(October 23 - November 4, 1942) and Stalingrad (November 19, 1942 - February 2, 1943), Tsar Boris began to seek contact with Anglo-American circles. This aroused Hitler's suspicions. Boris was summoned to Hitler's headquarters for an explanation. According to published information from British intelligence (E. H. Cookridge, 1948), during his return to Sofia on August 28, after an audience with Hitler, Tsar Boris, who wished for a separate peace, was killed. It later turned out that he died of a heart attack.

Modern Bulgaria

On November 10, 1989, deep economic and political reforms. Since November 15, 1990, the country has been called the Republic of Bulgaria. On April 2, 2004, Bulgaria joined NATO, and on January 1, 2007, the European Union.

The post-socialist presidents of Bulgaria were Pyotr Mladenov, Zhelyu Zhelev, Pyotr Stoyanov, Georgi Parvanov.

In the mid-1990s, socialists were in power. In 2001-2005, the Prime Minister of Bulgaria was the former Tsar Simeon II (Simeon of Saxe-Coburg Gotha), who headed his own party, the National Movement "Simeon the Second". From August 2005 to July 2009, a coalition government led by socialist Sergei Stanishev was in power. Stanishev's cabinet also included representatives of the party of Simeon of Saxe-Coburg Gotha and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms of Ahmed Dogan.

In the 2009 parliamentary elections, both the socialists and liberals of Simeon suffered a serious defeat. Most of the seats were won by the new party "GERB", led by the charismatic Boyko Borisov. This party, although quite populist in its rhetoric, is essentially its ideology - radical liberalism. GERB stands for a European choice for Bulgaria and its further participation in Euro-Atlantic cooperation. On July 27, 2009, the cabinet under the leadership of Boyko Borisov began its duties.

Second Bulgarian Kingdom

The Bulgarians of the Asen clan, who lived in Tarnovo, sent an embassy to the Byzantine emperor Isaac Anel in 1185 with a request to confirm their possessions. The arrogant refusal and beating of the embassy became the signal for an uprising. Behind a short time the uprising spread from the Balkan Mountains to the Danube. From then on, the alliance of the Bulgarians with the Cumans, known in Bulgaria as the Cumans, began - the Cumans repeatedly fought alongside the Bulgarians against the Byzantines.

The Second Bulgarian Kingdom existed from 1187 to 1396, the city of Tarnovo became the new capital. In 1197, Asen I was killed by the rebel Bolyarin Ivanko, who went over to the side of Byzantium. Peter, the middle of the brothers, also fell at the hands of murderers. In southern Bulgaria there were two independent states - led by the governor Dobromir Khris in the current city of Melnik, and the despot Slav in the Rhodope Mountains; his fortress Tsepina now does not exist. After becoming king in 1197, Kaloyan harshly suppressed opposition and began the rapid expansion of Bulgaria. The last seat of Byzantium in northern Bulgaria, Varna - then Odessos, was taken by storm on March 24, 1201, Easter Sunday. The entire Byzantine garrison was killed and buried in the ditches of the fortress. Kaloyan, who was a hostage in Constantinople during the reign of his brother Asen I, received a good Greek education. However, he received the nickname "Rome Killer". According to the Byzantine chronicler George Akropolitus, “He took revenge on the Romans for the evil that Emperor Vasily I inflicted on the Bulgarians, and he himself called himself the Romeo-Killer... Indeed, no one else caused so much grief to the Romans!” Taking advantage of the defeat of Byzantium by the crusaders, he inflicted several major defeats on the Latin Empire, defeating the troops of the IV Crusade, and extended his influence to most Balkan Peninsula. After the capture of Constantinople by the troops of the Fourth Crusade, Kaloyan began correspondence with Pope Innocent, and received the title “emperor” from him. In 1205, shortly after the defeat of the crusaders, Bulgarian troops suppressed the Byzantine uprising in the city of Plovdiv - the leader of the uprising, Alexei Aspieta, was hanged head down.

With the light hand of two people separated by a large time period, we know which Greek tragedy is the main one.

Aristotle's Poetics clearly states that the best Greek tragedian of the three great tragedians is Sophocles, and the best Greek tragedy of all Greek tragedies is Oedipus the King.

And this is one of the problems with the perception of Greek tragedy. The paradox is that Aristotle's opinion was apparently not shared by the Athenians of the 5th century BC, when Oedipus the King was produced. We know that Sophocles lost the competition with this tragedy; the Athenian audience did not appreciate Oedipus the King the way Aristotle appreciated it.

Nevertheless, Aristotle, who says that Greek tragedy is a tragedy of two emotions, fear and compassion, writes about Oedipus the King that anyone who reads even a line from it will at the same time be afraid of what happened to the hero and have compassion for him.

Aristotle turned out to be right: almost all great thinkers paid attention to the question of the meaning of this tragedy, how we should perceive the main character, whether Oedipus is guilty or not guilty. About twenty years ago, an article by an American researcher was published, in which he scrupulously collected the opinions of everyone, starting with Hegel and Schelling, who said that Oedipus was guilty, who said that Oedipus was not guilty, who said that Oedipus, of course, was guilty, but involuntarily. As a result, he ended up with four main and three auxiliary groups of positions. And not so long ago, our compatriot, but in German, published a huge book called “The Search for Guilt,” dedicated to how “Oedipus the King” was interpreted over the centuries that have passed since its first production.

The second person, of course, was Sigmund Freud, who, for obvious reasons, also devoted many pages to Oedipus the King (although not as many as it would seem he should have) and called this tragedy an exemplary example of psychoanalysis - with this only difference that the psychoanalyst and the patient coincide in it: Oedipus acts both as a doctor and as a patient, since he analyzes himself. Freud wrote that this tragedy is the beginning of everything - religion, art, morality, literature, history, that this is a tragedy for all times.

Nevertheless, this tragedy, like all other ancient Greek tragedies, was staged at a specific time and in a specific place. Eternal problems- art, morality, literature, history, religion and everything else - were correlated in it with specific times and specific events.

Oedipus the King was produced between 429 and 425 BC. This is a very important time in the life of Athens - the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, which will ultimately lead to the fall of the greatness of Athens and its defeat.

The tragedy opens with a choir who comes to Oedipus, who rules in Thebes, and says that there is a pestilence in Thebes and the cause of this pestilence, according to the prophecy of Apollo, is the one who killed the former king of Thebes, Laius. In tragedy, it takes place in Thebes, but every tragedy is about Athens, since it is staged in Athens and for Athens. At that moment, a terrible plague had just passed through Athens, killing off many citizens, including some absolutely outstanding ones - and this, of course, is an allusion to it. Also during this plague, Pericles, the political leader with whom the greatness and prosperity of Athens is associated, died.

One of the problems that preoccupies interpreters of the tragedy is whether Oedipus is associated with Pericles, if so, how, and what is Sophocles’ attitude to Oedipus, and therefore to Pericles. It seems that Oedipus is a terrible criminal, but at the same time he is the savior of the city both before and at the end of the tragedy. Volumes have also been written on this topic.

In Greek, the tragedy is literally called "Oedipus the Tyrant." The Greek word τύραννος (), from which it comes Russian word"tyrant" is deceptive: it cannot be translated as "tyrant" (it is never translated, as can be seen from all Russian - and not only Russian - versions of the tragedy), because initially this word did not have the negative connotations that it has in modern Russian language. But, apparently, in Athens of the 5th century it had these connotations - because Athens in the 5th century was proud of its democratic structure, the fact that there is no power of one, that all citizens equally decide who is the best tragedian and what is best for the state. In the Athenian myth, the expulsion of tyrants from Athens, which occurred at the end of the 6th century BC, is one of the most important ideologies. And therefore the name “Oedipus the Tyrant” is rather negative.

Indeed, Oedipus in the tragedy behaves like a tyrant: he reproaches his brother-in-law Creon for a conspiracy that does not exist, and calls the soothsayer Tiresias bribed, who speaks of the terrible fate awaiting Oedipus.

By the way, when Oedipus and his wife and, as it later turns out, mother Jocasta talk about the imaginary nature of prophecies and their political engagement, this is also connected with the realities of Athens in the 5th century, where oracles were an element of political technology. Each political leader almost had his own soothsayers, who interpreted or even composed prophecies specifically for his tasks. So even such seemingly timeless problems as the relationship of people with gods through prophecies have a very specific political meaning.

One way or another, all this indicates that a tyrant is bad. On the other hand, we know from other sources, for example from the history of Thucydides, that in the mid-5th century the allies called Athens a “tyranny” - meaning by this a powerful state that was governed in part by democratic processes and united around itself allies. That is, behind the concept of “tyranny” is the idea of ​​power and organization.

It turns out that Oedipus is a symbol of the danger that powerful power carries and which lies in any political system. Thus, this is a political tragedy.

On the other hand, Oedipus the King is, of course, a tragedy the most important topics. And the main one among them is the theme of knowledge and ignorance.

Oedipus is a sage who at one time saved Thebes from the terrible sphinx (because the sphinx is a woman) by solving her riddle. It is as a sage that a chorus of Theban citizens, elders and youth, comes to him with a request to save the city. And like the sage, Oedipus declares the need to solve the mystery of the murder of the former king and solves it throughout the entire tragedy.

But at the same time he is also blind, not knowing the most important thing: who he is, who his father and mother are. In his quest to find out the truth, he ignores everything that others warn him about. Thus it turns out that he is a sage who is not wise.

The opposition of knowledge and ignorance is at the same time the opposition of vision and blindness. The blind prophet Tiresias, who at the beginning speaks with the seeing Oedipus, constantly tells him: “You are blind.” Oedipus at this moment sees, but does not know - unlike Tiresias, who knows, but does not see.

It is remarkable, by the way, that in Greek vision and knowledge are the same word. In Greek, to know and see is οἶδα (). This is the same root that, from the Greek point of view, is contained in the name of Oedipus, and this is played out many times.

In the end, having learned that it was he who killed his father and married his mother, Oedipus blinds himself - and thereby, having finally become a true sage, loses his sight. Before this, he says that the blind man, that is, Tiresias, was too sighted.

The tragedy is built on an extremely subtle play (including verbal play surrounding the name of Oedipus himself) of these two themes - knowledge and vision. Inside the tragedy they form a kind of counterpoint, constantly changing places. Thanks to this, Oedipus the King, being a tragedy of knowledge, becomes a tragedy for all times.

The meaning of the tragedy also turns out to be dual. On the one hand, Oedipus is the most unhappy person, and the choir sings about this. He found himself plunged from complete happiness into misery. He will be expelled from his own city. He lost his own wife and mother, who committed suicide. His children are the product of incest. Everything is terrible.

On the other hand, paradoxically, Oedipus triumphs at the end of the tragedy. He wanted to know who his father was and who his mother was, and he found out. He wanted to find out who killed Lai, and he found out. He wanted to save the city from plague, from pestilence - and he did. The city was saved, Oedipus gained the most important thing for him - knowledge, albeit at the cost of incredible suffering, at the cost of losing his own vision.

PHILIP, ALEXANDER'S FATHER

In fairy-tale times, three teenage brothers fled from Argos in Greece and hired themselves out as shepherds to the king of the northern land. The eldest grazed horses, the middle one grazed bulls, and the youngest grazed sheep. Times were simple, and the royal wife baked bread for them herself. Suddenly she began to notice that the piece she was cutting off for the youngest was automatically doubling in size. The king became alarmed and decided to drive the shepherds away. The young men demanded their wages. The king got angry, pointed to the sun and shouted: “Here is your pay!” The times were poor, the royal housing was a simple hut without windows, only through the chimney the sun's rays fell like a bright spot on the earthen floor. Suddenly the younger brother bent down, outlined the sunlight on the ground with a knife, scooped the sun into his bosom three times with his palm, said: “Thank you, king,” and left. His brothers did the same after him. When the king came to his senses, he sent pursuit of them, but did not catch up. The brothers found shelter with neighboring tribes, grew up, returned and took the kingdom from the king. All Macedonian kings called themselves their descendants. Macedonia has changed little since then. Of course, the kings no longer lived in huts, but in palaces, and they had more goods. But there were still no cities in the country, but there was an old Testament village, where noble landowners made up the cavalry that pranced around the king, and the peasants made up the somehow assembled infantry. The cavalry was good, but the infantry was bad, and no one was afraid of the Macedonian army. Everything went differently when Philip of Macedon became king. As a child, he was a hostage in Thebes, in the house of Epaminondas, and saw enough of the best Greek army. Having become king, he turned the inexperienced Macedonian militia into an indestructible phalanx of the most in a simple way. He lengthened the spears of the warriors: the first row of fighters had spears two meters long, the second one three meters, and so on, up to six. The rear fighters thrust their spears between the front ones, and the phalanx bristled with points five times thicker than usual. While the enemy tried to approach it, the Macedonian cavalry attacked him from the flanks and cut down to victory. Next to Macedonia was Thrace; in Thrace there were the only gold mines near Greece. Philip was the first to recapture them from the fierce Thracians and keep them behind him. Until now, in Greece the coin was silver, gold was minted only Persian king ; now the Macedonian king also began to mint it. There were Greek cities along the Aegean coast - Philip subjugated them one after another. Some were considered impregnable - he said: “There is no such impregnable city that a donkey with a bag of gold would not enter.” Greece itself allowed its dangerous neighbor in. The Thebans began to push back their western neighbors, the Phocians. Phocis was a poor country, but among Phocis stood Delphi. Greek piety protected them for the time being - now that time is over. The Phocians captured Delphi, seized the wealth that was accumulating there, hired such a mercenary army as had never been seen here, and kept all of central Greece in fear for ten years. Delphi was considered under the protection of the surrounding states, but they could not cope with the brave sacrilege themselves and invited Philip to help. The Macedonian phalanx entered Greece. Before the decisive battle, Philip ordered the fighters to put wreaths from the sacred laurel of Apollo on their helmets; Seeing the formation of these avengers for the Delphic god, the Phocians wavered and were defeated. Philip was hailed as the savior of Greece; Macedonia was recognized as a Greek state, and moreover (although this was not said) the most powerful state. Philip tried to win not only with force, but also with affection. He said: “What is taken by force, I share with my allies; what is taken with caress is only mine.” He was offered to occupy Greek cities with troops - he replied: “It is more profitable for me to be known as good for a long time than for a short time as evil.” They told him: “Punish the Athenians: they scold you.” He was surprised: “And after this, will they really praise?” - and added: “The Athenian battle only makes me better, because I try to show the whole world that this is a lie.” He was like that among his neighbors. They told him: “So-and-so is scolding you, send him away.” He answered: “Why? So that he swears not in front of those who know me, but in front of those who don’t?” They told him: “So-and-so scolds you - execute him.” He answered: “Why? Better invite him to come to me for a treat.” He treated, rewarded, then inquired: “Are you scolding?” - “Praise!” - “You see, I know people better than you.” One day after a victory, he sat on a dais and watched as prisoners were driven into slavery. One of them shouted: “Hey, king, let me go, I’m your friend!” - “Why on earth is this?” - “Let me come closer and I’ll tell you.” And, leaning towards the king’s ear, the captive said: “Pull down your tunic, king, otherwise you’re sitting unsightly.” “Let him go,” said Philip, “he really is my friend.” Philip's main enemy in Greece was Athens. There, in the national assembly, supporters and opponents of Philip fought; some were fed by Macedonian gold, others by Persian gold. The opponents prevailed: the war began. The Macedonian phalanx clashed with the Athenian and Theban phalanx at Chaeronea. On one wing, Philip trembled before the Athenians, on the other, his son, young Alexander, overthrew the Thebans; Seeing this, Philip rushed forward, and victory was won. The “sacred detachment” of the Thebans died on the spot, down to a single person, all the wounds were in the chest. Greece was in the hands of Philip. He declared universal peace, banned internecine wars and began preparing a war against Persia. They advised him: “Destroy Athens.” He answered: “Who will look at my affairs then?” While practicing in the gymnasium, he fell, looked at the imprint of his body in the sand and sighed: “How little land we need and how much we want!” He managed to learn from the Greeks a sense of proportion, he was worried about his own happiness: “May the gods send us a little bit of bad for all the good!” His anxiety was not in vain: two years after Chaeronea he was killed.

Bulgaria(Bulgarian Bulgaria), officially - Republic of Bulgaria(Bulgarian Republic of Bulgaria) is a state in South-Eastern Europe, in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. Occupies 22% of its area. The country was named after the ethnonym of the people - Bulgarians.

From the east it is washed by the Black Sea. It borders with Greece and Turkey in the south, with Serbia and Macedonia in the west and Romania in the north.

The total length of the borders is 2245 km, of which 1181 km are by land, 686 km by rivers and 378 km by sea. The length of roads is 36,720 km, the railway network is 4,300 km.

Story

The most ancient population of the modern territory of Bulgaria, about which there is reliable information, were the Thracians, Indo-European tribes who lived here at least from the 1st millennium BC. e. By the 1st century BC. e. Thracian lands became part of the Roman Empire and were divided between the provinces of Thrace and Moesia. At the same time, Greek colonies arose on the shore, from which the Thracians eventually adopted Greek language. After the division of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern in 395, both provinces passed into the Eastern Roman Empire. From the 7th century AD e., as a result of the Great Migration of Peoples, the southern Slavs began to settle on the Balkan Peninsula, gradually assimilating the remnants of the Thracians.

The first state of the Bulgarians, about which accurate historical information has been preserved, was Great Bulgaria, a state that united the tribes of the proto-Bulgarians and existed in the Black Sea and Azov steppes for only a few decades. The capital of the state was the city of Phanagoria, and its founder and ruler was Khan Kubrat. The subjects of the state were various tribes of Turkic-speaking ancient Bulgarians.

First Bulgarian Kingdom

After the death of Kubrat, the state collapsed and the sons of the khan, each with his own tribe, migrated to different directions. Kubrat died in 665, and the Khazar offensive began even before his death. There is a legend that before his death, Kubrat bequeathed to his sons to be united, like a bunch of arrows, but the superiority of the Khazars was so great that the division of Great Bulgaria was a foregone conclusion even before Kubrat’s death. Another confusion arises regarding the question of how many years the resettlement of the Bulgarians under the leadership of Asparukh lasted. The battle with Byzantium took place in 680, and from the capital of Great Bulgaria, Phanagoria, which was located on the Taman Peninsula of Crimea, the mouth of the Danube is only a few hundred kilometers. In addition, the Bulgarians made several raids into the Balkans in the 6th and early 7th centuries, so the Balkans were very familiar to them. Most likely, Asparukh pondered for a long time where to go among hostile peoples - this version cannot be proven due to the lack of sources of that time. The Bulgarians knew that on the territory of Byzantium north of the Balkan Mountains the Slavic tribes were numerous, but due to their fragmentation they could not resist the well-organized Byzantine troops. The Slavs did not have mounted troops; the militia consisted only of infantry. The Bulgarians, as part of the Hunnic invasion of Europe, had one of the best cavalry of the time - like the Mongols, among the Bulgarians, horse riding began at the age of 3-4 years. On the territory of what is now northern Bulgaria, there was an alliance of Seven Slavic tribes - from the Timok River to the west, the Balkan Mountains to the south, the Black Sea to the east and the Danube to the north - these were the Slavic tribes with which Asparuh entered into an alliance. This alliance was mutually beneficial - the legend seems incredible that the Slavs met with bread and salt a warlike tribe of horsemen with a good state organization. Until the baptism of Bulgaria in 863, the Bulgarians constituted the aristocracy and the supremacy of the army, only then, after a long period, a single Bulgarian ethnic group was formed. One of Kubrat's sons, Asparukh, and his tribe occupied lands beyond the Dniester River on the northwestern coast of the Black Sea. There he entered into allied relations with local Slavic tribes and in 681 founded the Bulgarian state, the so-called First Bulgarian Kingdom. The official starting point of the existence of the First Bulgarian Kingdom is the signing of an agreement between the Bulgarians and Byzantium after the military defeat of the latter at the mouth of the Danube, according to which Byzantium undertook to pay tribute to the Bulgarians. The capital of the state was the city of Pliska. The state included Proto-Bulgarians, Slavs and a small part of local Thracians. Subsequently, these ethnic groups formed the people of Slavic Bulgarians, who were named after the country and spoke the language from which modern Bulgarian originated. At the beginning of the 9th century, the territory of the state expanded significantly due to the conquered Avar Khaganate.

First Bulgarian Kingdom under Simeon I

Until 865, the rulers of Bulgaria bore the title of khan; under Tsar Boris, the country officially adopted Christianity (from Byzantium, according to the Eastern rite), and the rulers began to bear the title of prince and then king. Under Tsar Simeon, the state reached its geopolitical apogee and included the territories of modern Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Serbia, the eastern part of modern Hungary, as well as southern Albania, the continental part of Greece, the southwestern part of Ukraine and almost the entire territory of European Turkey. Preslav became the capital, as opposed to the former pagan capital. Under Simeon, the Bulgarian state also experienced an unprecedented cultural flourishing, which began with the creation of writing by Cyril and Methodius, and a huge corpus of medieval Bulgarian literature was created.

Almost the entire history of its existence, the kingdom was forced to fight with Byzantium. After successful wars and conquests, the ambitions of the educated Simeon grew so much that he believed that he should become emperor of Byzantium, conquering it, and also sought international recognition of the status of an empire (kingdom) for his state and an independent church. His dreams were partially realized under the reign of his son, but Simeon made a mistake by appointing his second son, Peter I, as his heir, who believed that his calling was to be a monk, not a king. At the end of Peter's reign, the Bulgarian empire began to collapse under the blows of Byzantium and the Hungarians, and the final blow was the campaign of the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav, who, with the help of a not very large army, temporarily captured the capital and part of the territory. The future king and commander Samuel managed to return most of the territory of the empire, but the capital and Thracian territories, which formed the “heart of the country,” were lost, as well as the northwestern territories that went to the Magyars. In 1018, after the death of Samuel, Bulgaria was conquered by Byzantium and ceased to exist for almost two centuries. From 1018 to 1187, the territory of Bulgaria was a province of Byzantium, although the autonomy of the Bulgarian Church (Ochrid Archbishop) was confirmed. During this time, the country experienced two unsuccessful uprisings, those of Peter Delyan and Konstantin Bodin. In the 11th century, Bulgaria as part of Byzantium was successively threatened by the Normans (Varangians), Pechenegs and Hungarians. In 1185-1187, an uprising led by the brothers Ivan Asen and Peter led to the liberation of the country from Byzantine rule and the establishment of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom.

