 cubits and was carried out at the festival of Gellotia. In it, they say, they carried the bones of Europa, which [also] was called Gellotis. The Gellotii also ruled in Corinth." (Athen. XV 678b).

By the end of the 3rd millennium BC. The eastern Mediterranean became the center of world history.

In an era of maximum power Minoan civilization islands of Crete, the Minoan fleet perfectly mastered the Mediterranean from Sicily and Greece to Asia Minor, Syria, Phenicia and Egypt.

Ancient Greek goddess of motherhood Summer (ancient Greek Λητώ, - Latona, in the Minoan language - Ra-to - ra-to, wife of Zeus, and mother of the god Apollo.

The daughter of Zeus and Demeter (or Ceres), the goddess of plants Persephone (ancient Greek Περσεφόνη, in Mycenaean: pe-re-swa (per-re-sva). Swa - swa - sowing, sowing.

Ancient Greek goddesses of vengeance Erinyes (ancient Greek Ἐρινύες - - “wrathful”) in Mycenaean language - E-ri-nu = e-ri-nu, daughter of Arius - the god of war.

The names of the Minoan goddesses are known - Ra-zha-ya = ra-za-ja – “woman in labor”, And A-me-ya - a-me-ja - amea.

Cretan-Mycenaean goddess Aphrodite older than the god Zeus and belongs to the primary chthonic deities pre-Greek period . Aphrodite is usually identified with the Phoenician Astarte, , Babylonian-Assyrian Ishtar, Egyptian Isis.

From the name (Api) Athena comes the name (Api-rodite) Aphrodite, the root of the word “genus” in the name “Aph-rodite” - means “parent”, (life, fruit) “giving birth.” The goddess Aphrodite was considered in ancient times Greek mythology the goddess of fertility and life, the goddess of marriage and childbirth, she was called the child-parent and “child-nurser.” The divine fertility of the goddess Aphrodite is spoken of in the tragedy of Aeschylus “Danaids”.

As the chthonic (i.e. earthly) deity Aphrodite, who gives life and abundance to the earth, appears, as does the goddess (Api) Athena, accompanied by wild animals pacified by her - lions, wolves, bears and snakes, rulers of the underworld.

The name of one of the twelve great Olympian goddesses, Aphrodite (ancient Greek Ἀφροδίτη), in ancient Greece was interpreted in Greek as a derivative from the Greek word ἀφρός - “foam” , since according to the legend Aphrodite- goddess of beauty and love, born from the foam of the sea on the island of Cyprus.

In Greek mythology, created later than the appearance goddess of fertility in Cyprus, it is said that the blood of the god Cronus, the father of the god Uranus, spilled into the sea, which caused the foam to form in which Aphrodite was born. In the Homeric hymn, the goddess Aphrodite, who emerged from the airy sea foam in Cyprus, is called Cyprida (Greek: Κιπρίδα) , that is, born in Cyprus.
In later Greek myths about the birth of Aphrodite from the blood of the god Uranus is almost forgotten, the Greeks call Aphrodite daughter of Zeus, born in a cave on the island of Crete , and the goddess of rain, the Titanides Dions .

Plato emphasizes divine origin Aphrodite from the sky - Uranus, calling her Aphrodite Urania, goddess of pure heavenly love. Greek mythology gradually turned Aphrodite Urania into an accessible, vulgar mistress of the gods and heroes of myth, to Aphrodite Pandemos (Greek) Πάνδεμος - “national”) - the goddess of base sensual love, not associated with heavenly Uranus, but who became daughter of Zeus and the rain goddess, Titanide Dions , and the wife of the lame god of fire Hephaestus (ancient Greek Ἥφαιστος) , son of Zeus and Hera . Hephaestus was the patron of the blacksmith's craft and blacksmiths, the most skilled blacksmith and the ugliest among the gods.

Lame-footed Hephaestus he worked in a forge, he is depicted with a hammer at a flaming forge, he forged armor for gods and heroes, finding true satisfaction in work. Unlike the hardworking Hephaestus, Aphrodite is pampered and loving, she participated in many of the intrigues of Athena and Hera. Aphrodite had seven lovers, with whom she gave birth to 12 children.
The son of Aphrodite and Hermes (children of Zeus) is considered to be Herm-Aph-rodite who is called Afrodite, that is, born of Aphrodite. In Mycenaean texts the name Hephaestus is mentioned as a-pa-i-ti-jo.

The god of the seas and oceans, Poseidon, sought the love of Aphrodite, but she fell in love with the son of the goddess Hera, the god of the unjust war Ares, whom none of the people and gods loved. From a secret and illegal union with Arius, the goddess Aphrodite gave birth to children: passionate Eros (or Eros) belonged to chaos, and Harmony who accompany Aphrodite everywhere, Anteros (hate), Himeros (Chimeros), Phobos (fear), Deimos (horror) who became eternal companions god of war Ares.

Aphrodite and Ares - love and war - they are nearby, from love to hate there is always one step. Parmenides writes about birth Erota , a winged boy armed with a bow and arrows that inspire love: “Aphrodite created Eros first of all the gods.”, instilling love in the hearts and unpredictable chaos in the life of a lover.

Eros and Psia (Soul)

Xenophon and Pausanias mention the temple of Aphrodite Urania in Athens, on the Athenian Acropolis.