Second Bulgarian Kingdom

The Bolyars of the Asen clan, who lived in Tarnovo, sent an embassy to the Byzantine Emperor Isaac Angel in 1185 with a request to confirm their possessions. The arrogant refusal and beating of the embassy became the signal for an uprising. In a short time, the uprising covered the territory from the Balkan Mountains to the Danube. From then on, the alliance of the Bulgarians with the Cumans, known in Bulgaria as the Cumans, began - the Cumans repeatedly fought alongside the Bulgarians against the Byzantines.

The Second Bulgarian Kingdom existed from 1187 to 1396, the city of Tarnovo became the new capital. In 1197, Asen I was killed by the rebel Bolyarin Ivanko, who went over to the Byzantine side. Peter, the middle of the brothers, also fell at the hands of murderers. In southern Bulgaria there were two independent states - led by the governor Dobromir Khris in the current city of Melnik, and the despot Slav in the Rhodope Mountains; his fortress Tsepina now does not exist. After becoming king in 1197, Kaloyan harshly suppressed opposition and began the rapid expansion of Bulgaria. The last seat of Byzantium in northern Bulgaria, Varna - then Odessos, was taken by storm on March 24, 1201, Easter Sunday. The entire Byzantine garrison was killed and buried in the ditches of the fortress. Kaloyan, who was a hostage in Constantinople during the reign of his brother Asen I, received a good Greek education. However, he received the nickname "Rome Killer". Taking advantage of the defeat of Byzantium by the crusaders, he inflicted several major defeats on the Latin Empire, defeating the troops of the IV Crusade, and extended his influence to most of the Balkan Peninsula. After the capture of Constantinople by the troops of the fourth crusade, Kaloyan began correspondence with Pope Innocent, and received from him the title “emperor”. In 1205, shortly after the defeat of the crusaders, Bulgarian troops suppressed the Byzantine uprising in the city of Plovdiv - the leader of the uprising, Alexei Aspieta, was hanged head down.

After Kaloyan's death, Bulgaria lost a significant part of its territory, but then reached its greatest power under Tsar Ivan Asen II (1218-1241), who controlled almost the entire Balkan Peninsula. In 1235, the Bulgarian patriarchate was restored, but throughout his reign, Ivan Asen II maintained relations with Catholic countries. In the last year of his reign he defeated the Mongols who came from Hungary.

Second Bulgarian Kingdom under Ivan Asen II

After the death of Ivan Asen II, the state began to weaken. The Mongols nevertheless ravaged it in 1242, and Bulgaria was forced to pay them tribute. In the 13th century, Bulgaria again lost most of its territories to Hungary and the heirs of Byzantium, and also lost control of Wallachia. The Asenei dynasty ended in 1280. Tsar Theodore Svyatoslav from the next dynasty, the Terters, signed an agreement with the Tatars in 1300, according to which he received Bessarabia and stopped paying tribute. In 1322, he also signed an agreement with Byzantium, ending a long period of wars.

The further history of Bulgaria is constant wars with Hungary and Serbia. Brief period It flourished at the beginning of the reign of Tsar John Alexander (1331-1371), when Bulgaria was able to defeat the Serbs and establish control over the Rhodope Mountains and the Black Sea coast. This time also marks the rise of culture, called the “second golden age.”

In 1353, the Turks crossed to Europe, taking Plovdiv in 1362, Sofia in 1382, and Veliko Tarnovo in 1393, after a three-month siege. After the death of John Alexander, Bulgaria split into two states - with capitals in Vidin and Veliko Tarnovo - and was unable to provide any resistance to the Ottomans. The last city of the Tarnovo kingdom, Nikopol, was taken by the Turks in 1395, and the Vidin kingdom in 1396. The Second Bulgarian Kingdom ceased to exist.

The economy of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom was based on agriculture (Danube Plain and Thrace) and ore mining and iron smelting. Gold mining was also developed in Bulgaria.

Ottoman rule

At the end of the 14th century, Bulgaria was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. At first it was a vassalage, and in 1396 Sultan Bayazid I annexed it after defeating the crusaders at the Battle of Nicopolis. The result of five hundred years of Turkish rule was the complete ruin of the country, the destruction of cities, in particular fortresses, and a decrease in population. Already in the 15th century, all Bulgarian authorities at the level above the communal level (villages and cities) were dissolved. The Bulgarian Church lost its independence and was subordinated to the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The land formally belonged to the Sultan as the representative of Allah on earth, but in reality it was received for use by the sipahis, who were supposed to field cavalry in wartime on the orders of the Sultan. The number of troops was proportional to the size of the land holdings. For the Bulgarian peasants, this system of feudal land tenure was at first easier than the old feudal Bulgarian one, but the Turkish authorities were deeply hostile to all Christians. Despite the fact that those peasants who lived on land that belonged to Islamic religious institutions - vakif - had some privileges, all Bulgarians were in a powerless status - the so-called. “paradise” (Turkish herd). The Ottomans tried to forcefully convert the entire population to Islam, although all Christians, including those living in the Waqif lands, paid more taxes than Muslims, did not have the right to bear arms, and were subject to many other discriminatory measures compared to Muslims. The majority of Bulgarians remained Christians; the Bulgarians who forcibly converted to Islam - the so-called. The Pomaks, mainly in the Rhodope Mountains, preserved the Bulgarian language and many traditions.

The Bulgarians resisted and raised numerous uprisings against the Ottoman Empire, the most famous of which are the uprising of Constantine and Fruzhin (1408-1413), the First Turnovo Uprising (1598), the Second Turnovo Uprising (1686), and the Karposh Uprising (1689). They were all depressed.

In the 17th century, the sultan's power, and with it the institutions established by the Ottomans, including land tenure, began to weaken, and in the 18th century they entered a crisis. This led to the strengthening of local authorities, sometimes imposing very strict laws on the lands they owned. At the end of the 18th and early XIX century, Bulgaria actually fell into anarchy. This period is known in the history of the country as Kurdzhaliism due to the Kurdzhali gangs that terrorized the country. Many peasants fled from the countryside to the cities, some emigrated, including to the south of Russia.

At the same time, the 18th century was marked by the beginning of the Bulgarian Renaissance, associated primarily with the names of Paisiy Hilendarski, who wrote Bulgarian history in 1762, and Sofroniy Vrachanski and with the national liberation revolution. This period lasted until Bulgaria gained independence in 1878.

The Bulgarians were recognized as a separate national-confessional group in the empire (before that, they were administratively considered as members of the millet-i-rum, which united all the Orthodox subjects of the Sultan under the Ecumenical Patriarch) as a result of the Sultan's firman under the vizier Aali Pasha, proclaimed on February 28, 1870, which established the autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate.

Part of Bulgaria received the rights of administrative autonomy within the Ottoman Empire after Turkey’s defeat in the war with Russia of 1877-1878 (See the articles Peace of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin).

The fourth capital was the city of Sofia. Since 1879, when the fairly liberal Tarnovo Constitution was adopted, the state became a principality, headed by Prince Alexander I of Battenberg (prinz Alexander Joseph von Battenberg), who was succeeded by Ferdinand I (Ferdinand Maximilian Karl Leopold Maria von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, prince with July 7, 1887 until September 22, 1908, when the independence of the Principality of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire was declared - Tsar from September 22, 1908 to October 3, 1918).

In modern times

Since 1908 - an independent state.

In 1912-1913, she participated in the Balkan Wars, as a result of which she received territorial acquisitions in Macedonia and Thrace and access to the Aegean Sea at the expense of the Ottoman Empire.

In the First World War she took the side of Germany. Having suffered defeat, it lost a significant part of its territory and access to the Aegean Sea. On October 2, 1918, Tsar Boris III ascended the throne after the abdication of his father, Tsar Ferdinand. After 1920, Bulgaria became one of the largest centers of Russian White emigration. Until 1944, the 3rd Department of the Russian General Military Union operated in Bulgaria. In the periods between the wars, Tsar Boris III successfully repelled the attacks of various governments that tried to take away power from the monarch and make the monarchy purely formal.

By the beginning of World War II, Tsar Boris III sought to ensure the neutrality of Bulgaria. But due to the growing influence of Germany, Bulgaria took its side in the war, which brought Bulgaria the return of the northeastern region of Dobruja, belonging to Romania, taken after the unsuccessful Second Balkan War. Despite his (symbolic) participation in the war, Tsar Boris III tried in every possible way to save Bulgaria from any military action and in 1943 he managed to condemn Germany’s desires to deport 50,000 Bulgarian Jews. In March 1941, it was involved in the Berlin Pact of 1940, and German troops were brought into its territory.

In August 1943, Tsar Boris III died suddenly after a meeting with Hitler (rumors arose about his poisoning). After the death of the king, his six-year-old son Simeon II ascended the throne. In fact, the state began to be governed by its regents. The reign of the young king was short-lived - he had to flee with his family to Egypt, and then to Spain, since after a referendum on September 15, 1946, held under the supervision of the Soviet army, the People's Republic of Bulgaria was proclaimed. The republic developed along the socialist path until the end of 1989, when the country emerged from the influence of the USSR.

On November 10, 1989, deep economic and political reforms began in Bulgaria. Since November 15, 1990, the country has been called the Republic of Bulgaria. On April 2, 2004, Bulgaria joined NATO, and on January 1, 2007, the European Union.

The post-socialist presidents of Bulgaria were Pyotr Mladenov, Zhelyu Zhelev, Pyotr Stoyanov, Georgi Parvanov.

In the mid-1990s, socialists were in power. In 2001-2005, the Prime Minister of Bulgaria was the former Tsar Simeon II (Simeon of Saxe-Coburg Gotha), who headed his own party, the National Movement "Simeon the Second". From August 2005 to July 2009, a coalition government led by socialist Sergei Stanishev was in power. Stanishev's cabinet also included representatives of the party of Simeon of Saxe-Coburg Gotha and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms of Ahmed Dogan.

In the 2009 parliamentary elections, both the socialists and liberals of Simeon suffered a serious defeat. The new GERB party, led by the charismatic Boyko Borisov, won most of the seats. This party, although quite populist in its rhetoric, is essentially its ideology - radical liberalism. GERB stands for a European choice for Bulgaria and its further participation in Euro-Atlantic cooperation. On July 27, 2009, the cabinet under the leadership of Boyko Borisov began its duties.

Administrative division

Regions of Bulgaria

Administratively, the country's territory is divided into 28 regions.
Blagoevgrad region
Burgas region
Dobrich region
Gabrovo region
Haskovo region
Kardzhali region
Kyustendil region
Lovech region
Montana region
Pazardzhik region
Pernik region
Pleven region
Plovdiv region
Razgrad region
Ruse region
Shumen region
Silistra region
Sliven region
Smolyansk region
City region Sofia
Sofia region
Starozagora region
Targovishti region
Varna region
Veliko Tarnovo region
Vidin region
Vratsa region
Yambol region

Cities of Bulgaria

Sofia
Plovdiv
Varna
Burgas
Ruse
Stara Zagora
Pleven
Dobrich
Sliven
Shumen
Pernik
Yambol
Haskovo
Kazanlak
Pazardzhik
Blagoevgrad
Veliko Tarnovo
Vratsa
Gabrovo
Vidin
Asenovgrad
Kyustendil
Kardzhali
Montana
Smolyan

Policy

State structure

Bulgaria is a parliamentary republic.

The head of state is the president, elected on the basis of universal and direct suffrage for a period of five years.

Permanent supreme body legislative branch - a unicameral People's Assembly (240 deputies), elected for a term of four years.

The highest court of general jurisdiction is the Supreme Judicial Council, which determines the personnel of the judicial, prosecutorial and investigative bodies in Bulgaria, and the highest court of constitutional jurisdiction is the Constitutional Court of Bulgaria, which can overturn unconstitutional laws and regulations; its decisions are not subject to appeal.

Parties

The People's Assembly (Parliament) of Bulgaria, elected on July 5, 2009, is represented (by number of deputies):
Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB),
Coalition for Bulgaria (7 parties: Bulgarian Socialist Party and others),
Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS),
National Union "Attack"
Blue Coalition (5 parties: SDS, DSS and others),
Order, legality and justice

Current policy

In the parliamentary elections on June 25, 2005, the victorious coalition “For Bulgaria,” led by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), won 82 parliamentary seats out of 240 and received the right to form a new government. However, although the Socialists became the largest faction in parliament, they were unable to approve the government on their own, since to do this they needed the support of at least 40 more deputies.

The center-right party National Movement "Simeon II", which had previously ruled, refused to enter into a government coalition with the Bulgarian Socialist Party, since its leader, the former Tsar of Bulgaria Simeon II of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, did not agree to cede the post of prime minister to the socialists.

After this, the socialists entered into an alliance with the Turkish minority party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS). The new coalition has the support of 117 deputies of the People's Assembly.

On July 25, the composition of the new minority government was presented to Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov.

On July 26, a special meeting of parliament to approve the government was disrupted by the opposition.

On July 27, parliament, by 120 votes against 119, approved BSP leader Sergei Stanishev as prime minister, but refused to approve the composition of the government (117 votes for and 119 against). Thus, Stanishev set a record - the shortest mandate, 5 hours.

Later, the government was nevertheless formed with the help of the so-called “broad coalition” with the participation of both the DPS and the National Movement “Simeon II”. The present government is headed again by Stanishev.

Stanishev graduated with honors from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University in 1989, and five years later he defended his doctoral dissertation. Stanishev's mother is from the USSR; he was born in Kherson (Ukraine).

At the next parliamentary elections in Bulgaria, held on July 5, 2009, the center-right won opposition party GERB (“Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria”), led by the mayor of Sofia, Boyko Borisov. His party inflicted a crushing defeat on the Socialists, winning 117 seats out of 240 in the country's parliament.

Economy

Advantages: coal and gas reserves. Productive agriculture, especially winemaking and tobacco production. Close ties with the EU. Software production.

Weaknesses: infrastructure and equipment are outdated; high debt in all sectors. Privatization and structural reforms that lasted until 1998.

Armed forces

On December 1, 2007, Bulgaria abolished conscription and completely switched to a professional army. Prior to this, the period of military service in the Bulgarian armed forces was nine months; conscripts who have higher education, served only six months.

Bulgarian culture

Literature

Bulgarian literature, the oldest of the Slavic ones, arose in the second half of the 9th century.

Architecture and fine arts e

After the liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in 1878, its art and architecture were gradually integrated into the European artistic process.

Music

In 1890-1892 the first attempt was made to organize an opera troupe.

Ballet

The first amateur dance troupes in Bulgaria appeared in Sofia in 1900.

Theater

Theater in Bulgaria began to develop in the mid-19th century.

N. O. Massalitinov played a significant role in the development of the director’s theater.

After World War II, socialist realism was actively promoted in the Bulgarian theater.

Cinema

The first feature film in Bulgaria, “The Gallant Bulgarian,” was directed in 1915 by theater actor Vasil Gendov (Bulgarian: Vasil Gendov). In 1933, the first sound film was made - "Slave Riot".

Films “Escape from Captivity” (in the original “Kalin Orel”), “Anxiety”, “Heroes of September”, “Under the Yoke”, “Song of Man”, “Stars” (together with the GDR, directed by Konrad Wolf) filmed in 1950 years won prizes at international film festivals.

In the 1960s, the films “How Young We Were”, “Marriage License”, “Chronicle of Feelings”, “The Peach Thief”, “The Smell of Almonds”, “The Longest Night” should be noted.

Tourism in Bulgaria

The Black Sea coast of Bulgaria is a popular beach tourism destination. Bulgaria was one of the most important resorts for the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. The industry experienced a decline in the 1990s, but is now on the rise. Secondary housing is in great demand in Bulgaria. The bulk of tourists come from Western and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Germany, Russia, Ukraine and Great Britain.

The most popular Bulgarian Black Sea resorts:
Albena
Golden Sands
Riviera
Sunny day
St. Constantine and Helena
Review
sunny Beach
Sozopol
Lalov Egrek (diving)

Balneo (SPA) resorts:
Velingrad
Sandanski
Hisar

Ski resorts:
Bansko
Borovets
Pamporovo

At ski resorts, as well as at the Black Sea, active renovation of the hotel base and mountain infrastructure is underway. New trails are being built, modern lifts are being installed (for example, Doppelmayer). The resorts have a short total length of pistes; slopes of medium and low difficulty predominate, which is why Bulgaria is inferior to popular alpine destinations. In March 2008, the European downhill tournament for men took place in Bansko.

Holidays

1st of January - New Year in Bulgaria, St. Basil's Day, national holiday
January 6 - Epiphany in Bulgaria (Jordan Day)
February 2 (February 14, old style) - Tryfon Zarezan (feast of the winegrowers)
March 1 - Grandmother Marta - Martenitsa (arrival of spring)
March 3 - Day of the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman yoke, national holiday
May 1 - Labor Day, national holiday
May 6 - Bravery Day, Bulgarian Army Day, St. George's Day, national holiday
May 11 - Day of Saints Cyril and Methodius
May 24 - Holiday of Bulgarian culture and Slavic writing
June 2 - Day of Botev and those who fell for the freedom of Bulgaria, national holiday
September 6 - Bulgarian Unification Day, national holiday
September 22 - Bulgarian Independence Day
November 1 - National Awakening Day
December 8 - Student's Day
December 24 - Christmas Eve, national holiday
December 25 - Christmas, national holiday

Bulgaria in culture

The famous Soviet song “Under the Balkan Stars” (“Bulgaria is a good country, but Russia is the best.”) is dedicated to Bulgaria.
Sweet peppers began to be called Bulgarian after the name of the country.
In all CIS countries - after the place of its original production - the angle grinder began to be called an angle grinder.

Virtue,

Most difficult for the mortal race,

The reddest prize of human life.

For your virgin beauty

And die

And take on powerful and tireless labors -

The most enviable lot in Hellas:

With such power

You fill our souls,

By immortal power,

More powerful than gold

More powerful than ancestors,

More powerful than sleep, softening the gaze...

Aristotle

The right to idleness?

There is such a universal human property: laziness. What is interesting to us, we do with passion, and what is not interesting, we shy away from it. And it has ever occurred to each of us: we should come up with something so that the rolls themselves grow on trees! The Greeks were also very familiar with this feeling: it was not for nothing that they had a myth about a golden age, when the earth gave everything to people for free. And in the current Iron Age, this is precisely why they clung so tenaciously to slavery. They did not torture slaves to death with work, no, but they transferred all their own labor, which could have been transferred to someone else, to the slave. Only then did they experience a blissful feeling of freedom - freedom not only from a king or a tyrant, but also from the annoying worries of everyday life.

Of course, this does not mean that all free people in Greece did not work, but only urged slaves. The ancient Greek artisans were the same hard workers as in other times and among other peoples. But they worked, as if ashamed of their work. And this feeling - manual labor is shameful - left its mark on the entire Greek culture. Philosophy developed, but technology did not develop. Why? That is why. “We admire the statues of Phidias and Polykleitos, but if we ourselves were offered to become Phidias and Polykleitos, we would refuse with disgust,” admits one Greek writer. Why? Because the work of a sculptor is manual work, just like that of a slave.

Even when a free man was left penniless and had to, willy-nilly, earn a living with his own hands, he preferred to be hired not for long-term work, but for daily work - today for one, tomorrow for another. This allowed him to remember that he was his own boss. And in long-term employment he felt almost like a slave. Living, interrupting from day to day, was not scary; they didn’t think beyond tomorrow. “Give us this day our daily bread,” says the first Christian prayer of those times when Christianity was still the faith of the dispossessed.

A man in his city never felt lonely. He helped his fellow citizens in war - they should have helped him in peacetime. From war booty, from tribute from allies, from one’s own earnings - it doesn’t matter from what means. Pericles also introduced pay for six thousand judges and nationwide distributions for theatrical festivals. Now a fee has been introduced for participation in a public meeting, and holiday distributions began to be made twice as often. The distributions were insignificant - barely enough to survive a day. But the people grabbed onto them with desperate tenacity. “The glue that holds the city together,” the speaker Demade called them. There was even a law: all surpluses from government spending should go only to holiday distributions, and anyone who suggests otherwise will be executed by death.

If it was not possible to live at the expense of the state, a self-loving poor man could live at the expense of some rich or simply wealthy person, becoming a hanger-on with him: being at his beck and call, amusing him with jokes, and for this feeding at his table. In the Greek comedies of this time, such a cunning parasite, extricating the simple-minded owner from all the troubles, is the most indispensable face. In Greek, “on-bread” will be “para-sit” (what word came out of this later is clear to everyone).

Thus the law turned its back: the thought of duty to the state was supplanted by the thought of the right to idleness at the expense of the state. The state weakened from this. Laziness is a universal human property, but in a society where there is slave labor, it flourishes especially destructively.

When you feel the right to idleness, you no longer think about where the money you live on comes from. It seems that there are always funds for this in the world, but they are not distributed well: your neighbor has a lot, you have little. So it seemed to the parasite that since his owner had money, then such an owner could and should be robbed; so it seemed to all the Greeks together that since the Persian king had a lot of wealth, they needed to beg for it or need to recapture it. And we see: the new century begins with mercenary wars at the Persian expense, and ends with the conquests of Alexander the Great. And the gap is filled with philosophers arguing about how best to deal with the good that does exist.

War becomes a profession

There were only two occupations that the free Greek considered worthy of himself, because they were the most ancient: peasant labor and military labor.

It was becoming more and more difficult to live by peasant labor: no sooner had the land recovered from one internecine devastation than a new one fell upon it. And the ruined people switched to military labor: in order not to be prey, they became breadwinners. If their state took a break from war, they were hired to serve another. “For them, war is peace, and peace is war,” King Philip of Macedon said about mercenaries.

The history of modern times is a world with layers of war, the history of Greece is a war with layers of peace. The alternation of war and peace seemed natural to the Greeks, like the change of seasons. Actually, there was no peace at all: only truces were concluded, and even those were violated. They did not fight for conquest: it was difficult even for Sparta to keep the conquered region in submission. They fought to measure their strength and reward themselves for victory with robbery; and so it was possible to fight indefinitely. We went on a hike in May, when the winter crops were being harvested; if they won, then they burned the fields and robbed houses, and if not, then the opponents did it. In the fall, in time for the harvest of olives and grapes, they went home. At first, all the people capable of carrying weapons went on such campaigns. Then, after the bloodshed of the great war between Athens and Sparta, they became thoughtful and began to take care of people. This is where the demand for mercenaries appeared - for those who are ready to fight not for their own, but for someone else’s cause.

Many of the mercenaries died, a few returned with booty and settled in peace, loudly boasting of the miracles they saw and the exploits they performed on long campaigns. The “boastful warrior” became as constant a comedy hero as the parasitic hanger-on. Others envied them. Someone said: “This is how war helps the poor!” He was reminded: “And creates many new ones.”

The mercenaries knew nothing but how to fight, but they were incomparable warriors. Many were too poor to own heavy weapons and fight in the ranks. They fought in a canvas jacket instead of armor, in leather boots instead of leggings, and with a light shield in the shape of a crescent. They showered the enemy formation with darts, and then ran away, and the iron men-at-arms could not catch up with them. And when the Athenian leader Iphicrates gave them long spears instead of short ones, it turned out that they could fight even in the ranks.

Previously, battles were simple: two armies lined up against each other and went wall to wall, and a few cavalry covered the flanks. Now fighting had become an art: it was necessary to coordinate the actions of the lightly armed, the heavily armed, and the cavalry. “The arms of the army are lightly armed, the body is the men-at-arms, the legs are the cavalry, and the head is the commander,” said Iphicrates. A commander must be not only brave, but also smart. They said: “Better is a herd of rams led by a lion than a herd of lions led by a ram.” The Theban commander Pelopidas was informed that a new army was being assembled against him; he said: “A good flute player will not be alarmed because a bad flute player has a new flute.” The rival of the Athenian commander Timothy boasted of wounds received in the front ranks of the battle. Timothy said: “Is there a place for a general there? I feel ashamed in battle, even if an arrow reaches me.”

Iphicrates and Timothy - these two generals returned Athenian weapons to their former glory. They even managed to restore the Athenian Maritime Union. (True, not for long: the allies remembered the Athenian extortion habits and abandoned the Athenians at the first pressure.) Timothy was especially lucky: painters painted how he slept, and above his head the goddess Luck captured cities for him with a fishing net. This Timofey was not only a warrior - he studied with the philosopher Plato and listened to his intelligent conversations at his poor dinners. He told Plato: “Your food is good not when you eat it, but when you remember it.”

One of his comrades said to Timofey before the battle: “Will our homeland thank us?...” Timofey replied: “No, we will thank her.” This was a good answer, but the comrade also had reasons for his question. After the bitter experience with Alcibiades, the Athenian national assembly did not trust its commanders: if they won, then they were suspected of striving for tyranny, if they were defeated, then of treason.

Some managed to escape the trial with a joke. One military leader was accused: “You fled the battlefield!” He replied: “In your company, friends!”

Others had it more difficult. Iphicrates was accused of bribery and treason. He asked the accuser: “Could you betray?” - "Never!" - “So why do you think that I could?” The accuser was a descendant of the tyrannicide Harmodius, Iphicrates was the son of a tanner; the accuser reproached him for his rootlessness. Iphicrates replied: “My race begins with me, yours ends with you.”

More and more Greeks left home to go where they paid better. And the best pay was in Persia. When Alexander the Great fought with the last Persian king, he met in his troops not only Asians, but also mercenary Greeks, and these were the best royal fighters.

March of ten thousand

The most famous mercenary war was the campaign of ten thousand Greeks against Babylon and from Babylon to the Black Sea. Once in Sparta they said to Aristagoras: “You are crazy if you want us to travel three months away from Greece and the sea.” A hundred years later, ten thousand Greek mercenaries in Persian service set out on just such a crazy campaign.

The Persian king Artaxerxes ruled in Babylon and Susa. In Sardis, near Greece, his brother Cyrus the Younger, namesake of the first Persian king, was governor. He was young, brave, generous and generous. It was with his money that the Spartans managed to win a final victory over the Athenians. Cyrus dreamed of overthrowing his brother and becoming king. He did not rely on his Persian troops; he began to recruit Greeks. Ten thousand of them gathered. At home they fought against each other, here they felt at one in the middle of a foreign country, where the bread was millet, the wine was date, the path was measured not in short stages, but in long parasangs, and bustards and wild donkeys ran across the steppes. The Athenians teased the Spartans: “They teach you to steal in schools.” The Spartans answered the Athenians: “And you know how to steal even without training.” But in the ranks they fought side by side.

They were told that they were being led against the rebel highlanders, and only on the road did they discover their real target. They got excited: “We weren’t hired for that!” Cyrus promised them one and a half wages, and when they came to Babylon - five minas of silver each. Two thirds of the journey had already been completed; the Greeks moved on.

Three marches from Babylon, the royal army appeared. First, a white cloud of dust arose at the edge of the sky, then the steppe horizon on three sides became covered with blackness, then armor and spears sparkled in it, and individual detachments became visible. Cyrus lined up his right hand Greeks, on the left Persians. He showed the Greeks to where the royal sign fluttered over the enemy army - a golden eagle with outstretched wings: “Beat there, there is the king.” The Greeks didn't understand. For them the main thing was to defeat the royal army, for Cyrus it was to kill the king. Opposite them could be seen rows of royal fighters with wicker and wooden shields - they said that they were Egyptians; The Greeks attacked them, knocked them over, and drove them away, moving further and further away from the royal eagle. Then Cyrus and his bodyguards, in despair, galloped towards the royal detachment, cut through all the way to Artaxerxes, hit his brother with a spear - but then a dart pierced his eye, he waved his arms, fell from his horse and died. His Persian warriors fled or went over to Artaxerxes.

When the Greeks returned, it was all over. They were ready to fight further, but the king did not accept the fight. They were alone in a foreign land, three months away from home, but they felt like winners. The king sent messengers: “Lay down your arms and come to me.” The first of the Greek commanders said: “Death is better.” Second: “If he is stronger, let him take it by force; if he is weaker, let him assign a reward.” Third: “We have lost everything except weapons and valor, and they cannot live without each other.” Fourth: “When the vanquished commands the victors, it is either madness or deceit.” Fifth: “If the king is our friend, then with weapons we are more useful to him; if we are an enemy, then we are more useful to ourselves.”

None of the five lived even a month and a half after that. The Persians summoned them to negotiations, swore not to touch them and killed them all. They hoped that the Greeks would become confused and die. This did not happen. The army met at a meeting, like a national assembly, chose new leaders, and busily discussed actions and paths. One of the new leaders was the Athenian Xenophon, a student of Socrates; he left a description of this campaign.

The direction was taken to the north to reach the Black Sea. They didn’t know how long it was before him.

At first the path was along the plain. The Tigris River flowed to the left, the hills stretched to the right, and from the hills the royal army watched the Greeks: they did not fight, but fought with bows and slings at every opportunity. The Greeks marched in four detachments, with the convoy in the middle. The convoy contained loot: food, things, slaves. The slaves were local, did not understand Greek, and spoke to them with signs, as if they were dumb. It was impossible to take away much; that they captured the excess and burned it. People from the villages scattered along the way, but it was possible to feed themselves.

Then the mountains began. In the mountains lived the Karduhi people, who did not recognize either the royal power or anyone else. The royal army fell behind. The Greeks sent to announce that they were enemies of the king, but not enemies of the Kardukhs - they did not understand. The Greeks walked through the gorges, and boulders of stone rolled at them from the slopes of the mountains and arrows flew at them. The bows of the Kardukhs are three cubits long, and the arrows are two cubits long, piercing both the shield and the armor. To clear the road, it was necessary to send a detachment along the path to the steep slope in order to go even higher than the attackers and hit them from above, like they did the Greeks. They walked through the country of the Kardukhs for seven days: every day there was a battle, every night there were enemy fires on the steep slopes from all sides. The mountain rivers were so fast that it was impossible to enter the water with a shield - it would knock you off your feet.

Then came the Armenian Highlands. There were no enemies here, but there was snow here. It was higher than the knees of horses and those on foot; during the day it sparkled so much that you had to blindfold yourself so as not to go blind; at night it settled in pits under fires. The north wind blew in my face; They made sacrifices to the wind, but it did not subside. It was so cold that the sleepers did not want to get up from under the snow: the snowdrift protected them from the cold. The closing detachment could barely move, because they were constantly picking up frostbitten people. They took breaks in Armenian villages. The dwellings there were underground - both for people and for livestock; food was only bread and barley beer, which was sucked from clay barrels through a straw.

The last mountains were in the land of the Khalibs, the iron smiths who danced on the slopes at the sight of the enemy. These did not know bows and arrows, they fought only hand-to-hand, they cut off the heads of the dead with crooked sickles and hung them on spears four times tall. The prisoners and guides said that the sea was not far away.

Finally, one morning the vanguard climbed another mountain and suddenly raised a loud cry. Those following thought that the enemy had attacked and rushed towards them. The scream became louder, because those running up also began to scream, and finally it became audible that they were shouting: “Sea! sea!" Beyond several ridges of descending mountains, the dark winter sea was visible on the horizon. The warriors crowded at the top, everyone hugged each other with tears, not distinguishing who was the fighter and who was the boss. Without orders, they rushed to collect stones, lay the mound and place the loot on it, as a gift to the gods after the victory. The guide was given a horse, a silver cup, a Persian outfit and ten royal gold coins as a reward, and each warrior added something of his own. And then we moved down to the sea. And ten days later, having come to the first Greek city - Trebizond, they made sacrifices to Zeus the Savior and Hercules the Guide and staged a competition in honor of the gods: running, wrestling and horse racing.

Ten thousand walked with Cyrus to Babylon for three months, they were on the way back for eight months, until they came to familiar places on the Aegean shores, where they were received by the lame Spartan king Agesilaus, who fought there with the Persians.

Agesilaus and the stab in the back

When Athens was at the head of Greece, it took them twenty to thirty years for all their allies to hate them. When Sparta broke Athens and stood at the head of Greece, then within five years it was hated by everyone.

Sparta was no longer the same as in the days of Lycurgus laws and iron money. From Persian assistance in the war against Athens, gold appeared in Sparta. It was announced that this gold was only for the state, and not for private individuals; all the same, private individuals pounced on it, stole it and hid it. The universal equality of the Spartans ended: the weak hated the strong, the strong hated their equals. Conspiracies began. When the first man in Sparta, Lysander, the conqueror of Athens, died, notes with a plan were found in his house coup d'etat: a man will come to Sparta, declare himself the son of the god Apollo, he will be given secret prophecies in Delphi, kept only for the son of Apollo, and he will read in them that the power of two kings in Sparta must be abolished, and one should be chosen, but the best - such as Lysander. The unpleasant discovery was silenced. At the same time, the young daredevil Kinadon, demoted from the citizenry for poverty, was setting up another conspiracy much more simply. He brought a friend to the square and said: “Count how many people have full rights and how many people don’t have full rights.” It turned out: one in a hundred. “Well, these hundred will attack that one at the first sign, you just need to shout the cry that we are for ancient equality.” A traitor was found among the interlocutors; Kinadon was captured, dragged in stocks around the city and beaten to death with stakes.

Among these new Spartans, greedy for gold and power, King Agesilaus seemed a lonely fragment of ancient valor. He was small, lame and fast, walked in an old, rough cloak, was friendly with his own people, and mocking with foreigners. When he was on campaigns, he slept in temples: “When people don’t see me, let the gods see me.” In Egypt, most of all the miracles he liked was hard papyrus: from it it was possible to weave wreaths for awards even simpler than in Greece. The soldiers adored him so much that the Spartan authorities reprimanded him for the fact that the soldiers loved him more than the fatherland.

Agesilaus persuaded the Spartans to start a war with Persia: rather than wait for Persian gold as a gift, it was better to capture it as booty. The authorities hesitated. Agesilaus presented the favorable oracle of Dodonian Zeus. He was told to ask the Delphic Apollo. He asked at Delphi: “Does Apollo confirm the words of his father?” The answer to such a question could only be “yes.”

The departure was solemn - from Aulis, from where King Agamemnon once sailed to Troy. The campaign was successful: the pampered royal soldiers could not withstand the Spartan blow. Agesilaus undressed the prisoners and showed the fighters their white bodies and piles of rich clothes: “This is who you are fighting for and this is what you are fighting for!” The Ionian cities gave him divine honors; he said: “If you know how to make people gods, make yourself, then I will believe.” The Persian king sent him gifts; he answered: “I am used to enriching soldiers, not myself, and with booty, not with gifts.” He was about to go to Babylon in the footsteps of ten thousand, when suddenly an order came from Sparta to return. Thebes, Athens, Argos, and Corinth rebelled against Sparta, and the state needed his help.

A familiar story repeated itself. Once upon a time, the Athenians fought a war with Persia, and the Spartans at Tanagra stabbed them in the back. Now the Spartans were waging war against Persia, and the Athenians and their allies, in turn, struck in the back. This time Persian gold helped them: having stopped paying Sparta, the king began to pay its enemies. Leaving Asia, Agesilaus showed his friends a royal coin with the image of an arrow and said: “These are the arrows that drove us out of here!” And when he heard about the first battles of the internecine war, he exclaimed: “Poor Greece! You have destroyed so many of your own that it would have been enough to defeat all the barbarians!”

The Spartans were easier to defeat at sea than on land. The king moved his fleet to Greece; at the entrance to the Aegean Sea, at Cnidus, the city of Aphrodite, the Spartans were defeated. At the head of the Persian fleet - an unheard of thing! - the Athenian stood. His name was Konon; It was he who ten years ago, disobeying Alcibiades, destroyed the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami, the Goat River. Now he sailed to restore Athenian power - on Mount Sparta and to the delight of the Persian king. A sign of Athenian power were the city walls that connected Athens with its port of Piraeus: within them Athens was impregnable. They began to be built under Themistocles, destroyed under the “thirty tyrants” and now they have been built again; the builders were paid in Persian gold.

Agesilaus hurried to Greece overland, bypassing Aegean Sea, through the lands of the wild Thracians. He asked: “How should I walk through your land: raising my spears or lowering my spears?” - and they let him through. Having entered Greece, he defeated the rebel allies on the very day on which the news of the destruction of the fleet at Cnidus reached him. But this could not decide the outcome of the war. Mutual extermination continued.

Finally, the Spartans were exhausted and sent a humiliated embassy to the Persian king: to ask forgiveness for the war against him and to ask for an alliance against their enemies. The Athenians, the Thebans, and everyone else immediately sent there with the same message. Artaxerxes sat on a high throne, the ambassadors bowed to him with prostrations. One Theban was ashamed to bow - he dropped the ring to the ground and bent down, as if picking it up. Artaxerxes presented the ambassadors with gifts - no one refused; the Athenian ambassador took away so many of them that later in the Athenian people's assembly they jokingly proposed sending nine poor people to the king every year for cash. One Spartan could not stand it and began to scold the Persian order; the king ordered it to be announced that he could say what he wanted, and he, the king, could do what he wanted.

The Treaty of the “Royal Peace” began with the words: “King Artaxerxes considers it fair that the Ionian cities remain with him, while the other cities of the Greeks are independent of each other... And whoever does not accept this peace will have to deal with me.” What Xerxes could not achieve, Artaxerxes achieved: the Persian king disposed of Greece as his own, and, moreover, without introducing a single soldier into it.

“How happy is the Persian king!” - someone said to Agesilaus. “And the Trojan Priam was happy at his age,” Agesilaus answered gloomily.

Pelopidas and Epaminondas

If you look at the map of Greece and remember the history of Greece, you will discover an interesting pattern: the power of Greece gradually shifted from east to west. Once upon a time, under Thales of Miletus, the most prosperous cities were the cities of Asia Minor Ionia. After the Persian Wars, Athens became the most powerful state. Defeated by Sparta, they weakened, but their western neighbor, Boeotian Thebes, suddenly rose (not for long, but brightly). Then, to the west of Thebes, Phocis gained and lost strength even faster, then Aetolia; Next was the sea, and beyond the sea was the new master of the world - Rome.

Now it was Thebes' turn. Until now, they were a large but quiet city, lived according to ancient laws, obeying the nobility, were considered allies of the Spartans and peacefully tolerated the Spartan garrison in their fortress Cadmeus. Now they rebelled, overthrew the Spartan power, established the same democracy as in Athens, and for ten years went on liberation campaigns throughout Greece. The leaders of Thebes in this glorious decade were two friends - Pelopidas and Epaminondas.

Pelopidas was noble, rich, passionate and generous, Epaminondas was poor, unsociable and serious. Pelopidas commanded the Theban cavalry, Epaminondas the infantry. And thanks to Epaminondas, the Theban infantry performed a miracle: it inflicted such a defeat on the invincible Spartans, after which Sparta’s power over Greece came to an end forever.

The struggle began with the fall of Kadmea. The Spartan commander in Cadmeus was called Archias. A denunciation was brought to him at the feast that a conspiracy was being prepared against the Spartans in Thebes. “Is this an important matter? - asked Archy. “Then not at the feast, then tomorrow.” He did not live to see tomorrow: at this feast they killed him. His detachment surrendered the fortress for the right to leave with arms in hand. When those who surrendered returned to Sparta, they were all executed for humiliating Spartan honor.

The Spartan army moved to Thebes. It was scary to go against him. The fortune tellers cast lots: some of the lots were favorable, some were unfavorable. Epaminondas divided them into two groups and turned to the Thebans: “If you are brave, then this is your lot; if you are cowardly, then this is your lot.”

Before the battle, his wife asked Pelopidas to take care of himself. He replied: “This should be advised to a simple warrior, but the job of a commander is to take care of others.”

The troops converged near the city of Leuctra. They told Pelopidas: “We have fallen into the hands of the enemy.” Pelopidas objected: “Why not him for us?”

The Thebans won the battle because Pelopidas and Epaminondas lined up their troops in a new way: they strengthened one wing, weakened the other and went to the Spartan phalanx not in an even formation, but with a strong wing forward. The phalanx was poorly able to maneuver, did not have time to change formation and was crushed first on one wing, and then everywhere. The battlefield remained with the Thebans; The Spartans sent to ask for the dead to be handed over to them for burial. So that they could not downplay their losses, Epaminondas did not allow everyone to pick up the dead at once, but first the Spartan allies, then the Spartans. Then it became clear that more than a thousand Spartans alone had fallen.

The news of the terrible battle came to Sparta on the day of the holiday. There were singing competitions. The ephors sent home notices of the fallen, forbade all mourning and continued to supervise the competitions. The relatives of the fallen made sacrifices to the gods and joyfully congratulated each other on the fact that their loved ones had fallen as heroes; the relatives of the survivors seemed grief-stricken. Only three years later, when the Spartans managed to defeat the allies of Thebes without losing a single man - it went down in history as a “tearless battle” - did real feelings break through. The rulers congratulated the warriors, the women rejoiced, the old men thanked the gods. But once upon a time, victory over the enemy was such a common thing in Sparta that they did not even sacrifice anything to the gods except a rooster.

The Thebans invaded the Peloponnese and approached Sparta itself. All Peloponnesian allies broke away from Sparta. There were no troops in the city. A handful of old men came out to meet the enemy with weapons in their hands. Pelopidas and Epaminondas did not humiliate themselves to such a battle and retreated.

There was a holiday, the Thebans sang and drank, Epaminondas wandered alone in thought. “Why aren’t you having fun?” - they asked him. “So you can have fun,” he replied.

Conceit comes from victories: it began to seem to the people that Epaminondas could have done even more for Thebes than he did. He was brought to trial for commanding an army four months longer than required. He said: “If you execute me, then write a sentence over the grave so that everyone knows: it was against the will of the Thebans that Epaminondas forced them to burn Laconia, which had not been burned by anyone for five hundred years, and to achieve independence for all the Peloponnesians.” And the court refused to judge Epaminondas.

Epaminondas did not get rich from his campaigns. He had only one cloak, and when this cloak was being repaired, Epaminondas did not leave the house. Pelopidas was reproached for not helping his friend. Epaminondas replied: “Why does a warrior need money?” The Persian king sent him thirty thousand gold pieces - Epaminondas replied: “If the king wants good for Thebes, I will be his friend for free, and if not, then his enemy.”

Pelopidas was captured by the Thessalian tyrant Alexander of Thera. He behaved so proudly that Alexander asked: “Why are you trying so hard to die quickly?” “So that you become more hated and die sooner,” answered Pelopidas. He turned out to be right: Alexander was soon killed.

Pelopidas remained alive. He died a few years later in battle. Before the battle they told him: “Beware, there are many enemies.” He replied: “The more we will kill them.” He did not return from this battle.

Epaminondas also died in battle - in the battle of Mantinea, which ended ten years of Theban happiness. Wounded, he was taken out of the fight and laid under a tree. The battle was already over. He asked to call Daifant to him. "He's killed." - “Then Iolaida.” - “And he was killed.” “Then make peace quickly,” said Epaminondas, “because there are no more worthy commanders in Thebes.” He fell into oblivion, then asked if he had lost his shield. They showed him his shield. “Who won the fight?” - “Thebans”. - “Then you can die.” He ordered the dart sticking out of the wound to be taken out, and blood began to flow. One of his friends regretted that he was dying childless. Epaminondas said: “My two daughters are victories at Leuctra and Mantinea.”

Sword of Damocles

Speaking about Pelopidas, I had to mention the Thessalian tyrant Alexander of Thera. He was just one of many generals who, in this turbulent century, took advantage of popular unrest to seize power and rule, regardless of anyone and relying only on the army, as Polycrates, Peisistratus and other tyrants ruled two hundred years before. There were now more opportunities for this: gathering a mercenary army, as we saw, was as easy as shelling pears. There were now more justifications for this: the lessons of the sophists made it possible to say that by nature there is only the right of the strong, and everything else is convention. But compared to the previous tyrants, the new ones had more greed and fear. Greed - because there were more mercenaries and they needed to be paid more. Fear - probably because sophistical justifications could not drown out the voice of conscience. The most powerful, greedy and fearful, and therefore the most cruel tyrant of this time was Dionysius the Elder in Sicilian Syracuse.