Pausanias reports that the worship of Aphrodite was introduced Theseus , the nationwide cult of the deity, “when he brought all the Athenians from their rural homes into one city.”

On the mainland, the first center of veneration of the cult of Aphrodite Urania was the ancient Ephyra or Corinth . The statue of Aphrodite Urania was wooden and the goddess is depicted armed in military armor and wearing a Corinthian helmet.

The penetration of the cult of Aphrodite Urania into ancient Greece is associated with the island of Cyprus and (Greek Κύθηρα - Kythera), located southeast of the Peloponnese, where the most ancient and sacred Elien Temple of Aphrodite .

There were numerous sanctuaries of Aphrodite in other regions of Greece (Corinth, Boeotia, Messenia, Achaia, Sparta), on the islands of Cyprus, in the city of Paphos, there is a temple of Aphrodite - the Paphos goddess, Kythera, Crete, Sicily Temple of Aphrodite at Mount Eryx - Aphrodite Ericinia.

Aphrodite was especially revered in Asia Minor, in Ephesus and Abydos, in Syria in Byblos, dedicated to this Lucian's treatise "About the Syrian Goddess."

Hellas is the ancient name of Greece. This state had a significant influence on the further development of Europe. It was here that such a concept as “democracy” first appeared, here the foundation was laid, the main features of theoretical philosophy were formed, and the most beautiful monuments of art were created. Hellas is an amazing country, and its history is full of secrets and mysteries. In this publication you will find the most Interesting Facts from the past of Greece.

From the history of Hellas

In the history of Ancient Greece, it is customary to distinguish 5 periods: Crete-Mycenaean, Dark Ages, Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic. Let's look at each of them in more detail.

The Creto-Mycenaean period is associated with the emergence of the first state formations on the islands of the Aegean Sea. Chronologically it covers 3000-1000 years. BC e. At this stage, the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations appeared.

The Dark Ages period is called the “Homeric” period. This stage is characterized by the final decline of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, as well as the formation of the first pre-polis structures. Sources practically do not mention this period. In addition, the Dark Ages are characterized by the decline of culture, economy and the loss of writing.

The Archaic period is the time of the formation of the main cities and the expansion of the Hellenic world. In the 8th century BC e. The Great Greek Colonization begins. During this period, the Greeks settled along the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. During the archaics take shape early forms Hellenic art.

The classical period is the heyday of the Greek city-states, their economy and culture. In the V-IV centuries. BC e. the concept of “democracy” appears. During the classical period, the most significant military events in the history of Hellas took place - the Greco-Persian and Peloponnesian wars.

The Hellenistic period is characterized by close interaction between Greek and Eastern cultures. At this time, there was a flourishing of art in the state. The Hellenistic period in the history of Greece lasted until the establishment of Roman rule in the Mediterranean.

The most famous cities of Hellas

It is worth noting that in Greece during the period of antiquity there was no single state. Hellas is a country that consisted of many policies. In antiquity, a city-state was called a polis. Its territory included an urban center and a chora (agricultural settlement). The political administration of the polis was in the hands of the People's Assembly and the Council. All city-states were different in both population and territory size.

The most famous policies of ancient Greece are Athens and Sparta (Lacedaemon).

• Athens is the cradle of Greek democracy. Famous philosophers and orators, heroes of Hellas, as well as famous cultural figures lived in this polis.
• Sparta is a shining example of an aristocratic state. The main occupation of the population of the polis was war. It was here that the foundations of discipline and military tactics were laid, which were later used by Alexander the Great.

Culture of Ancient Greece

The myths and legends of Ancient Greece played a unifying role for the culture of the state. Every sphere of Hellenic life was subordinated general ideas about deities. It is worth noting that the foundations of the ancient Greek religion were formed back in the Cretan-Mycenaean period. In parallel with mythology, cult practice arose - sacrifices and religious festivals, accompanied by agons.

The ancient Greek literary tradition, theatrical art and music are also closely connected with mythology.

In Hellas, urban planning actively developed and beautiful architectural ensembles were created.

The most famous figures and heroes of Hellas

• Hippocrates is the father of Western medicine. He is the creator of a medical school that had a huge influence on all ancient medicine.
• Phidias is one of the most famous sculptors of the classical era. He is the author of one of the seven wonders of the world - the statue of Olympian Zeus.
• Democritus - father modern science, famous ancient Greek philosopher. He is considered the founder of atomism, the theory that material things are made of atoms.
• Herodotus is the father of history. He studied the origins and events of the Greco-Persian wars. The result of this research was the famous work “History”.
• Archimedes - Greek mathematician, physicist and astronomer.
• Pericles - outstanding statesman. He made a significant contribution to the development of the Athenian polis.
• Plato is a famous philosopher and orator. He is the founder of the first educational institution on the territory of Western Europe - Plato's Academy in Athens.
• Aristotle is one of the fathers of Western philosophy. His works covered almost all spheres of social life.

The importance of ancient Greek civilization for the development of world culture

Hellas is a country that has had a huge influence on the development of world culture. Here such concepts as “philosophy” and “democracy” were born, and the foundations of world science were laid. Greek ideas about the world, medicine, civil society and man also influenced the destinies of many Western European states. Any field of art is connected with this great state, be it theater, sculpture or literature.