He looked like Alcibiades, who had achieved the desired power. He had the same title: commander-autocrat. But he did not, like Alcibiades, waste his mental strength on empty revelry. He came to power by promising the people two things: to repel the Carthaginians, who had been oppressing the Sicilian Greeks for a hundred years, and to appease the nobles and rich who had taken too much power. He did both. He arrested his rich enemies, divided their lands among the ruined poor, recruited mercenaries with their money, pushed back the Carthaginians, united two-thirds of Sicily under his single rule. And then everything went by itself: the money was still needed, the enemies were still terrible - extortions and suspicion began.

Dionysius had the best scouts and informers in Greece. It was said that, in fear of them, the Carthaginian authorities, under threat of death, forbade the Carthaginians to know the Greek language. But the people of Dionysius reported, of course, not only against the Carthaginians. The famous Syracuse quarries - the hard labor where Athenian prisoners were once kept - were never empty under Dionysius. People suffered here for years and decades, gave birth to children here, they grew up, and if they were released into the wild, they shied away like wild ones from sunlight, from people and from horses.

It was Dionysius who had a friend, Damocles, who once said: “I wish I could live like tyrants live!” Dionysius replied: “If you please!” Damocles was dressed luxuriously, anointed with fragrant oil, seated at a magnificent feast, everyone fussed around, fulfilling his every word. In the midst of the feast, he suddenly noticed that a sword on a horsehair was hanging from the ceiling above his head. A piece stuck in his throat. He asked: “What does this mean?” Dionysius replied: “This means that we tyrants always live like this, on the verge of death.”

Dionysius was afraid of his friends. One of them had a dream that he was killing Dionysius; the tyrant sent him to execution: “What a person secretly wants in reality, he sees in his dreams” (modern psychologists would confirm this). Dionysius was afraid to let a barber with a razor near him and forced his daughters to learn barbering in order to shave him. Then he began to be afraid of his daughters and began to burn his own hair with hot nut shells.

He was scolded for honoring and giving gifts to one scoundrel. He said, “I want one person in Syracuse to be hated more than me.”

He robbed temples. He stripped the statue of Zeus of gold and put a woolen cloak on it instead: “Gold is too hot for Zeus in summer and too cold in winter.” He ordered the golden beard to be taken away from the statue of Asclepius, the god of healing, the son of Apollo: “It is not good for a son to be bearded when the father is beardless.”

He imposed a tax on the Syracusans; they cried, saying that they had nothing. He imposed a second, a third - until they reported to him that the Syracusans were no longer crying, but were mocking. Then he stopped: “So they really don’t have anything else.”

One day he was informed that an old woman in the temple was praying to the gods for the health of the tyrant Dionysius. He was so amazed that he called her to him and began to interrogate her. The old woman said: “I have survived three tyrants, one was worse than the other; what will the fourth be like?

Meanwhile, if necessary, he knew how to captivate the people. When there was a war with Carthage and it was necessary to surround Syracuse with a wall as soon as possible, he worked at a construction site as a simple mason, setting an example for everyone.

He knew how to appreciate nobility. There were two friends in Syracuse - Damon and Phintius. Damon wanted to kill Dionysius, was captured and sentenced to execution. “Let me leave until the evening and arrange my household affairs,” said Damon, “Phintius will remain a hostage for me.” Dionysius laughed at such a naive trick and agreed. Evening came, Phintias was already being led to execution. And then, having made his way through the crowd, Damon arrived in time: “I’m here; Sorry for being late." Dionysius exclaimed: “You are forgiven! and I ask you to accept me third into your friendship.” Friedrich Schiller has a ballad about this, it is called “Bail”.

Dionysius was even an amateur poet, and the glory of a poet was more valuable to him than the glory of a commander. His advisor was the lyricist Philoxenus, cheerful and talented. Dionysius read his poems to him, Philoxenus said: “Bad!” Dionysius ordered him to be chained and thrown into a quarry. A week later, his friends rescued him. Dionysius called him and read him new poems. Philoxenus sighed, turned to the chief of the guard and said: “Lead me back to the quarry!” Dionysius laughed and forgave him. One of the faces in the Syracuse quarries was called Philoxenova.

Dionysius died after a drinking party in joy that the Athenians awarded a prize to the tragedy he had composed. They did this, of course, not out of honor, but out of flattery. Dionysius had a prophecy that he would die when he defeated the strongest. He thought that this referred to his war with the Carthaginians, but it turned out that it referred to his rival playwrights. “Because the strongest are defeated anywhere, but not in war,” the historian Diodorus, who reports this, judiciously notes.

Aristippus, teacher of pleasure

Under Dionysius the Elder (and under his son Dionysius the Younger) there were not only court poets, but also court philosophers. Courtiers - this means those who are pleasant to listen to, easy to understand, amused at a cheerful moment, and not pay attention to them at an important moment. The most suitable philosopher for this turned out to be Aristippus from the city of Cyrene.

Oddly enough, he was a student of Socrates. Like Socrates, he looked into own soul, only very shallow. He noticed in her only what was on the very surface: man, like any animal, seeks what is pleasant and avoids what is unpleasant. He repeated after Socrates: “I know that I know nothing,” but added to this: “...except for my own feelings.” He said: “Socrates lived like a beggar, but why? Because it gave him a feeling of pleasure. Does this mean that living in wealth and luxury cannot bring any pleasure? No, it can be great. Let us use it, as long as it does not restrict the freedom of our spirit. If we have pleasure, it is very good; Now, if pleasure subjugates us, this is bad. Let’s try to feel equally free and pleasant both in purple and in rags!”

This is how he tried to live. One day he was walking along the road, and behind him was a slave, dripping with sweat, dragging a bag of his money. Aristippus turned around and said: “Why are you fussing? Throw away the excess and let’s move on.” Aristippus was reproached for being the lover of Laisa, the most fashionable beauty in all of Greece. He answered: “What's wrong with that? After all, it is I who possesses Laisa, and not she who possesses me.” Dionysius of Syracuse once asked him to choose one of three beautiful slaves. Aristippus took all three, saying: “The Trojan Paris had a bad time because he chose one goddess out of three!” - and having brought them to his threshold, he released them on all four sides. Because he didn’t need slaves, but a feeling of pleasure.

One philosopher, finding him at a rich dinner with women and musicians, began to scold him. Aristippus waited a little and asked: “And if they offered you all this for free, would you take it?” “I would take it,” he answered. “So why are you swearing? Apparently, money is simply more valuable to you than pleasure is to me.”

Once he interceded with Dionysius on behalf of a friend, Dionysius did not listen, Aristippus threw himself at his feet. They told him: “Shame on you!” He replied: “It’s not my fault, but Dionysius, whose ears grow on his feet.” - “Say something philosophical!” - Dionysius demanded of him. "Funny! - answered Aristippus. “You learn from me what and how to say, and you teach me when to speak!” Dionysius became angry and ordered Aristippus to move from the place of honor at the table to the furthest one. "Where I sit, there it will be place of honor! - responded Aristippus. Dionysius became furious and spat in Aristippus's face. Aristippus dried himself and said: “Fishermen expose themselves to the spray of the sea in order to catch small fish; Will I be afraid of these splashes if I want to catch such a big fish as Dionysius? And when he was asked why Dionysius was dissatisfied with him, he replied: “Because everyone else is dissatisfied with Dionysius.”

Someone brought his son to study with him; Aristippus asked for five hundred drachmas. The father said: “For this money I could buy a slave!” “Buy,” said Aristippus, “and you will have two whole slaves.” - “What will your teaching give him?” - asked the father. - “At least that he will not sit in the theater like a stone on a stone.” (The seats in Greek open-air theaters were made of stone.)

He was very unlike Socrates. But, like everyone who knew the crafty sage of Athens, he loved him and remembered him all his life. To the question: how did Socrates die? - he answered: “Just as I would like to die.” One speaker defending Aristippus in court asked him: “What did Socrates give you?” “Thanks to him,” answered Aristippus, “everything you said good about me was true.”

Aristippus had a sharp tongue and an easy-going character; the Greeks loved him and remembered stories about him for a long time. But if we look closely, we recognize in him a well-known and not very respected type of this time - a parasite, a professional hanger-on. Ordinary hangers-on were freeloading out of hungry necessity - Aristippus came up with a beautiful philosophical justification for himself. But at its core was the same dangerous feeling: the right to idleness.

Diogenes in a barrel

Aristippus learned to enjoy. And another student of Socrates, named Antisthenes, exclaimed: “Better madness than pleasure!” And then, having calmed down: “Contempt for pleasure is also pleasure.”

Of all that Socrates said, he remembered best: “How nice it is that there are so many things that you can do without!” Our body is in slavery to the needs for food, drink, warmth and rest, but our thought is free, like God. So let us keep the body, like a slave, in hunger and cold - and the more delightful will be the pleasure of freedom of spirit, the only true pleasure - not like Aristippus's! A true sage does not need anything and does not need anyone, not even his fellow citizens; lonely, he wanders around the world, feeding on anything, and shows everyone that in body he is a beggar, but in essence he is a king. If Aristippus had the philosophy of a hanger-on, then Antisthenes had the philosophy of a day laborer who lives on random pennies, but is proud of his legal freedom.

It was to this Antisthenes that a stocky tramp from the Black Sea Sinope named Diogenes, the son of a counterfeiter, once came to study. Antisthenes did not want to teach anyone; he swung a stick at Diogenes. He turned his back and said: “Hit, but learn!” Surprised, Antisthenes lowered his stick, and Diogenes became his only student.

What Antisthenes spoke about, Diogenes did. He wandered around Greece barefoot, in a rough cloak over his naked body, with a beggar's bag and a thick stick. All he had was a clay cup, and even that he knocked on a stone, having once seen how some boy was drinking from the palms of his hands by the river. In Corinth, where he visited most often, he made himself a home in a round clay barrel - pithos. He ate in the square, in full view of everyone, quarreling with the boys: “If you can starve in the square, then why can’t you eat in the square?” He fed on alms, demanding it as his due: “If you give to others, give to me, if you don’t give, start with me.” Someone praised the one who gave alms to Diogenes; “Don’t you praise me for deserving it?” - Diogenes got angry. Someone teased that the lame and the blind are given alms, but not the philosophers; Diogenes explained: “This is because people know: they can become lame and blind, but never philosophers.” They told him: “You live like a dog.” He answered: “Yes: I wag at the one who gives, I bark at the one who does not give, and I bite the unkind.” Diogenes and his students were nicknamed “canine philosophers”, in Greek - “cynics”, and to this day the word “cynic” means “shameless evil scoffer”. And the famous Plato, when asked about Diogenes, answered briefly: “This is Socrates enraged.”

Diogenes washed roots by the stream for himself to eat; Aristippus told him: “If you knew how to deal with tyrants, you wouldn’t have to wash the roots.” Diogenes replied: “If you knew how to wash roots, you wouldn’t have to deal with tyrants.”

He walked the streets in the middle of the day with a lantern and shouted: “I’m looking for a man!” They asked him: “And you didn’t find it?” - “I found good children in Sparta, good husbands- nowhere." One day he was captured by pirates and taken to sell into slavery. When asked what he could do, Diogenes replied: “Good people” - and ordered the herald: “Announce: does anyone want to buy himself an owner?” It was bought by the Corinthian Xeniades; Diogenes told him: “Now please obey me!” He was taken aback, and Diogenes explained: “If you were sick and bought yourself a doctor, would you listen to him?” Xeniades made him an uncle to his children, Diogenes raised them like a Spartan, and they doted on him.

They told him: “You are an exile.” He answered: “I am a citizen of the world.” - “Your fellow citizens condemned you to wander.” - “And I told them to stay at home.” Whoever was proud of his purebred noble family, he said to him: “And any grasshopper is even more purebred than you.” Anyone who marveled at how many offerings from swimmers saved by God from shipwrecks hung in the temple of Poseidon, he reminded him: “And from the unsaved there would be a hundred times more.” Someone was making a cleansing sacrifice - Diogenes said: “Don’t think, cleansing makes up for bad deeds no more than grammatical errors.” And when Corinth was attacked by enemies and citizens, pushing and rattling their weapons, ran to the city walls, Diogenes, so as not to be reproached for his idleness, rolled out his barrel and began to roll it and knock on it.

They laughed at him, but they loved him. And when the Corinthian children, out of mischief, broke his barrel, the Corinthian citizens decided to flog the children and give Diogenes a new barrel.

He lived to see the days of Alexander the Great. When Alexander was in Corinth, he came to see Diogenes. He lay and basked in the sun. “I am Alexander, king of Macedonia, and soon of the whole world,” said Alexander. - What can I do for you? “Move aside and don’t block the sun for me,” answered Diogenes. Alexander walked away and said to his friends: “If I were not Alexander, I would like to be Diogenes.”

Diogenes allegedly died on the same day as Alexander in distant Babylon. Feeling the end approaching, he dragged himself to the city wasteland, lay down on the edge of a ditch and said to the watchman: “When you see that I’m not breathing, push me into the ditch, let the brother dogs feast on it.” But the Corinthians took Diogenes' body from the guard, buried it with honor, placed a pillar over the grave, and on the pillar - a marble dog.

Plato's Cave

Aristippus composed for the new century the philosophy of the hanger-on, Antisthenes the philosophy of the day laborer, and the philosophy of the masters of life - those who are noble, rich and want power - was composed by Plato.

The name Plato means “broad”: they called him that way in his youth for the breadth of his shoulders and continued to call him in his old age for his breadth of mind. He was from the most noble Athenian family, his ancestor was Solon. From a young age he wrote poetry, but one day, when he was carrying a newly composed tragedy to the theater, he heard Socrates talking, threw his tragedy into the fire and became Socrates' most devoted student. And when the Athenian people's power executed Socrates, he hated this people's power for the rest of his life.

Socrates never wrote anything: he only thought and talked. When you think, your thought is in motion, but in order to write it down, you need to stop it. Socrates did not want to stop his thought - for this he died. And Plato devoted his whole life precisely to stopping thought: let it depict to us the most beautiful, the most real, the best, we will write it down, we will arrange it, and then let nothing change: let eternity begin. The fear of unceasing thought was as strong in Plato as in the Athenian judges he hated.

Like everyone else, he saw around that people were living badly, and thought about what kind of order needed to be introduced so that life would become good once and for all. But he began his thought very far away.

Socrates said: a person should not care about the universe, but about his human affairs: think about a good deed - and commit it. But this is how any carpenter works: he thinks about what kind of table he is designing and makes it. At the same time, the finished table is never as good as the intended one: either your hand will tremble, or you will get a bad board. Where does the carpenter's idea of ​​a beautiful table come from in his mind, if he has never seen such tables in the world? He must have looked with his mental eyes into some world where there is a Table for all the tables and a Mountain for all the mountains and a Truth for all the truths - he looked, saw and tried to reproduce this Table in a tree, just as Socrates tried to reproduce this Truth in good deeds. Plato himself saw this intelligible world so clearly that he called this Table and this Mountain “images” of a table and a mountain - in Greek “ideas”. There is nothing superfluous in them, nothing accidental, which always happens in earthly objects, everything is beautiful, convex and bright: not the table, but the Capital itself, not the mountain, but the Mountain itself, and above all - Truth, Beauty and Goodness. “And here I am, Plato, for some reason I see a table and a mountain, but for the life of me I don’t see Stolnost’ and Gornost’!” - Diogenes the scolder interrupted him. “That’s because you don’t have the eyes for it,” Plato answered. “All your tables and mountains are just shadows falling from the idea-Table and the idea-Mountain.” How are these shadows? That's how.

Imagine: there is a road, and along the road there is a long gap in the ground, and under this gap there is a long underground cave, like a prison for slaves. In the cave there are people sitting in stocks - neither moving nor looking back; behind them there is a light gap, in front of their eyes there is a bare wall, and their shadows and the shadows of those who pass along the road fall on this wall. The prisoners see the flickering of shadows, hear the echo of voices, compare, guess, argue. But if you unchain one of them, take him out into the blinding sunlight, show him real world, and then send him back to his friends - they won’t believe him. These are the philosophers who looked into the world of ideas, among the crowd living in the world of things.

What allows them, philosophers, to look into the world of ideas? Memory. Before our birth, our souls lived there, in the world of ideas, and from there they descended to torment into our bodies, like from sunlight into an underground cave. And, seeing here a wooden table and a stone mountain, the soul remembers the idea-Table and the idea-Mountain and understands what is in front of it. And seeing a beautiful person here, the soul does not remain calm, it flares up with love and rushes upward, because for it this is a reminder of the incomparable beauty of the world of ideas. And when a poet writes poetry, he is inspired not by what he sees around him, but by what his soul remembers from what he saw before birth. If poems or paintings are copied not from ideas, but from things, then they are worthless: after all, if things are only shadows of ideas, then such poems are the shadow of shadows.

Everyone lives on such fragments of memories, but only a few can constantly contemplate the world of ideas. This requires many years of mental exercises, starting with the simplest ones - over geometric shapes. When we say “square”, we all imagine the same thing; when we say “truth”, it is not at all the same thing; So, by peering and thinking, you need to achieve that the truth will be one for everyone, just like geometry is one for everyone. Those who have seen this through, power should belong to them, and they will create a state that will be eternal and unchangeable, like the world of ideas. Once upon a time in Greece, power belonged to the noblest; then - the most numerous; Now it’s the turn of the wisest.

The state must be united, like a living being: each member knows his own business, and only his own. There are three vital forces in the human body: in the brain - reason, in the heart - passion, in the liver - need. So in the state there should be three classes: philosophers - rule, guards - protect, workers - feed. The virtue of rulers is wisdom, of guards is courage, and of workers is moderation. Each person begins to be scrutinized even as a child, his abilities are determined, and he is assigned to a class - most often, of course, to the one from which he came. If he is a ruler or a guard, then he is freed from labor for others, but he has nothing of his own: here everyone is equal to each other, everyone eats at the same table, as in ancient Sparta, all property is common, even wives and children are common; Rulers manage short-term marriages, caring only that the children have good heredity. If he is a worker, then work is assigned to him according to his inclinations and abilities, and he no longer has the right to change it. Only rulers are allowed to think; for the rest, just listen and believe. The rulers themselves believe in the world of ideas, and for workers they invent such myths as they deem necessary. For how else can something be explained to those who sit in the cave of shadows and have never seen the sun?

Such was the living state machine, with the help of which Plato wanted to keep the world familiar to him from falling apart - a city-state, strong by law and unity. Here everyone sacrifices himself to the state so that it stands forever, renewing itself, but not changing, like the vault of heaven. And, looking at this goal of Plato’s whole life, you involuntarily think: if Socrates had ended up in such a state, who cannot stop his thought on any perfection, and to every “I know” he answered “but I don’t know,” - and he would have been waiting for the same death as in Athens. Did Plato understand this?

Lesson from Atlantis

The state was invented - the state had to be built. “There will be no good in people until philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers,” said Plato. He looked around Greece: where is the king who can be made a philosopher, so that he can then make philosophers kings? His gaze settled on Syracuse - on Dionysius the Elder, and then on his son Dionysius the Younger. And Plato, a hater of tyranny, a descendant of tyrant-fighting aristocrats, went to the Syracuse tyrants.

His conversation with Dionysius the Elder was short-lived. Plato stood in front of Dionysius and began to say how pitiful the tyrant is in comparison with the sage. Dionysius listened gloomily. “Then the tyrant is not wise?” - “Only he is wise who makes his fellow citizens better.” - “And not brave?” - “Should a brave man be afraid of his own barber?” - “And not fair in court?” - “Every court only darns holes in the rags of Justice.” - “Why did you come, then?” - “Look for the perfect person.” - “Then consider that you haven’t found him!” And Dionysius left, giving the order: when Plato goes back to Athens, seize him and sell him into slavery.

Plato was taken out for sale in an unfamiliar city - he did not say a word. Annikerides, a student of Aristippus, happened to be among the people; he recognized Plato, bought him and immediately set him free. Plato's Athenian friends wanted to reimburse him for this money - Annikerides proudly replied: “Know: not only in Athens they know how to appreciate philosophy.”

In fairy-tale times, the hero Academus lived near Athens. When King Theseus kidnapped young Helen in Sparta and her brothers Dioscuri chased the kidnapper, Akademus showed them where their sister was hidden. Therefore, when the Spartans ravaged the Athenian land, they did not touch the suburban grove where Academus once lived. This “Academy” remained a peaceful corner amidst strife and disaster. Here, with the money that Annikerides did not accept, friends bought Plato an estate. On the gate they wrote: “Those who do not know geometry are not allowed to enter.” Here he thought, wrote, talked with his students and waited for the philosopher king.

More than twenty years have passed. Dionysius the Elder in Syracuse was replaced by Dionysius the Younger - stupid, wayward and dissolute. The father was afraid of a rival in his son, kept him locked up and did not teach him anything, and he whiled away his boredom by knocking together wooden carts and tables. Having come to power, he went on a spree: his drinking bouts lasted ninety days, and all affairs in the state were at a standstill. He was ashamed of his ignorance and character, but he could not overcome himself. He had an uncle named Dion, a passionate admirer of Plato. Dion proposed inviting Plato to Syracuse and giving him land and money to found a philosophical state. Dionysius grabbed this thought with all his troubled conscience.

Plato went to Syracuse a second time and was received royally. Dionysius did not leave him, geometry became a court fashion, the rooms of the palace were covered with sand, on which drawings were drawn. Moreover, Plato was the only one who could enter the tyrant without being searched. Aristippus said offendedly: “With such a guest, Dionysius will not go broke: to us, who need a lot, he gives little, but to Plato, who needs nothing, he gives a lot.” Dionysius did not give only help for the philosophical city: he was afraid that Dion would strengthen himself there and overthrow him. Dion was sent into exile, and Plato realized that his hopes were over. With difficulty, he asked Dionysius to leave for his homeland. Saying goodbye, Dionysius said gloomily: “Don’t say bad things about me at the Academy.” Plato answered sadly: “I would be a bad philosopher if I had nothing more to talk about.”

Another five years passed, and Plato came to Syracuse for the third time - to reconcile Dionysius with Dion. Nothing came of it. Dionysius did not hate Plato, worse: he loved him - he loved him with the heavy love of a man who knows that he is unworthy of reciprocity. He listened to lessons, reproaches, denunciations, but did not let Plato go. There could be no question of Dion's return: the tyrant was jealous of Plato with mortal jealousy towards Dion. Plato returned empty-handed. Then Dion gathered a detachment of mercenaries, went to Syracuse, expelled Dionysius by force, but to the Syracusans the new tyrant seemed no better than the old one, and Dion was killed before he had time to think about philosophical laws. They said that he was killed by Callippus, a student of Plato like him.

Plato grew decrepit at the Academy, again and again redrawing his blueprint for an ideal state. And the further he went, the more it became clear to him: there is no place for eternal good on earth, the human race is too corrupt, even the best state is doomed. Before his death, he began to write a book about the war between two ideal states and the death of the one that, in its greatness, forgot about divine virtue and pursued earthly goods. These two states are Athens and Atlantis.

The action takes place nine thousand years ago, several floods before our time - that is, this is an outright fairy tale. The Athens of this tale is a real Platonic state: virtuous guardians who have everything in common, and virtuous workers who find it easy to work because the land is rich, as in the golden age. There are rolling mountains, spreading oak forests, lush fields and curved banks. Atlantis is an island in the ocean, on it the field is like a rectangle along a ruler, and the city is like a circle along a compass. The city has three canals, a ring in a ring, above the canals there are three walls - made of copper, tin and the mysterious metal orichalcum, on straight streets - houses made of stone, black, white and red, in the middle - the temple of Poseidon, silver walls, golden roof, the ceiling is ivory, and the walls are orichalcum. Ten kings, descendants of Poseidon, reigned in this geometric splendor. And when their wealth became more valuable to them than virtue, Zeus, the guardian of the laws, decided to impose punishment on them... Here, at the very beginning, death interrupted Plato’s story.

You will probably still have to read many different things about Atlantis: and that in pre-human times in Atlantic Ocean there really was a great subsidence of the land, and that a thousand years before Plato there was such a volcanic eruption in the Aegean Sea that the wave from it devastated the mighty kingdom on the island of Crete. Read, but remember: the myth of the Golden Gate City, punished for its sins, was made of all this only by Plato.

Aristotle, or the Golden Mean

Plato, whose name means “broad,” had a student named Aristotle, whose name means “good completion.” These names suited them so well that they seemed to have been invented on purpose.

Aristotle was a good student. It was said that Plato once gave a lecture on the immortality of the soul. The lecture was so difficult that the students, without finishing listening, one after another got up and left. When Plato finished, only Aristotle sat before him.

Aristotle studied with Plato for twenty years and the longer he listened, the less he agreed with what he heard. And when Plato died, Aristotle said: “Plato is my friend, but truth is dearer,” he left the Academy and started his own school - the Lyceum, at the sacred site of Apollo of Lyceum. He taught classes not standing in front of those sitting, like Plato, but walking with them under a canopy. They were called “walking philosophers” - Peripatetics.

Aristotle said so. Plato is right, but Diogenes is wrong: there is not only a table, but also Capitalism, not only a mountain, but also Gornost. But it seems to Plato that Stolnost is something much brighter, more beautiful and perfect than a table. And this is not true. Close your eyes and imagine this table. You will imagine it in every detail, with every scratch and carved curl. Now imagine “the table in general” - Plato’s idea of ​​Stolnost. Immediately all the details will disappear, only the board will remain and under it either three or four legs. Now imagine “furniture in general”! It is unlikely that even Plato will be able to do this clearly and clearly. No, the higher the idea, the brighter it is, but the poorer and paler it is. We do not contemplate ready-made “images,” as Plato thought, we create them ourselves. Having seen a hundred tables, a thousand chairs and beds, a hundred thousand houses, ships and carts, we notice what features they have in common, and we say: here is the type of object “table”, the type of object “furniture”, the class of object “product”. Let's sort everything we know into these categories of genera and species - and the world will immediately become clearer for us.

In Plato, the world is similar to Plato’s state: at the top sits, like a ruler, the idea of ​​Capitalism, and below, real tables obediently obey it. In Aristotle, the world is similar to ordinary Greek democracy: tables meet, find out what they have in common and what is different, and jointly develop the idea of ​​Capitalism. No need to laugh: Aristotle really believed that every table strives to be a table, and every stone - a stone, just as an acorn strives to be an oak, and an egg - a bird, and a boy - an adult, and an adult - a good person. You just need to observe moderation: when you strive to be yourself, then undershooting and overshooting are equally bad. What are human virtues? The golden mean between human vices. Courage is the mean between pugnacity and cowardice; generosity - between extravagance and stinginess; fair pride - between arrogance and humiliation; wit - between buffoonery and rudeness; modesty is between shyness and shamelessness. What is a good state? The power of the king, but not the tyrant; the power of the noble, but not the selfish; the power of the people, but not of the idle mob. Measure in everything is the law. And in order to determine this measure, you need to examine what is measured by it.

Therefore, there is no need to stare your mental eyes into the world of ideas in vain - it is better to turn your real eyes to the world of objects around us. Plato spoke very beautifully about what an ideal state should be like, and Aristotle compiles 158 descriptions of 158 real Greek states and then sits down to write the book “Politics.” Plato loved mathematics and astronomy more than all the sciences, because in the world of numbers and stars, order immediately catches the eye, and Aristotle was the first to study zoology, because in the motley chaos of living beings surrounding man, it is more difficult and necessary to establish order. Here Aristotle performed a miracle: he described about 500 animals and arranged them on the “ladder of nature” from the simplest to the most complex so harmoniously that his system lasted two thousand years. Some of his observations were a mystery: he mentioned veins in insects that we see only through a microscope. But experts confirm: yes, yes, there is no deception here, Aristotle simply had such visual acuity as one person in a million has. Mental acuity too.

Seeing things as they are is much sadder than calmly knowing how they should be. To look at them like that, to measure out the golden mean in them like that, you need to feel like an outsider in the world, equally benevolent towards everything, but with your heart not attached to anything. Such was Aristotle, the son of a doctor from the city of Stagira, who lived all his life on a foreign side. He does not feel like a parasite, or a day laborer, or the master of life - he feels like a doctor with her. There are no small details for a doctor: he listens to everything, compares everything, tries to foresee everything. But he remembers: people turn to a doctor only when they are sick; he is not a manager in their lives, but an adviser. It is ridiculous to imagine, like Plato, that someone will one day entrust a philosopher with the structure of the state: at most, the philosopher may be asked for some random advice, and then advice should be given to the king in such and such a way, and to the people in such and such a way. Aristotle lived both under the king - he was the teacher of Alexander the Great, and under the people - he was the head of the school in the Athenian Lyceum. But he died in exile, on the shore of the strait between Attica and Euboea, and while dying he thought not about state affairs, but about why in this strait the water changes its flow six times a day - either to the west or to the east .

It was Aristotle who said: “The roots of teaching are bitter, but its fruits are sweet.”

"Characters" of Theophrastus

Aristotle began not only the science of animals and not only the science of government with the collection and classification of material. The science of human feelings and behavior too. This science was called “ethics”, Aristotle himself wrote an essay about it, and a collection of descriptions of human characters was compiled by his student Theophrastus. Here are thirty small portraits: Pretender, Flatterer, Idle talker, Ignorant, Obsequious, Desperate, Gossip... Here are some of them, slightly abbreviated.

Flatterer. Flattery can be defined as unsightly treatment, but beneficial to the flatterer. A flatterer is a person who, while walking, will say to his companion: “Do you notice how everyone is looking at you? No one else in the city is so respected!” - and removes a thread from his cloak. The companion spoke - the flatterer tells everyone to be silent; joked - laughs; sang - praises; fell silent - exclaims: “Excellent!” He buys apples and pears for his children, gives them so that the father can see, and says: “A good father has good children.” When a companion buys sandals for himself, the flatterer exclaims: “The shoes are good, but the feet are better!” When he goes to visit a friend, the flatterer runs forward and announces: “He’s coming to see you!” - and then, returning back: “Notified!” He asks the person being flattered if he is cold, and, without allowing him to answer, he already wraps him in a cloak. Chatting with others, he looks at him, and when he sits down, he snatches the pillow from the slave and puts it on him himself. And his house, says the flatterer, is beautiful and strong, and the field is well cultivated, and the portrait is similar.

Ignorant. Ignorance is, most likely, ignorance of decency, like among men. An ignoramus wears shoes that are too big for him; speaks loudly; He doesn’t trust his friends and family, but consults with his slaves about everything and tells the farmhands in the field what happened with him in the people’s assembly. In the city he does not look at temples or statues, but if he sees a bull or a donkey, he will certainly stop and admire it. He has breakfast on the go, giving food to the cattle. Not just any coin will be accepted, but first he’ll figure out if it’s too light. If he lends someone a basket, a sickle or a bag, then after that he cannot sleep and in the middle of the night he goes to ask for it back. When he arrives in town, he asks the first person he meets how much sheepskins and dried fish. While washing in the bathhouse, he sings; he nails his shoes.

Chatterbox. Talkativeness is the tendency to talk a lot and without thinking. The chatterbox sits down closer to the stranger and tells how he, the chatterbox, good wife; then he reports a dream he had at night; then he lists what he ate for lunch. Further, word for word, he says that today’s people are much worse than the former, and how little they give for wheat in the market, and how many foreigners have come in large numbers, and that the sea has been navigable for a month now, and that if Zeus sends good rain, then a year there will be a harvest, and how difficult it has become to live, and how many columns are there in the Parthenon, and that in six months there will be a feast of Eleusinius, and then Dionysius, and what day is it, exactly, today? And if they tolerate him, he will not give up.

Killjoy. Grumbling is an unfair abuse of everything. A grouch in the rain is angry not because it is raining, but because it didn’t rain before. Having found a wallet on the street, he says: “But I’ve never found a treasure!” When his girlfriend kisses him, he grumbles: “Why do you love me?” Having bargained and bought a slave, he exclaims: “I can imagine what good I bought, and for what price!” And having won the case by a unanimous decision of the court, he still reproaches the defense attorney that he could have said better.

Superstition. Superstition is a cowardly fear of unknown divine forces. On holiday, a superstition will certainly sprinkle himself with holy water, put a sprig of laurel taken from the temple in his mouth, and walk with it all day. If a weasel crosses his path, he will not move until someone passes first, and if there is no one, he will throw three pebbles forward. If a mouse eats a bag of flour, he goes to the fortuneteller and asks what to do, and if he says: “Take it and patch it up,” then he comes home and makes propitiatory sacrifices. Hearing the cries of owls on the way, he will stop and pray to Athena. On difficult days he sits at home and only decorates the household gods with wreaths. Having met the funeral, he runs, washes himself from head to toe and, calling the priestesses, asks to perform cleansing on him. And when he sees someone having a seizure, he spits in his bosom in horror because of the evil eye.

Fool. Stupidity is the slowness of the mind in speech and in deed. A fool is one who, having made a calculation and summed up the total, asks his neighbor: “How much will it be?” When he is called to court, he forgets and goes to the field. He falls asleep during a performance and wakes up to find himself alone in an empty theater. Having taken something, he will hide it himself, and then he will look for it and will not be able to find it. When he is informed that an acquaintance has died, he, darkening, says: “Good hour!” In winter, he argues with a slave because he did not buy cucumbers. If he forces his children to practice wrestling and running, he will not let them go until they are exhausted. And if someone asks how many dead people are buried outside the cemetery gates, he will answer: “You and I would have that many!”

Comedy learns from tragedy

These “characters” of Theophrastus seem like ready-made characters for some kind of comedy. Not the same, of course, as Aristophanes, where caricatures of living people and ideas were brought on stage and joked about, but the kind that is familiar to us from Fonvizin or Moliere and is usually called the “comedy of manners.”

So it is: it was during the time described that a new type of comedy appeared in the Athenian theater. The old comedy wanted the viewer to laugh and think about war and peace, about the sermons of Socrates, about the poetry of Aeschylus and Euripides, and who knows what else. The new one wanted the viewer to laugh and feel emotional - over the love of two good young people or the fate of children separated from their parents. Until now, the feelings of the spectators have been more concerned with the tragedy; Now comedy learns this from tragedy and becomes, as it were, a tragedy with a happy ending. The Athenian spectator was tired of thinking, tired of holding the rudder of the ship of state in his hands, which, despite all efforts, was still going somewhere in the wrong direction. And he went to the theater just to have fun and unwind.

Here, in every comedy, he encountered almost the same set of mask roles: an old father, a frivolous son, a cunning slave or hanger-on, an evil slave owner, a boastful warrior, a smug cook. Almost every time the same thing happened between them with different details. A young man is in love with a girl, but this girl is the slave of an evil slave owner. The young man has a rival - a boastful warrior, and he is about to buy the girl from the owner. The young man urgently needs a lot of money, but his father does not give it: he does not want to indulge his son’s revelry, but wants him to quickly get married and settle down. You have to get money by cunning - this is done by a crafty slave or hanger-on. A trick is played out, each comedy has its own, and the required money is lured out of the father, the warrior, or even the girl’s owner. The deception is revealed, a scandal begins, but then it turns out that this girl is not a natural slave at all, but the daughter of free parents who abandoned her in infancy, and now happen to be nearby and happily recognize her by the things that were with her. Therefore, the young man can take her as his lawful wife, his father blesses him, the slave receives freedom, the hanger-on receives a treat, the cook prepares a feast, and his rivals are put to shame.

Before us is a real kingdom of chance: if the slave had not taken advantage of the opportunity, the trick would not have succeeded; if the girl’s parents had not happened nearby, the happy ending would not have succeeded. The Athenian spectator looks at this with pleasure: in life, in his domestic and state affairs, he has ceased to rely on his own strength and hopes more for a happy occasion.

To prevent the comedies from being too monotonous, the permanent roles were painted with the colors of different characters. The old father could be a Grouch, a Suspicious one, a Miser, an arrogant one, and even a Young One. A cunning slave could be a Trickster, an Insolent One, or a Troublemaker. A boastful warrior could turn out to be a Superstition and even a Coward. This made it possible to derive another moral from the comedy, quite according to Aristotle: extremes are not good, but the golden mean is good, otherwise character will be its own punishment. The best comedies of this time are those in which characters and roles are combined unexpectedly. Looking at them, it seemed: everything was like in life. A recognized master of this art was a friend and student of Theophrastus himself, the author of “Characters,” Menander. “Menander and life, who imitated which of you?!” - the Greeks exclaimed.

Here comes Menander's comedy "Shorn". There is no villain-slave owner, no slave-schemer, no hanger-on, no cook, no extortion of money. There is a warrior, but you can’t call him boastful: he is an ardent and passionate lover, tossing between anger and despair. There are three houses on stage: in one lives a warrior with his friend, the free girl Glikera, in the other - a rich widow with her adopted son Moschion, in the third - an old merchant neighbor. A terrible thing happened: the warrior saw his neighbor Moschion hugging and kissing him Glikera. He flew into a rage, beat his friend and cut her hair like a slave. At this point Glikera became offended. She secretly goes to her widow neighbor, asks for shelter and reveals a secret to her: she Native sister to her adopted son Moschion, they were once found abandoned together by an old woman, but the boy was immediately adopted into a rich house, and she was left to grow up in poverty and, out of pride, still did not take advantage of this relationship. Of course, the widow accepts her with joy. At first Moschion rejoices - the girl he likes is falling into his hands! - and then becomes despondent: it turns out that this girl is just his sister. The warrior first goes berserk - he is even ready to storm the widow's house according to all the rules of military art - and then he comes to despair: after all, by doing this he will only offend Glikera even more and will most certainly lose her. He asks a neighboring merchant to intercede for him before Glikera. But she hasn’t calmed down yet: “I’m a free girl, I still keep the things my parents left me with!” - "Which?" - "Here!" The merchant looks and, of course, recognizes those chains and bedspreads with which he once, in a difficult moment, threw his own little children to the will of God. So not only does the brother find his sister, but both of them find their father, and all because of a thoughtless outburst of jealousy of a warrior in love - how can he not be forgiven for this now? The warrior swears he won't do it again; Gliker's anger is replaced by mercy; the new-found father says, touched:

To forgive when happiness smiles again, -

This, daughter, is truly Greek!

And so this drama of experiences ends with common joy, where there is neither greed nor cunning, but there is pride, love and kindness.

Rebirth of art

The free Greek increasingly became a consumer from a producer. This was reflected even where it seemed strange to talk about production and consumption - in art. A century ago it was simple - such that, if necessary, any citizen of average ability, having learned to sing at school, could compose and sing a song, and, having learned the rules of proportions from a master, could carve a column or statue. Now it becomes complex - so that everyone admires the work, but not everyone could (or better yet, no one could) repeat it. From amateur art becomes professional - it is divided between a few producers and a mass of idle spectators or listeners. At the same time, the master looks down on the viewer, as if he were an ignoramus, and the viewer, although he admires the master, also looks down on him, as at a narrow specialist hired to serve him, the viewer.

The easiest way to see this was on the threshold of art - in sports. Everyone can be an athlete, but not everyone can be a record holder. The Olympic, Pythian and other games are now turning from a sport for athletes into a sport for record holders. The same athletes move from competition to competition, spectators during the games admire them until they lose consciousness, and after the games they tell jokes about what clumsy dupes these athletes are in life.

Music is not a sport, but it was the same in music. Each of you can sing a song, but not everyone can play the guitar. In Greece, singing was separated from string music right now: next to the “cithareds” - lyre singers, “citharists” appeared - simply lyre players and immediately began to look down on the cithareds. The instrument, freed from the voice, immediately began to become more complex: instead of seven strings, nine and eleven appeared on the cithara. When such cithara players came to stubborn Sparta, the ephors, without much conversation, cut off their extra strings with an ax.

Theater, of course, is not such an accessible art: not everyone could write drama in verse before. But it was accessible, if not in form, then in content: a choir sang interspersed with the actors, expressing, as it were, a general opinion about the actions of the characters. Now the choir disappears from the action and only during intermissions performs songs and dances that no longer have anything to do with the events: why is the choir in Menander’s “Shorn”? The actors took advantage of this: they left the choir to dance below in the orchestra, and for themselves they built a high narrow platform in front of the tent-skene - “proskenium”. Previously, the theater looked like our circus - now it has become similar to the current stage. Even a curtain appeared - though not falling (there was nowhere for it to come down), but rising, like an open screen, from the crack in front of the platform.

Painting followed the theater. For the new stage, they began to make new scenery: with perspective, so that everything seemed to go into the distance. Then they began to paint not only decorations, but also frescoes and paintings. In old paintings, any object could be viewed individually, as a sign, looking from anywhere; on the new ones, it was necessary to look only at everything as a whole, from a distance, from the point at which the artist was counting, and from close up, each piece of the picture seemed distorted and rough. It was as if the painter himself was showing the viewer his seat, as in a theater: stand with folded hands and admire.

Sculpture followed painting. The famous Lysippos was asked how he managed to make statues that looked like they were alive. He answered: “Previously, sculptors depicted people as they are, and I - as they appear to the eye.” It was like sculptural sophistry: after all, sophistry also taught not what actually exists, but how to present what is needed convincingly to the public. Lysippos had a brother, Lysistratus. He was the first to sculpt faces with portrait likeness; for this he even took plaster casts from living faces. If Lysippos had life-like figures, then Lysistratus had real-life faces.

Architecture, too, increasingly became a spectacle for show. The last century knew two styles of construction: strict Doric and graceful Ionic. The new century invented the third - the elegant Corinthian. There is a story about how he appeared. The girl died, she was buried, and her relatives placed a basket with her childhood toys on the grave, pressing it down with tiles. And there grew the Greek acanthus bush: flexible stems, carved leaves and curled tendrils. He braided and entwined the basket. A sculptor passed by, looked, admired, and made a column capital based on her model: eight short leaves, above them eight long ones; eight long antennae, between them eight short ones.

The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus was the height of a ten-story building - 140 feet, and around a kilometer and a quarter: 410 feet. The base had a height of 60 feet, the colonnade 40 feet, the pyramidal roof 25 feet, and the chariot above the roof another 15 feet. Greece had never seen such large buildings before. A frieze depicting the battles of the Greeks with the Amazons surrounded the building, apparently above the base, under the colonnade.

It is very beautiful - but until you think that it is a column supporting the roof: leaves and tendrils are not suitable for support. Looking at a Doric column, we see that it carries weight; looking at the Ionic - remember this; looking at the Corinthian one, we forget. Instead of a support, we have a decoration in front of us.

You can amaze the eye not only with its pattern, but also with its size. In the Greek city of Halicarnassus, the Asia Minor king Mausolus ruled. His widow ordered a gigantic tomb from Greek architects for her husband - so that it would look like both a Greek temple and an eastern pyramid. The Greeks did as she wanted. They mentally took a stepped pyramid, cut it at the waist and inserted a colonnade of a Greek temple between the bottom and top. The structure was the height of a ten-story building; At the top, above the tomb, stood a gigantic statue of Mausoleum with his non-Greek, beardless and mustachioed face. A hundred years ago the Greeks would have been horrified by such a building for a barbarian prince, in which Greece was mixed with the East. Now they admired her; The Halicarnassian tomb was ranked among the seven wonders of the world, and the word “mausoleum” spread across all languages.

This is how art changed, and with it the attitude towards the artist changed. It bifurcated: he was a craftsman, that is, less than a man, and he was a miracle worker, that is, more than a man. It was said with admiring horror about the artist Parrhasius that art was so dearer to him than reality that, while painting the torment of Prometheus, he ordered a living man to be crucified in front of him; the people wanted to execute him, but when they saw what a wondrous picture it turned out to be, they forgave and glorified him. This, of course, was slander. Nineteen centuries later the same slander was repeated about another great master - Michelangelo Buonarroti; Pushkin hints at this in the last line of his drama “Mozart and Salieri”.

The world also becomes a profession

In war the sword is mightiest, in peace it is speech.

(Attributed to Socrates)

A hundred years ago they said about Athens: “Whoever was in Athens and left it voluntarily is a camel.” Now they began to say: “Athens is a visiting yard: everyone wants to go there, but no one wants to live there.”

Then Athens was rich and beautiful because it collected tribute from its allies. Now the tribute was over, it was necessary to decide how to live further. Either move to the position of a peaceful second-rate city, receiving a slow but sure income from maritime trade, or embark on desperate wars in the hope of random but large loot. The first way was preferred by the rich: trade income ended up in their chests. The second way was preferred by the poor: war booty went to the treasury and was divided among all citizens through holiday distributions.

We must not forget that the troops were now usually mercenary, and the war, therefore, was fought with money. This means that the poor collected money from the rich to equip troops and navy, and often did not even go out into the field or into the sea. It is clear that such wars were often voted for without thinking, and then retribution came. The speaker Demades said: “To vote for peace, the Athenians must first dress in mourning.”

Disputes were resolved and scores were settled in the people's assembly and in court. Not a single politician, even the successful one, could escape the trial: a commander could always be brought to trial for not making full use of a victory, and a peaceful speaker for not giving the people the best possible advice. Real blackmailers appeared who appeared to every noticeable person and threatened to bring him to trial. They were paid off to leave them alone. They were called “sycophants”, and about themselves they said: “We are the watchdogs of the law.” The orator Lycurgus was reproached for spending too much money paying off sycophants. Lycurgus answered: “It’s better to give than to take!”

There was no code of laws in Athens; the assessors passed sentences more according to civil conscience: if good man, then the guilt can be forgiven. The main thing became not to prove whether there was guilt, but to convince that the accused was a good (or, conversely, bad) person. And for this you needed oratorical talent. And speakers become the main people in Athens.

Under Pericles, orators relied only on talent and inspiration - now orators study their craft, use rules, compose and record their speeches in advance. The rules of oratory began to be developed by the sophists. When preparing a speech, one had to worry about five things: what to say, in what order to say it, how to say it, how to remember it, how to pronounce it; about four sections - introduction, presentation, evidence, conclusion; about the three virtues of style: clarity, beauty and appropriateness. However, theory is theory, and when the great Demosthenes was asked which of the five parts of eloquence is the most important, he answered: “Pronunciation.” And secondly? - “Pronunciation.” And thirdly? - “Also pronunciation.”

The oldest of Athenian orators was Isocrates. He himself did not give speeches - he had a weak voice and a shy character. But all the young masters of eloquence were his students. He said: “I’m like a whetstone, I don’t cut it myself, but I sharpen others” - and added: “I take ten minas from my students, but whoever taught me how to speak with the people, I wouldn’t spare a thousand.” Young Demosthenes, coming to him, said: “I don’t have ten minas; here are two for a fifth of your science.” Isocrates replied: “Good science, like good fish, doesn’t cut into pieces: take it all!” He taught the Athenians for free.

Oratory skill is measured by success. The orator Lysias composed a defense speech for one defendant, who read it several times and said: “The first time it is wonderful, but the more you reread it, the more you see the exaggerations.” “Excellent,” said Lisiy, “the judges will hear it only once.” Demosthenes himself once composed speeches for both the plaintiff and the defendant at once: they fought before the court as if with two swords from one gunsmith. In order to pity the court on the merits of the client, another defense lawyer exposed his chest and pointed to the scars: “This is what he endured for you!” The speaker Hyperides had to defend the beautiful Phryne - he tore her clothes: “Look: can such a beautiful woman be guilty?” Phryne was acquitted, but a law was passed so that judges would pronounce sentences without looking at the accused.

Seeing such oratorical techniques, the people here too got used to feeling like a spectator, and not a participant - to enjoy the right to idleness. One day Demade spoke in a national assembly. The matter was important, but boring, and they did not listen to him. Then he stopped and began to tell a fable: “Demeter, a frog and a swallow walked along the road. They found themselves on the river bank. The swallow flew over it, and the frog dived into it...” And he fell silent. “And Demeter?” - the people shouted. “And Demeter stands and is angry with you,” answered Demades, “because you listen to trifles, but do not listen to state affairs.”

Philip, Alexander's father

Be a benefactor to the Greeks, a king to the Macedonians, a ruler to the barbarians.

In fairy-tale times, three teenage brothers fled from Argos in Greece and hired themselves out as shepherds to the king of the northern land. The eldest grazed horses, the middle one grazed bulls, and the youngest grazed sheep. Times were simple, and the royal wife baked bread for them herself. Suddenly she began to notice that the piece she was cutting off for the youngest was automatically doubling in size. The king became alarmed and decided to drive the shepherds away. The young men demanded their wages. The king got angry, pointed to the sun and shouted: “Here is your pay!” The times were poor, the royal housing was a simple hut without windows, only through the chimney the sun's rays fell like a bright spot on the earthen floor. Suddenly the younger brother bent down, outlined the sunlight on the ground with a knife, scooped the sun into his bosom three times with his palm, said: “Thank you, king,” and left. His brothers did the same after him. When the king came to his senses, he sent pursuit of them, but did not catch up. The brothers found shelter with neighboring tribes, grew up, returned and took the kingdom from the king. All Macedonian kings called themselves their descendants.

Macedonia has changed little since then. Of course, the kings no longer lived in huts, but in palaces, and they had more goods. But there were still no cities in the country, but there was an old-Testament village, where noble landowners made up the cavalry that pranced around the king, and the peasants made up the somehow assembled infantry. The cavalry was good, but the infantry was bad, and no one was afraid of the Macedonian army.

Everything went differently when Philip of Macedon became king. As a child, he was a hostage in Thebes, in the house of Epaminondas, and saw enough of the best Greek army. As king, he turned the inexperienced Macedonian militia into an indestructible phalanx in the simplest possible way. He lengthened the spears of the warriors: the first row of fighters had spears two meters long, the second one three meters, and so on, up to six. The rear fighters thrust spears between the front ones, and the phalanx bristled with points five times thicker than usual. While the enemy tried to approach it, the Macedonian cavalry attacked him from the flanks and cut down to victory.

Next to Macedonia was Thrace; in Thrace there were the only gold mines near Greece. Philip was the first to recapture them from the fierce Thracians and keep them behind him. Until now, in Greece the coin was silver, only the Persian king minted gold; now the Macedonian king also began to mint it. There were Greek cities along the Aegean coast - Philip subjugated them one after another. Some were considered impregnable - he said: “There is no such impregnable city that a donkey with a bag of gold would not enter.”

Greece itself allowed its dangerous neighbor in. The Thebans began to push back their western neighbors, the Phocians. Phocis was a poor country, but among Phocis stood Delphi. Greek piety protected them for the time being - now that time is over. The Phocians captured Delphi, seized the wealth that was accumulating there, hired such a mercenary army as had never been seen here, and kept all of central Greece in fear for ten years. Delphi was considered under the protection of the surrounding states, but they could not cope with the brave sacrilege themselves and invited Philip to help. The Macedonian phalanx entered Greece. Before the decisive battle, Philip ordered the fighters to put wreaths from the sacred laurel of Apollo on their helmets; Seeing the formation of these avengers for the Delphic god, the Phocians wavered and were defeated. Philip was hailed as the savior of Greece; Macedonia was recognized as a Greek state, and moreover (although this was not said) the most powerful state.

Philip tried to win not only with force, but also with affection. He said: “What is taken by force, I share with my allies; what is taken with caress is only mine.” He was offered to occupy Greek cities with troops - he replied: “It is more profitable for me to be known as good for a long time than as evil for a short time.” They told him: “Punish the Athenians: they scold you.” He was surprised: “And after this, will they really praise?” - and added: “The Athenian battle only makes me better, because I try to show the whole world that this is a lie.”

He was like that among his neighbors. They told him: “So-and-so is scolding you, send him away.” He answered: “Why? So that he swears not in front of those who know me, but in front of those who don’t?” They told him: “So-and-so scolds you - execute him.” He answered: “Why? Better invite him to come to me for a treat.” He treated, rewarded, then inquired: “Are you scolding?” - “Praise!” - “You see, I know people better than you.”

One day after a victory, he sat on a dais and watched as prisoners were driven into slavery. One of them shouted: “Hey, king, let me go, I’m your friend!” - “Why on earth is this?” - “Let me come closer and I’ll tell you.” And, leaning towards the king’s ear, the captive said: “Pull down your tunic, king, otherwise you’re sitting unsightly.” “Let him go,” said Philip, “he really is my friend.”

Philip's main enemy in Greece was Athens. There, in the national assembly, supporters and opponents of Philip fought; some were fed by Macedonian gold, others by Persian gold. The opponents prevailed: the war began. The Macedonian phalanx clashed with the Athenian and Theban phalanx at Chaeronea. On one wing, Philip trembled before the Athenians, on the other, his son, young Alexander, overthrew the Thebans; Seeing this, Philip rushed forward, and victory was won. The “sacred detachment” of the Thebans died on the spot, down to a single person, all the wounds were in the chest. Greece was in the hands of Philip. He declared universal peace, banned internecine wars and began preparing a war against Persia. They advised him: “Destroy Athens.” He answered: “Who will look at my affairs then?”

While practicing in the gymnasium, he fell, looked at the imprint of his body in the sand and sighed: “How little land we need and how much we want!” He managed to learn from the Greeks a sense of proportion, he was worried about his own happiness: “May the gods send us a little bit of bad for all the good!” His anxiety was not in vain: two years after Chaeronea he was killed.

Demosthenes against Macedon

The leader of all the enemies of Philip of Macedon in Athens was the orator Demosthenes. He understood that Macedonian rule over Greece would be the beginning of a peaceful and calm life, but the end of freedom and independence. And he called on the Athenians to rush into the last struggle: it is better to die, but with honor.

From a young age, Demosthenes was weak-voiced and tongue-tied. With superhuman efforts, he forced himself to speak loudly and clearly. He stuffed his mouth with pebbles and learned to move his tongue strongly and accurately. In order not to lose heart in his determination, he shaved half his head and hid to live in a cave on the seashore until his hair grew back. Here, on the seashore, he practiced his speeches, trying to overcome the noise of the sea surf with his voice.

His speeches were harsh. The people in the assembly were accustomed to the speakers speaking flatteringly to them, and they grumbled. Demosthenes said: “Athenians, you will have in me an adviser, even if you do not want, but you will not have a flatterer, even if you want.” Philip of Macedon, comparing him with his teacher Isocrates, said: “The speeches of Isocrates are like athletes, the speeches of Demosthenes are like fighters.” It was impossible to bribe Demosthenes to advocate a wrong cause. He was paid only to remain silent. One actor boasted: “For one day of performance I was paid a talent of silver!” Demosthenes told him: “And for one hour of silence they paid me five talents of silver.” To avoid speaking, he said that he had a fever. The Athenians laughed: “Silver fever!”

The main battle of Demosthenes before the people was a competition in speeches with Aeschines: Aeschines spoke for the Macedonians, Demosthenes - against. Aeschines was an excellent speaker, but Demosthenes defeated him. Aeschines had to go into exile on the island of Rhodes. The Rhodians loved eloquence and asked Aeschines to repeat his speech to them. Aeschines repeated. The amazed Rhodians asked: “How did you end up in exile after such a magnificent speech?” Aeschines replied: “If you had heard Demosthenes, you would not have asked about this.”

Demosthenes performed a miracle: he convinced the Athenian people to give the state treasury not for holiday distributions, but for military expenses. Demosthenes performed a second miracle: he traveled around the Greek cities and gathered them into a desperate alliance against Philip of Macedon. This was where the miracles ended: there was war, the Battle of Chaeronea and a brutal defeat. Philip remembered well who his main enemy was and whom he had defeated. On the night after Chaeronea, he could not stand it, got drunk at the victory feast and started dancing between the corpses in the field, saying: “Demosthenes, the son of Demosthenes, proposed to the Athenians...” And in the morning, having sobered up, he shuddered at the thought that there was a man who alone with speech he can do what he, Philip, can do only after many years of war. He called the slave and ordered him to wake him up every morning with the words: “You are only a man!” - and without this I didn’t go out to people.

Two years passed, Philip was killed; Demosthenes came out to the people wearing a festive wreath, although his daughter had died only seven days ago. But the joy was short-lived. Another year passed, and Philip’s son Alexander was already standing over Greece and demanding that the Athenians hand over to him ten of his father’s enemies, led by Demosthenes. The people hesitated. Demosthenes reminded him of the fable: “The wolves said to the sheep: “Why should we be at enmity? It’s all the dogs that are quarreling us: give us the dogs, and everything will be fine...” Orator Demades, who knew how to get along with the Macedonians, apologized to the ten leaders.

It was not a good time. Alexander fought in distant Asia, but the Macedonian power over Greece was still strong. Demosthenes had to leave Athens into exile: no one stood up for him. Coming out of the city gates, he raised his head to the statue of Athena, visible from the Acropolis, and exclaimed: “Mistress Athena, why do you love so much the three most evil animals in the world: the owl, the snake and the people?”

On the way, he saw several Athenians who were his worst enemies. He decided that they were planning to kill him and wanted to hide. He was stopped. Demosthenes was such a person that even his enemies respected him. They gave him money for his journey and advised him where to go in exile. Demosthenes said: “How does it feel for me to leave this city, where the enemies are such as friends are not everywhere!”

Finally, news arrived from Asia that Alexander had died. Athens was boiling; Demade shouted: “It can’t be: if it were so, the whole world would smell the smell of decay!” An uprising against Macedonia began again, and again Demosthenes traveled through Greek cities, persuading them to an alliance with Athens. They told him: “If donkey milk is brought into a house, it means there is a sick person there; if the Athenian embassy is coming to the city, then something is wrong in the city!” He answered: “Donkey milk brings health to the sick; so the arrival of the Athenians brings hope of salvation to the city.”

Just as the first struggle of Athens with Philip ended with Chaeronea, just as the second struggle of Athens with Alexander ended with the ruin of Thebes, so this third struggle of Athens with the Macedonian governor of Alexander ended in defeat and reprisals. Speakers who spoke against Macedonia were captured and executed; Hyperides had his tongue cut out before execution. The soldiers came to the temple in which Demosthenes was hiding. Demosthenes only asked to be allowed to write a will and promised to leave later. He was allowed. He took the writing tablets and the slate, with a thoughtful look he raised the slate to his lips, froze for a while, and then his head fell on his chest and he fell down dead. He carried poison for suicide in the head of his stylus.

Then, when the Athenians erected a statue of Demosthenes in their square, they wrote at the foot of this statue:

If you had the same power, Demosthenes, as your mind, -

The Macedonian Ares would not have been able to take power in Hellas.

Phocion for Macedonia

The main enemy of the Macedonians in Athens was Demosthenes, and the main supporter of the Macedonians was old Phocion. Demosthenes fought with words, Phocion with deeds. He was a good commander, went on campaigns with Iphicrates and Timothy, and now he firmly said: Athens can no longer fight, they need peace.

For his strength of character he was called the new Aristide. No one saw him laughing or crying. Hyperides and his comrades laughed in front of everyone at his always gloomy face. Phocion answered: “Laugh, laugh! But my gloominess did no harm to anyone, and your laughter already brought a lot of tears.”

When Phocion stood up in the public assembly to speak, Demosthenes, who despised all other speakers in Athens, whispered to his friends: “Here is the ax that rises to chop my speeches.” Meanwhile, Phocion did not consider himself an orator and spoke like a business man, clearly and concisely. "What are you thinking about?" - they asked him when he was thinking about his speech. He answered: “I’m thinking about reducing it.”

Phocion was elected commander forty-five times, forty-five years in a row, and always without his request, but according to the people’s own will. Meanwhile, he, like Demosthenes, did not flatter the people. He said to the assembly: “Athenians, you can force me to do what I do not want, but you cannot force me to say what I do not want.” When one day the whole people began to applaud some of his words, he turned to his comrades and asked: “Did I say anything bad?”

Demosthenes told Phocion: “Someday the Athenians will execute you!” Phocion answered: “Yes, if they go mad; and you - if they come to their senses.”

He was reproached that he did not want good for his fatherland. He answered: “Either know how to win, or know how to be friends with the winner; and what can you do?”

The people themselves felt that their strength was running out. Fat Demochares, nephew of Demosthenes, climbing the Acropolis, said, taking a breath: “I am like the Athenian state: I puff a lot, but have little strength.” But it was a shame to admit this, and people were worried. The question was being decided whether to fight or not to fight with Philip of Macedon. The meeting raged. They shouted to Hyperides: “You want to break the law!” Hyperides shouted in response: “We can no longer hear the laws behind the clang of Macedonian weapons!” They shouted to Demade: “Yesterday you told us one thing, today you told us something else!” Demade shouted back: “I can contradict myself, but I cannot contradict the good of the state!” The refined Hyperides scolded from the podium with the last words, the people were indignant: “We want to listen to your speech, not scolding!” Hyperides answered: “It’s better not to think whether this is speech or abuse, but think whether this abuse is to your detriment or benefit!” They shouted at Demade: “Our fathers did not speak or do as you do!” Demade replied: “Our fathers steered the ship of state, and we steered its wreckage!”

Phocion stood his ground: Athens would not survive the war. They shouted to him: “Are you afraid?” He answered: “It’s not for you to teach me courage, and it’s not for me to teach you cowardice.” One sycophant asked: “You are a commander, and you dissuade him from war?” Phocion said: “Yes, although I know that in war I am your boss, but in peace you are my boss.”

Demosthenes prevailed: war was declared. They began to discuss the war plan. Demosthenes proposed to wage the war away from Attica. Phocion said: “We must think not about where to fight, but about how to win: in victory, military dangers are always far away, in defeat they are always close.” He told the people everything they wanted, but did what the people wanted: he took command and led the militia. The militia surrounded him and gave advice; he said: “How many generals I see and how few fighters!”

The Chaeronean defeat was a grief not only for the enemies, but also for Philip’s friends in Athens. The decrepit Isocrates, who had been calling for the Greeks to unite under the Macedonian king for many years, starved himself to death at the news of Chaeronea so that he would be buried on the same day as the fallen soldiers. Philip wanted to reward those Athenians who stood for him in previous years. He offered Phocion a rich gift. Phocion asked the messenger: “Why me?” The messenger replied: “Because the king only considers you in Athens.” an honest man" Phocion said: “Let him allow me to continue to remain an honest man.”

Philip of Macedon died. The Athenians rejoiced and wanted to make a thanksgiving sacrifice to the gods. Phocion did not allow them to do this, saying: “With the death of Philip, there was only one less man in the Macedonian army!”

Philip was succeeded by Alexander the Great. He also offered Phocion a rich gift; Phocion again refused. Alexander said: “Accept this money, if not for yourself, then for your son.” Phocion had a son who did not take after his father: he was the most famous drunkard and spendthrift in Athens. Phocion replied: “If he lives like me, this is too much for him; if he lives the way he lives, that’s too little for him.”

Alexander the Great died, and rejoicing began again in Athens, and again Phocion held him back: “Let’s wait for confirmation: after all, if he is dead today, he will be dead tomorrow, right?” Confirmations came, and again Phocion, at eighty years old, had to fight where he would like to be friends. At first the Athenians were victorious, but Phocion told them: “Beware: you are good short-distance runners and bad long-distance runners.” He was worried: “When will we stop winning?” - “Aren’t you happy about our victories?” - “I’m glad about the victories, but I’m not happy about the war.” The Athenians soon finished winning; It was Phocion who had to beg for them from the Macedonians a difficult peace, according to which Hyperides and Demosthenes died.

Phocion died in the turmoil, when the struggle of Alexander's heirs for power began and touched Athens. He and other champions of Macedonian power were thrown into prison and sentenced to death. They gave him, like Socrates, a cup of poison to drink, but he was in good health, there wasn’t enough poison, and the executioners didn’t have any more poison. Phocion said: “Is it really impossible even to die humanly in Athens?” Phocion's neighbor cried that he too must die; Phocion said to him: “Is it not an honor to die with Phocion?” They asked him: “What will you bequeath to your son?” He said: “I bequeath not to take revenge on the Athenians for me.”

Chersonesos oath

The ruins of the Greek city of Chersonese are located near present-day Sevastopol. There was an Athenian-style democracy with a council and archons called “demiurges.” After some attempt on this democracy (just at the end of the 4th century BC), all the Chersonesos took such an oath. It is preserved in an inscription on a stone.

“I swear by Zeus, the Earth, the Sun, the Virgin and our gods and heroes! I will be united with everyone in caring for the freedom and prosperity of the city and citizens and will not betray either Chersonesus, or the fortifications, or its surroundings, to either a Hellenic or a barbarian, and whoever plans such betrayal will be his enemy. I will not violate the rule of the people, and whoever wants to violate it, I will not allow him and I will reveal his intentions to the people. I will serve the people as a demiurge and a member of the council as best and fairly as possible, and in court I will vote according to the law. I will not disclose anything to the detriment of the city and citizens, I will not give or accept gifts to the detriment of the city and citizens. I will not plot anything unfair against citizens who are faithful to the law, and I will not allow this to others; If I find myself bound by an oath to someone who is unfaithful to the law, then may violation of this oath be for the benefit of me and my loved ones, and compliance with it for evil. I will neither sell the grain brought from the plain nor export it to any other place, but only to Chersonesos. Zeus, and the Earth, and the Sun, and the Virgin, and the Olympian gods! If I keep this, may it be good for me and my house and my kindred, but if I do not keep it, may it be evil for me and my house and kindred, and may neither the earth nor the sea bear fruit for me, and may the wives..."

At this point the stone inscription ends.

Timoleon, twice tyrant fighter

During these years of the collapse of freedom in Athens, an unexpected flash flashed a short-lived restoration of freedom at the other end of Greece - in Syracuse. The hero of this feat was a Corinthian named Timoleon.

When Timoleon appeared in Syracuse, he was already an experienced tyrant fighter. Here is how it was. Timoleon had a brother, Timophanes. Timoleon loved him and helped him in everything. But he used this help for evil: he stood at the head of the mercenaries and became a tyrant in Corinth. Timoleon begged his brother to renounce - but he only mocked him. Timoleon came to him with two friends - the tyrant began to get angry. Then Timoleon began to cry and covered his face with his cloak, and his friends drew their swords and killed Timofan on the spot. The Corinthians rejoiced at freedom, but they looked at Timoleon with delight and horror: here is a man who, in the name of the law of the state, trampled on the law of kinship. The mother of Timoleon and Timofan locked herself in the house and refused to see her son. This broke Timoleon’s soul: he was tormented by melancholy, alienated from people and tried to starve himself to death. So, on the edge of madness, he spent twenty years.

At this time, ambassadors from Syracuse arrived in Corinth. They asked for help: after all, Syracuse was a colony of Corinth. After Dion's troubles, Dionysius the Younger, of ill memory, again took power here, and a new rival, even worse than him, rose up against him, and brought the Carthaginians with him to Sicily. The Carthaginians rule in Sicily as at home: they demand what they want, they say: “Otherwise what will happen to your city,” they stretch out their hand in front of them, palm up, and turn it over, palm down. The Corinthians became agitated. A detachment of volunteers was assembled to help Syracuse, and Timoleon was offered to lead it. They told him: “If you win, you will remain a tyrant killer for us; if not, you will remain a fratricide.” And Timoleon joyfully set off on his journey - with a desired feat to atone for the memory of an unwanted feat.

The campaign was victorious, Syracuse was liberated. Dionysius himself had long been unhappy with his power and rushed to Timoleon as a savior. Dionysius' rival was ordered to live as a simple man in the street near Syracuse, and when he rebelled again, he was executed. The fortress of the Syracusan tyrants was razed to the ground; a courthouse was erected on the site of the mercenary barracks, and Timoleon won such a victory over the Carthaginians that after the battle the soldiers disdained copper booty, and took only gold and silver. Following Syracuse, other cities began to overthrow tyrants. The overthrown were crucified on crosses in city theaters so that citizens could admire the rare spectacle of the tyrant's well-deserved punishment.

Dionysius the Younger abdicated power, and Timoleon sent him to live in Corinth: let all Greeks see the insignificance of the fallen tyrant. The obese, blind-sighted Dionysius became a school teacher here in his old age, scolded boys, wandered around the markets, drank and sued street scoundrels. He deliberately tried to live in such a way that everyone would despise him: he was afraid that otherwise they would suspect that he wanted to become a tyrant again and would deal with him. His fear was not in vain: he was actually brought to trial three times as dangerous person and was acquitted three times out of contempt. They asked him: “How is it that your father was a nobody and became a tyrant, and how was it that your father was a tyrant and became a nobody?” He answered: “Father came to power when people were tired of democracy, and I came to power when people were tired of tyranny.” And he recalled: “My father, reproaching me for my revelry, said: “I was not like that”; I told him: “So you didn’t have a tyrant father”; and he said to me: “And if that’s the case, you won’t have a tyrant son.” They teased him: “What, Dionysius, did Plato’s philosophy help you?” He answered: “Of course. It is thanks to her that I calmly endure the change in happiness.”

Syracuse was devastated by civil wars. The city square was overgrown with grass, and horses grazed on it. To fill the city treasury, the statues of tyrants that stood in the main square were sold. Not just sold out, but sold into slavery: they were brought to court, charged against them, put up at auction and sold like slaves: whoever would give more.

Finally, an event happened after which no one doubted: yes, democracy had established itself in Syracuse. Two sycophants brought Timoleon to trial for not being diligent enough in winning victories for the benefit of the Syracusan people. The Syracusans were at first taken aback, then laughed, and then got ready to deal with the ungrateful accusers. Timoleon told them: “Leave it: this is why I worked, so that every Syracusan could say whatever he sees fit.”

Timoleon did not return to Corinth, but remained in Syracuse: here he was not a fratricide, here he was only a tyrant fighter. He grew old, surrounded by people's love and honors. When the national assembly discussed particularly important matters, it sent for him; they brought him, weak and blind, on a magnificent chariot, he was greeted with applause and praise, then they told him the matter, and he, without leaving the chariot, said what he thought about it, they thanked him noisily, and then the chariot moved back. The whole city buried him, and a gymnasium was built near his grave for the classes of free youth.

Agathocles, tyrant potter

The freedom won by Timoleon lasted Syracuse for exactly twenty years. And then they again found themselves under the rule of a tyrant - a tyrant whom the nobility remembered with hatred, and the poor sometimes remembered with kind words.

His name was Agathocles, he was the son of a potter and a potter himself. All bad omens were supposed to be collected about tyrants; so at the birth of Agathocles, they say, from somewhere a prediction became known that he would bring many troubles to Sicily and Carthage. His father solemnly renounced the newborn, carried him away and laid him to die in a remote place, and ordered his slave to watch. But the baby miraculously did not die for a day or two; the slave fell asleep, and then the mother secretly took the baby away and handed it over to her relatives. Seven years later, the father accidentally saw the boy and sighed: “If only our son would be the same now!” Then his mother revealed herself to him, and Agathocles returned to his home, to the fear of Sicily and Carthage.

He grew up, became a mercenary warrior, daring and strong: no one could wear such a heavy shell as he. He became the head of the detachment; The rulers tried to kill him, but he substituted his double for them, and he himself remained unharmed. Was in Syracuse Civil War, the people fought with the nobility. He was invited to restore order; he surrounded the council building with troops, massacred and sent into exile several thousand rich and noble people, and promised the people a redistribution of land and the cancellation of debts. Many tyrants started this way, but the first thing they did after that was to surround themselves with guards and feel as if they were among enemies, but Agathocles did not do this. He walked alone among the crowd, was simple with everyone, and was the first to make fun of his pottery craft. “Potter, potter, when will you pay for the clay?” - they shouted to him from the walls of the city that he happened to besiege. “I’ll profit from you and pay you!” - Agathocles responded, took the city and sold the inhabitants into slavery.

The Carthaginians went to war against him. The troops stood opposite each other for a long time on the plain near the fortress where Phalarids once burned people in a copper bull. There was a prediction: “Many brave men will die on this plain,” but whose men were unknown, and therefore both sides hesitated. And when they came together, the Carthaginians won. They had slingers who threw stones as heavy as mines; the Greeks did not have these. The Carthaginians approached Syracuse itself and began a siege.

And here there was a violation of all the rules of military art. Instead of fighting back, Agathocles left his brother in Syracuse, and he himself gathered whatever army he could - he even enrolled slaves who wanted to free themselves into it - miraculously broke through the Carthaginian siege fleet and sailed to the coast of Africa. They landed three marches from Carthage and, to the sound of trumpets, burned their ships on the shore so that there would be no temptation to retreat. “This is our sacrifice to Demeter of Sicily,” said Agathocles, pointing to the fire and smoke flying towards the sky. The Greeks went through the meadows, fields and gardens, ruining well-fed estates and raising African tribes who hated the Carthaginians to war. At night, from the walls of Carthage, residents saw their estates burning at all ends of the valley. Deplorable news came from Sicily to Carthage: the siege of Syracuse failed, the besieging leader received a prediction: “Today you will dine in Syracuse,” he was delighted, went on an attack, was defeated and dined in Syracuse not as a winner, but as a prisoner.

For four years, Agathocles' army terrorized Africa. And yet, victory was not given to him. It became increasingly difficult to take the cities. Near Utica, the second city in Africa after Carthage, he moved siege towers, on which Carthaginian prisoners were tied as human protection; this did not help, the Carthaginians beat their own without pity. He took Utica, but Carthage held out. The Africans did not support Agathocles: their horse hordes stood as spectators at every battle between the Greeks and the Carthaginians and waited for the outcome before rushing to rob the weakest. A new internecine war was beginning in Sicily. Agathocles' troops began to grumble, and his own son, Archagatus, tried to take his father into custody. Then Agathocles abandoned everything - both the army and his son - and fled to Sicily to restore order at home.

The unprecedented African campaign began and ended suddenly. The abandoned troops, enraged, first of all massacred the abandoned relatives and assistants of the tyrant, and then scattered and went into Carthaginian service. When one warrior raised his sword over Archagatus, the son of Agathocles, he shouted: “What do you think Agathocles will do for my death to your children?” “It doesn’t matter,” replied the killer, “it’s enough for me to know that my children will outlive the children of Agathocles at least for a short time.”

In Sicily, Agathocles found himself in such a desperate situation that he was ready to renounce tyrannical power. Experienced friends calmed him down: “They don’t escape from tyrannical power alive.” He made peace with the Carthaginians, an agreement with rivals, restored peace, and began to restore power. This is where he died. They said that his own grandson, the son of the deceased Archagatus, poisoned Agathocles by placing a poisoned toothpick on him. Its poison corroded the gums and caused such torment that Agathocles allegedly ordered himself to be burned alive on a funeral pyre.

Pipe of Theocritus

While Sicily was being torn apart by tyrants and tyrant fighters, serene and tender poems were written about this same Sicily. In these poems, Sicily turned out to be a fabulous land of eternal golden peace, where meek shepherds live, tend bleating flocks, love their shepherdesses and compete in playing the flute and in simple-minded songs about their lives and their love. These poems, which quickly became fashionable, were called “idyls” - “pictures”; They were very popular with the townspeople, who had long since parted ways with real rural work, but who never stopped talking about how much they loved the peaceful rural life in the lap of nature. Then poets began to settle their shepherdesses not in Sicily, but in Arcadia, but the first idyllic poet wrote about Sicily, because he himself was from Sicily. His name was Theocritus; he was born in Syracuse just under Agathocles, and then lived far away, in Egyptian Alexandria.

In Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, when he wanted to be original, “scolded Homer, Theocritus,” whom everyone knew from school, and talked about the science of political economy, which no one knew. We also know Homer; classical Greek poetry began with him; Let’s also get acquainted with Theocritus, with whom it, one might say, ends.

Daphnis and Menalkos, a cow shepherd and a sheep met:

Both of them are blond, both are teenagers in age,

Both are masters of the flute and are skilled in singing.

Menalk was the first to look at Daphnis and address him like this:

“Guardian of the lowing cows, shouldn’t we fight in the singing, Daphnis?

If I want to, I’ll defeat you in an instant.”

Daphnis responded to this by addressing him with the following word:

“Shepherd of shaggy sheep, you are a master, Menalk, on the pipe,

But no matter how hard you try, you won’t see victory in your singing.”

Menalc. Do you want to test your strength? Do you agree to place a bid?

Daphnis. I am ready to measure strength and agree to place a bet.

Menalc. I put my pipe: it’s good, with nine voices,

The whole thing is covered with snow-white wax from top to bottom.

Daphnis. And I have a pipe, and mine with nine voices,

I cut it out myself - look, the finger hasn’t healed yet.

Menalc. Who will be our judge? And who will listen to our songs?

Daphnis. Let’s call that shepherd from the goat herd over there!

The boys called loudly. The shepherd came up and heard it.

The boys began to sing - the shepherd was their judge.

Menalc. Nymphs of rivers and valleys, where I sang on the pipe!

If you liked my songs, then listen to my request:

Give my sheep some nourishing grass; but if

Daphnis brings in the cows, then let them graze too.

Daphnis. Spring is everywhere, and herds are everywhere, and everywhere they crowd

Our calves go to the cows, sucking their mother's udder.

A sweet girl passed by; and how she disappeared from sight,

Even the bulls became sad, and I, their shepherd, even more so.

Menalc. I want neither Pelops' lands nor Croesus's gold,

I don't want to beat runners who are as swift as the wind.

I would like to sing songs over the sea, with a beauty next to me,

Looking after my flock in a seaside Sicilian meadow.

Daphnis. Trees die from the cold, streams die from drought,

The death of the bird is snares, and the death of the beast is traps and nets.

A man's death is from a gentle beauty. Zeus, our parent!

After all, I’m not the only one in love: you yourself were gentle with beauties.

Menalc. Good wolf, spare my goats, don’t touch the kids

And don't bite me. I am small, but I care about many.

You, my red dog, slept too deeply:

It’s not a good idea to sleep like that if you’re appointed to help me.

Daphnis. Once the black-browed girl, seeing how I drove the calves,

She screamed after me, laughing: “Handsome, handsome!”

I don’t say a word in response, nor ridicule in response to ridicule:

With my eyes downcast, I went my way.

Menalc. Sheep, boldly pluck the fresh green grass:

Before you finish, another one will have time to grow up. Alive!

Graze, graze, fill your udder more fully:

Let the lambs be fed; We will leaven the remainder in jars.

Daphnis. It’s sweet for me to hear the mooing of cows and the breathing of heifers,

It’s sweet for me to doze in the summer near a stream under the open sky.

Acorns are the beauty of an oak tree, the fruit is a decoration for an apple tree,

The mother is proud of her calf, and the shepherd is proud of his flocks.

The boys finished singing, and so the goatherd said to them:

Your singing is more joyful than honey from a honeycomb.

Here, get the pipe. You achieved victory in singing.

If only you could teach me, a goatherd, these songs -

For this I would give you both a goat and a milk pan.”

Daphnis was so happy about the victory that he clapped his hands loudly,

He jumped into the air like a young deer that sees a queen.

And Menalk turned away, drooping sadly:

He cried as if a bride was about to get married.

From that time on, Daphnis became famous among all the shepherds;

Soon, very young, he married the nymph Naida.

Stalwart Stoics

In these very years, shortly after the death of Alexander the Great, an inconspicuous man, dark, thin and clumsy, came to Athens: a merchant’s son from Cyprus named Zeno. In his youth he asked the oracle: how to live? - the oracle replied: “Learn from the dead.” He understood and started reading books. But there were few books in Cyprus. In Athens, he first of all found a shop where books were sold, and here, among the scrolls of the Iliad, for the needs of schoolchildren, he came across a book of memoirs about Socrates. Zeno could not tear himself away from her. “Where can one find a man like Socrates?” - he asked the shopkeeper. He pointed to the street: “Here!” There, half-naked Crates, a student of Diogenes, noisily walked there, knocking with a stick. Zeno dropped everything and went after the beggar Crates. Then they brought him news: the ship with a cargo of purple, which he was waiting for from Cyprus, was wrecked, all his property was lost. Zeno exclaimed: “Thank you, fate! You yourself are pushing me towards philosophy!” - and never left Athens.

On the Athenian square there was a portico - a wall with a painted image of the Battle of Marathon, in front of it - a colonnade and a sun canopy. Portico means “standing” in Greek. Here, in the “Painted Stoa,” Zeno began to conduct his conversations, and his students began to be called “Stoics.” These were poor, stern and strong people. The eldest of them, Cleanthes, a former fist fighter, earned money by carrying water for gardeners at night, and during the day he listened to Zeno and wrote down his lessons on lamb shoulder blades, because he had nothing to buy writing tablets.

Until now, philosophers have imagined the world as a large city-state with rulers-ideas, or citizens-atoms, or parties-elements. Zeno imagined the world as a large living body. It is animated, and the soul permeates every part of it: there is more of it in the heart than in the leg, in a person - than in a stone, in a philosopher - than in an ordinary person, but it is everywhere. It is expedient down to the smallest detail: every vein in a person and every insect around a person is needed for something, our every breath and every thought is caused by the need of the world organism and serves its life and health. Each of us is a part of this universal body, just like a finger or an eye.

How should we live? Like a finger or an eye: do your job and be glad that the world body needs it. Maybe our finger is unhappy that it has to do rough work, maybe it would prefer to be an eye - so what? Voluntarily or involuntarily, he will remain a finger and will do everything he should. So are people in the face of world law - fate. “Whoever wants is led by fate; whoever doesn’t want is dragged,” says a stoic proverb. “What has philosophy given you?” - they asked the stoic; he replied: “With her I do willingly what without her I would do unwillingly.” If the finger could think not about its rough work, but about how a person needs it, the finger would be happy; Let man be happy, merging his mind and his will with the mind and law of the world as a whole.

What if something interferes with this? If ill health prevents him from serving his family, and the family from serving the state, and the tyrant from serving the world law? What if he is a slave? This is nothing, these are just exercises to strengthen your will: would Hercules become Hercules if there were no monsters in the world? The main thing for a person is not trouble, but his attitude towards trouble. “His son died.” But it didn’t depend on him! “His ship sank.” And it didn't matter. "He was sentenced to death." And it didn't matter. “He endured it all with courage.” But it depended on him, that’s good.

For such self-control, the Stoic sage must renounce all passions: from pleasure and sorrow about the past, from desire and fear of the future. If my finger begins to be tormented by its own passions, it is unlikely to function well; so is a person. “Learn not to give in to anger,” said the Stoics. - Count to yourself: I haven’t been angry for a day, two, three. If you count to thirty, then make a thanksgiving sacrifice to the gods.” When Zeno was once angered by a disobedient slave, all Zeno said was, “I would have beaten you if I had not been angry.” And when the Stoic Epictetus, who was himself a slave, was mercilessly beaten by his master, Epictetus said to him in a calm voice: “Be careful, you will break my leg.” The owner attacked him even angrier, the bone crunched. “So I broke it,” said Epictetus without changing his voice.

If a person achieves dispassion and merges his mind with the world mind, he will be like God, everything that is subordinate to the world mind, that is, the whole world, will belong to him. He will be a real king, and a rich man, and a commander, and a poet, and a shipbuilder, and everyone else, even if they sat on the throne, even if they accumulated wealth, will only be slaves of passions and poor in soul. For in perfection there is no “more” or “less”: either you are everything, or you are nothing. The path of virtue is narrow, like a tightrope walker's rope - if you stumble on a toe or a step, you still fall and die. The Stoics were much ridiculed for such arrogance, but they stood their ground.

They were laughed at, but they were respected. This was not Diogenes’s philosophy of the day laborer—it was finally, despite all the eccentricities, the real philosophy of the worker. And then and always the house, the city, and the world rested on the workers. Slaves consoled themselves with the thought that they were freer in spirit than their masters, and kings invited Stoics to be their advisers. The Macedonian king Antigonus the Younger, when in Athens, did not leave Zeno and took him to all his feasts. After getting drunk, he shouted to him: “What can I do for you?” - and he answered: “Sober up.”

The Athenians executed Socrates, expelled Aristotle, tolerated Plato, and they honored Zeno with a golden wreath and buried him at the expense of the state. “Because he did what he said,” said the people’s decree.

Garden of Epicurus

And those who could not cope with the stubborn virtue of the Stoics could seek happiness in the philosophy of the Epicureans. “Epicure”, “Epicureans”, “Epicurean” - these words may have come across to you more than once in Pushkin and other writers. Usually they mean a free life, full of pleasures: an epicure is one who lives happily, knows a lot about pleasure, is gentle, complacent and kind.

The real Epicurus was indeed benevolent and kind. But in other respects he bore little resemblance to this image. He was a sick man with a thin, emaciated face, who had suffered from liver stones all his life. He almost never left the house, but talked with friends and students while lying in his Athenian garden. He ate only bread and water, and on holidays, also cheese. He said: “Whoever doesn’t have enough of little things, doesn’t have enough of everything” - and added: “He who knows how to live on bread and water will compete with Zeus himself in pleasure.”

Epicurus, indeed, considered pleasure the highest good. But pleasure and pleasure are different: each of them requires effort, and if the effort required is too great, then it is better not to have such pleasure. Maybe wine and sweets taste better to the tongue than bread and water, but wine makes you dizzy, and sweets make your teeth hurt. So why? Real pleasure is nothing more than the absence of pain: when, after a long torment, the pain lets go of you, then there is a moment of unspeakable bliss; This is what the sage wants to extend for the rest of his life. Old Aristippus considered himself a teacher of pleasure, but he was healthy man I couldn’t even imagine this happiness.

Therefore, the main thing a person should value is peace. World life is a game of chance, and every chance can hurt a person. The wise man will especially guard against state concerns: they require a lot of effort and bring little pleasure. "Live unnoticed!" - this is the main rule of Epicurus. (It outraged his contemporaries: “How? After all, this means saying: “Lycurgus, do not write laws! Timoleon, do not overthrow tyrants! Themistocles, do not defeat the Asians! And you yourself, Epicurus, do not teach philosophy to your friends!”) Live alone, love your friends, have pity on your slaves and stay away from strangers - and you will preserve your enjoyment of little things. This is how the Epicureans lived: they didn’t even tell jokes about them, like the Stoics and all other philosophers.

Uneducated people are haunted by the fear of the gods, the fear of death, the fear of pain. For a philosopher this does not exist either. The gods are blessed, and since they are blessed, they do not know any worries and certainly do not interfere in our human life. They, too, like the sages, “live unnoticed” somewhere in the world’s spaces, enjoy indestructible peace and only say to themselves: “We are happy!” Death cannot be terrible for a person: while I am alive, there is no death yet, and when death comes, I am no longer there. Pain also does not deserve fear: unbearable pain is short-lived, and long-term pain is bearable because it is softened by habit. Epicurus knew how to monitor his pain: when he felt that the pain had reached its limit, he wrote a letter to a friend: “I am writing to you on my blessed and last day. My pains are already such that they cannot become stronger, but they are overcome by my spiritual joy at the memory of our conversations with you...” - he lay down in a hot bath, drank undiluted wine, asked his friends not to forget his lessons and died.

Epicurus did not think much about how the world works: after all, this made his peace and pleasure neither better nor worse. Following Democritus, he imagined that the world consists of atoms - this is because the crush of atoms seemed to him similar to the crush of people - just as separate, closed and painfully touching each other. But Democritus was the most inquisitive of the Greeks and was interested in the causes of everything that exists in nature, and Epicurus indifferently accepted any explanations, as long as they did not require the intervention of the gods in our lives. Maybe the heavenly bodies go out between sunset and sunrise and light up again (like the lamps of a caring housewife), or maybe, while burning, they circle the Earth from the other side. Maybe thunder happens because the wind breaks between the clouds, or maybe it’s the clouds tearing at the seams, or maybe it’s the clouds hardening and rubbing their hard sides against each other. Perhaps earthquakes occur from underground fire, from underground winds, from underground collapses of the earth - just as long as it is not from Poseidon the Earthshaker.

If we continue to label philosophical systems, then we can say about Epicureanism: this is the philosophy of the average man. Not a hanger-on who begs, not a toiler who produces, but an ordinary person who has a little, doesn’t want more, doesn’t offend anyone and thinks only that his hut is on the edge. The Epicureans were not respected, but they were loved: they were kind people, and their Stoic neighbors, for example, clearly lacked kindness. Those who were tired of life came to the Epicureans. They were proud that there were many defectors to them from other philosophical schools, but none from them.

While people had mythology instead of philosophy, it represented the world to them as a large family, where custom reigns. Philosophy, from Thales to Aristotle himself, imagined the world as a large city where law reigns. Now, with Epicurus and the Stoics, this world crumbled into particles, between which chance reigned, and was rebuilt into a world body, the law of which is fate. This meant that the end had come for the small Greek states: they were lost and dissolved into the great world powers - Macedonian and Roman.

Happiness by points

What is happiness? The Greek could answer this difficult question absolutely precisely: he sang about it at every feast. There was this old song:

The best gift to a person is the gift of health;

The second gift is beauty; honest wealth -

To him is the third gift; and for wine

Joy among friends is the fourth gift.

Greek philosophy did not cancel anything in this list, but only supplemented it. She said: “There are three types of good for a person: internal, external and external. Internal are the four virtues; external is health and beauty; outside is wealth and fame, good friends and a prosperous fatherland.” What good is most important for happiness? Of course, it’s internal: you can’t take it away. No wonder the sage Biant said: “Everything that is mine is in me.”

The four virtues are understanding, courage, justice and the most necessary - sense of proportion. (No wonder Cleobulus said: “Moderation is most important!”, and Pittacus said: “Nothing in excess of measure.”) Understanding is the knowledge of what is good and what is bad. Courage is knowing what good things to do and what not to do. Justice is knowing for whom good things should be done and for whom it is not necessary. A sense of proportion is knowing how long you need to do this and where to stop. Courage is a virtue for war, justice for peace; understanding is a virtue of the mind, a sense of proportion is a virtue of the heart. Reasoning gives rise to understanding and benevolence, courage - constancy and composure, justice - evenness and kindness, a sense of proportion - structure and orderliness.

King Agesilaus was asked: “Which of the four virtues is more important? Perhaps courage? - "No! - answered the famous commander. “If people had justice, why would they need courage?” Plato considered understanding more important than other virtues; Aristotle - sense of proportion; The Stoics, perhaps, still have courage, but everyone would agree that justice stands higher than this. When Plato outlined his ideal state, for him, understanding was the virtue of rulers, courage was the virtue of guards, a sense of proportion was the virtue of workers, and justice was the general virtue on which the entire state rested.

Justice turned out to be so important because justice is the law, and the law for the Greek is everything. We remember that it could be understood in different ways: for some it meant “equality” - the same for everyone; for others, like Plato, “goodness” is to each his own. Even such a respectable thing as piety was for the Greeks not a separate virtue, but only a kind of justice: piety is fair treatment to the gods. To commit injustice is worse than to suffer injustice. In the old days, taking revenge with an insult for an insult was considered justice, but among philosophers it was considered injustice. “How can I take revenge on my enemy?” - the man asked Diogenes. “Be better than you were,” answered Diogenes.

For those who think that amid earthly worries it is still impossible to maintain the dispassion of a true sage, there is a much simpler everyday rule from one Aesopian fable:

Don't be too happy and complain in moderation:

There are equal amounts of joy and sorrow in life.

If you ask a Greek what a person who has achieved happiness should feel, he would most likely briefly say: joy. It seems that none of the philosophers rejected this feeling, no matter what else they called into question. (It’s not for nothing that Pericles said: “We know how to rejoice in our prosperity better than anyone else.”) They claim that folk psychology can be defined by the word with which people greet and say goodbye. The Russians, when parting, say “sorry”, the British say “farvell” - “have a good trip”, the Romans, when greeting, said “vale!” - “be healthy!”, and the Greeks said “haire!” - “Rejoice!”

Let's stop here: our retreat is over. And the end happens (this was also calculated point by point) of four kinds: first, by decree, as when a law is passed; secondly, by nature, as when the day sets; thirdly, by skill, as when a house is being completed; fourthly, by chance, as when it turns out not at all what you wanted. Let's think that this is the end of skill.

Preachers, debaters, jokers

Followers of Plato in the Academy; followers of Aristotle in the Lyceum; the Stoics under the “Painted Stoa”; Epicureans in the Garden - four philosophical clubs were in Athens. Beginning philosophers came to Athens to study, experienced philosophers came to show themselves. After Alexander the Great, Athens ceased to be a political force forever. But they remained what Pericles called them - “the school of Hellas.” Philosophers walked around Athens in dozens - important, bearded, in gray cloaks, teaching and bickering. There were few great thinkers among them. But they all lived and thought in a special way, not like everyone else, so it was interesting to watch and listen to them. But for those who are not used to it, it’s strange. One Spartan watched in surprise as the stony old man Xenocrates argued with the young students of the Academy. "What is he doing?" - “Seeks virtue.” - “And when he finds it, what does he need it for?”

They called happiness different things, but agreed on one thing: thinking is happiness, and everything else in life is unimportant. All you need is fortitude. “The only misfortune is the inability to endure misfortune,” said the philosopher Bion, a former slave born in distant Scythia.

It was said about the philosopher Anaxarchus that the Cypriot tyrant ordered him to be beaten to death with pestles in a mortar, and he, dying, shouted: “You are not beating Anaxarchus, but his body!”

Xenophon was told: “Take courage: your son died at Mantinea.” Xenophon replied: “I knew that my son was mortal.” Xenophon was not a philosopher, but philosophers admired this answer: “This is how you have to, having been deceived by someone, remind yourself: I knew that my friend was weak; that my wife is only a woman; that I bought myself a slave, and not a wise man.”

One man's son died, and he mourned him bitterly. The wandering philosopher Demonakt came to console him. He said: “I can perform miracles: name me three people who have never had to mourn anyone, I will write their names on the tomb of your son, and he will rise again.” The father became lost in thought and could not name anyone. “Why are you crying, as if you are the only one unhappy?” - said Demonakt.

Old Carneades went blind in his sleep. He woke up in the middle of the night and ordered the slave to light a lamp and give him a book. But nothing was visible. “What are you doing?” “I lit it,” answered the slave. “Well,” said Carneades calmly, “then read to me.”

Bion and his companions were captured by sea robbers. The companions cried: “We will die if they recognize us!” “And I will die if they don’t recognize me,” said Bion.

The philosopher Pyrrho talked aloud to himself. "What are you doing?" - they asked him. "I'm learning to be kind." This Pyrrho was the head of another philosophical school - the skeptics. If Socrates said: “I know that I know nothing,” then Pyrrho went further - he said: “I do not even know that I know nothing.” He argued that man does not even distinguish between life and death. They asked him: “Why don’t you die?” He answered: “That’s exactly why.”

Alexander the Great sent Xenocrates a lot of money. Xenocrates sent them back: “He needs it more.”

Another philosopher was called to the court by the king of Pergamon. He refused: “It is better to look at kings, like statues, from afar.”

Xenocrates was brought to trial, and the orator Lycurgus rescued him with a defensive speech. “How did you thank him?” - they asked Xenocrates. “Because everyone praises him for his action,” answered Xenocrates.

Plato's disciples played dice, Plato scolded them. They said: “This is a small thing!” “Habit is not a small thing,” Plato objected. And perhaps he reminded me that in Crete, when they curse an enemy, they wish him bad habits.

Zeno reproached the young man for being a spendthrift, but he justified himself: “I have a lot of money, so I spend a lot.” Zeno replied: “So the cook can say: I over-salted, because there was a lot of salt in the salt shaker.”

The lender demanded money from the debtor, who answered him according to Heraclitus: “Everything flows, everything changes: I am no longer the same person who took from you!” The lender beat him with a stick, he dragged him to court, and the lender answered according to Heraclitus: “Everything flows, everything changes: I am no longer the same person who beat you!”

Zeno was robbed by his slave, Zeno took up a stick. It was not for nothing that the slave served the Stoic - he shouted: “It was my destiny to steal it!” “And it was fate to be beaten,” answered Zeno.

When philosophers argued, people gathered around as if for a competition. It was said about the philosopher Menedemos that after philosophical debates he left with nothing less than a black eye. Someone complained to Aristotle: “He scolds you so much behind your back!” Aristotle replied: “Let him at least beat you for your eyes.”

Serious philosophers did not like public debates: “In them it is always easier to say anything than what is needed.” But others did not spare any sophisms for them. The woman philosopher Hipparchia, who left a rich house to wander with the cynic Crates, argued with the philosopher Theodore like this: “If Theodore beats himself, Theodora, there is nothing wrong with that; This means that if Hipparchia beats Theodore, there is nothing wrong with that either!” And one sophist teased Diogenes himself like this: “I am not you; I am human; therefore, you are not a person.” - "Great! - said Diogenes. “Now repeat the same thing, starting not with yourself, but with me.”

The philosopher Stilpon argued to someone that this fish from the merchant is not food, because “food” is a general concept, and “fish” is a separate one, and in the midst of this conversation he walked away and began to buy this very fish. The interlocutor grabbed him by the cloak: “You are undermining your own arguments, Stilpon!” - “Not at all,” Stilpon responded, “my arguments are with me, but the fish will be sold out.”

Philosophy sale

This scene was composed by Lucian, the most mocking of the ancient writers, who lived already in the 2nd century AD.

Zeus doesn't have enough money on Olympus. He takes you out of the afterlife famous philosophers and puts them up for sale as slaves. “Great teachers of life are for sale! - Hermes shouts. “Whoever wants a good life, come and choose according to your taste!” Buyers come up and ask the price.

On the platform is Pythagoras. “This is a wonderful life, this is a divine life! Who wants to be a superman? Who wants to know the harmony of the universe and come to life after death? - “Can I ask him?” - "Can". - “Pythagoras, Pythagoras, if I buy you, what will you teach me?” - “Be silent.” - “I don’t want to be dumb! And then?" - "Count". - “I can do this without you.” - "How?" - "One two three four". - “You see, but you don’t even know that four is not only four, but also a body, a square, perfection and our oath.” - “I swear on your oath, I don’t know! What else can you say?” - “I’ll say that you consider yourself one thing, but in fact you are another.” - "How? It’s not me talking to you, but someone else?” - “Now it’s you, but before you were different and after that you will be different.” - “So I’ll never die? Not bad! What should I feed you?” - “I don’t eat meat, I don’t eat beans.” - “I’ll feed you! Hermes, write it down for me.”

On the platform is Diogenes. “Here is a courageous life, here is a free life! Who will buy? - “Free? Will I not get sued if I buy a free one?” - “Don’t be afraid, he says that he is free even in slavery.” - “What can he do?” - "Ask!" - “I’m afraid it will bite.” - “Don’t be afraid, he’s tame.” - “Diogenes, Diogenes, where are you from?” - “From everywhere!” - "Who do you look like?" - “To Hercules!” - "Why?" - “I’m at war with pleasures, I cleanse life from excesses.” - “What needs to be done for this?” - “Throw money into the sea, sleep on the bare ground, eat garbage, swear at everyone, be ashamed of nothing, shake your beard, fight with a stick.” - “I can swear and fight - I can do that myself. But your hands are strong, you are fit to be a digger; If they give you for two pennies, I’ll take it.” - “Take it!”

“But here are two lives at once, one wiser than the other! Anyone?" - "What is this? One laughs all the time, the other cries all the time. Why are you laughing? - “I’m laughing at you: you think you’re buying a slave, but in fact - only atoms, emptiness and infinity.” - “That there is a lot of emptiness in you, I see that. Why are you crying? - “I cry that everything comes and goes, that in every joy there is sorrow, and in every sorrow there is joy, that there is no eternal in eternity, and eternity is a child playing with dice.” - “You don’t speak like a human being!” - “I’m not speaking for people.” - “So no one will buy you.” - “Still worthy of tears: buyers and non-buyers.” - “Both of them are crazy: don’t need them!” - “Oh, Zeus, these will remain unsold among us!”

"Bring out the Athenian." - “Beautiful life, reasonable life, holy life - to whom?” - “How, Plato, are you being sold into slavery again? Well, if I buy you, what will I have? - "The whole world". - "Where is he?" - “Before my eyes. For everything that you see - the earth, the sky, and the sea - is actually not here at all.” - “Where are they?” - “Nowhere: after all, if they existed somewhere, it would not be existence.” - “Why don’t I see them?” - “Because the eye of your soul is blind. I see you, and myself, and the true you, and the second me, and that’s how I see everything in the world twice.” - “Well, I’m ready to buy the whole world in one slave! I'll take it, Hermes."

“For sale is a valiant life, an all-perfect life! Who wants to know everything? - “How is it: everything?” - “He alone is a sage, which means he is alone a king, and a rich man, and a commander, and a navigator.” - “Is he alone and a cook, is he alone and a carpenter, is he alone and a cattleman?” - "Certainly". - “It’s a sin not to buy such a slave. Stoic, stoic, aren’t you offended that you’re a slave?” - “Not at all. After all, this does not depend on me, and what does not depend on me is indifferent to me.” - “What an easy-going fellow!” - “But beware: if I want, I can turn you to stone.” - "How? Are you Perseus with the head of Medusa? - “Tell me: is a stone a body?” - "Yes". - “Is man a body?” - "Yes". - “Are you a human?” - "Yes". - “So you are a stone.” - “I’m getting cold!” Please turn me back into a human." - “In no time. Is the stone animate? - "No". - “Is man animated?” - "Yes". - “Are you a human?” - "Yes". - “So you are not a stone.” - “Well, thank you for not ruining me, I’ll take you.”

“We sell the smartest, the most intelligent, the most efficient! Aristotle, come out!” - “What does he know?” “He knows how long a mosquito lives, to what depth the sea is illuminated by the sun, and what the soul of an oyster is.” - "Wow!" - “And he also knows that a man is a laughing animal, but a donkey is not, and that a donkey does not know how to build houses and ships.” - “Enough, enough, I’m buying it; take any money from me, Hermes.”

“Well, who else do we have left? Skeptic? Come out, skeptic, maybe someone will buy you.” - “Tell me, skeptic, what can you do?” - "Nothing". - "Why?" - “It seems to me that there is nothing at all.” - “And I’m not there?” - "Don't know". - “And you’re not there?” - “I don’t know for a long time.” - “What will you teach me?” - “Ignorance.” - “This is something you really can’t learn anywhere else! How much do I pay for it, Hermes? - “For a knowledgeable slave we take five minas, but for such a one, perhaps, one.” - “Here's a mine for you. Well, my dear, did I buy you?” - “This is unknown.” - "How? I paid for you!” - "Who knows?!" - “Hermes, money and everyone present.” - “Is anyone present here?” - “But I’ll send you to turn the millstones - you’ll immediately feel who is a slave here and who is not a slave!”

“Enough to argue! - Hermes interrupts them. “You follow your master, and all of you who haven’t bought anything from us, come here tomorrow.” Today we were selling philosophers, and tomorrow we will be selling artisans, peasants and traders. Maybe they are better suited to be teachers of life?

Affairs and years (BC)

405-367 - tyrant Dionysius the Elder in Syracuse

401 - march of ten thousand Greeks

396-394 - Agesilaus fights in Asia

388 - philosopher Plato in Dionysius the Elder

387 - Plato begins teaching at the Academy. "The Tsar's Peace".

371 - Battle of Leuctra

366 and 361 - Plato's trips to Dionysius the Younger

362 - Battle of Mantinea

359-336 - King Philip of Macedon

355 - Phocians capture Delphi

353 - death of Prince Mausoleum, construction of the Halicarnassian mausoleum

347 - death of Plato

344-337 - Timoleon liberates Sicily

342-336 - Aristotle - teacher of Alexander the Great

338 - Battle of Chaeronea

335 - destruction of Thebes. Alexander's meeting with Diogenes

335 - Aristotle begins teaching at the Lyceum

334-323 - conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great

323 - last revolt against Macedonia

322 - death of Demosthenes

317 - death of Phocion

317-289 - tyrant Agathocles in Syracuse

315 - first performance of the playwright Menander

310-307 - Agathocles' campaign in Africa

OK. 306 - Epicurus begins to teach in the Garden

OK. 300 - Zeno begins to teach in Stoa

OK. 280 - heyday of Theocritus, writer of idylls

Dictionary V

Old acquaintances

Most of the words we talked about earlier were so scientific that it was clear to everyone: they are not Russian, they were borrowed from Greek - so from Greek. But some words are very simple - such that hardly anyone thought about their origin. This is because they came to the Russian language a long time ago, became familiar and were sometimes rethought and modified.

HELL. In Greek, the underground kingdom (and God, its king) was originally called “invisible” - a-id-es; and when we retell myths, we usually write Hades. Then this word began to be pronounced ades; then, already in the Middle Ages, adis; hence our hell.

ATLAS. Atlas or Atlas (in different cases in different ways) was the name of the mighty titan, brother of Prometheus; because he fought against the gods, he was ordered to stand on the edge of the earth and support the firmament with his shoulders; and then he was turned into a high mountain. This mountain (or rather, the whole massif) is in northern Africa, and is still called Atlas, and the ocean lying to the west of it is the Atlantic. In the 16th century The famous cartographer G. Mercator, having published an album of geographical maps, decorated its binding with the figure of Atlas with a huge sphere on his shoulders. Based on this figure, all such albums began to be called atlases. The name of the fabric “satin” has a completely different origin - from the Arabic word, which means “smooth”.

GAS. This word was introduced into use at the beginning of the 17th century. Flemish chemist van Helmont, who studied the composition of air. He said that air is chaos, consisting of different vapors, and he pronounced and wrote the word “chaos” in the Flemish manner: gas. The word chaos, of course, is Greek and means “disorder, general confusion,” and literally “emptiness, gaping.”

GUITAR. This is nothing more than the Greek cithara: the word is the same (only slightly distorted during the transition from Greek to Latin, then German, then Polish and then Russian), although the instrument is not at all the same: the current guitar is a plucked instrument, and on the Greek lyre The kifare was played with a tinkling sound.

PLAYER. In French this means “and Greek”: this is the name of the letter u, written in French mainly in words of Greek origin. Therefore, the correct (French) accent in this word is igrek; but now it is more and more often pronounced by Igrek, and this has ceased to be a mistake.

IDIOT. There was a Greek word idios - own, private, special, separate; hence the idiot is a private person. The Greeks were a sociable and social people; Anyone who shunned public life and preferred to live as a private person seemed to them an eccentric and even a fool. Hence the current abusive meaning of this word.

LIME. We say "quicklime"; "quicklime" is an accurate translation of the Greek word a-sbestos. It was brought to Rus' by Byzantine masons back in Kievan times and was quickly distorted according to the model of Russian words with the prefix iz-: this is how the word lime and all its derivatives turned out - limestone, lime, etc. And then, a thousand years later, the word asbestos came into Russian language is secondary - as the scientific name for a fireproof fibrous mineral used for fireproof crafts. There is even a city in the Urals called Asbest.

WHALE. There was an ancient Greek word ketos, in the medieval pronunciation kitos; it meant “sea monster,” large, scary and toothy. When the Greek translators of the Hebrew Bible wrote that the prophet Jonah was swallowed and then spat out by a whale, they imagined just such a voracious monster. And only then this word was transferred to ocean animals, large and scary, but not toothy or voracious.

SHIP. In Greek, carabion, carabos meant “crab,” and then a light sea vessel; which one - we don’t know exactly. This is where the Russian word comes from; the borrowing is very ancient, from that era when the Greek be had not yet turned into ve. From here, through the Latin language, the Italian and Spanish caravel.

BED. The Old Russian language adopted this word from the Byzantine kravation; there it was formed from the word krabbatos, found in the Alexandrian translation of the Bible of the 3rd century. BC.; it was apparently brought to Alexandria by the Macedonians, and to Macedonia it came from some neighboring Balkan peoples: in the classical ancient Greek He was absent. At first, the Russian word bed apparently meant a rich bed of Greek work, in contrast to ordinary Russian shops, then it was reinterpreted under the influence of similar Russian words krov, cover and began to mean any bed.

FUN. In Orthodox worship, one of the most frequently repeated exclamations is “Lord, have mercy,” in Greek - kyrie, eleison. When the service was conducted in a hurry, then, to save time, part of the choir sang one thing, another part - another, everything was mixed, and only one could distinguish: kirileison, kirolesa... This is where the meaning of the Russian word came from: to get confused, to confuse, to fool. “They are walking through the forest, singing tricks...” says an old riddle about a funeral.

CAR. There was a Greek word mehane, meaning “tool”, “device”; From him came the name of the science of mechanics. In the Dorian dialect (with the mouth wide open) it sounded makhana. From this adverb it passed into the Latin language, but shifted the stress and lightened the middle syllable: it turned out to be a colossus. From Latin the word passed into Polish, again changing the emphasis: colossus; and into French, in addition changing the middle consonant: machines. Both variants appeared in the Russian language simultaneously under Peter I and, oddly enough, again with the accents machina and mashina. The modern emphasis and modern difference in meaning (“clumsy bulk” and “convenient device”) were established only in the 19th century. This is how the accents travel.

TYPHOON - Pacific hurricane. This is a Chinese word meaning strong wind. But when the British (in the 18th century) began to write it in Latin letters, they deliberately wrote it down so that in Latin it would be read chiffon. And Typhon in Greek mythology was a monster half the size of a world that attacked Zeus himself; and the Greeks (and the Romans too) called chiffon a hurricane wind. And so bold linguists suggest: the Greek word typhon passed into the Arabic tufan (which means “tide”), Arab sailors brought it to the Chinese shores, there it entered the Chinese language and from Chinese was returned by the British to Greek mythology.

CRIB. This is probably the most unexpected thing on our list of “old acquaintances” of Greek origin. There was a Greek word, sparganon, which meant baby diapers, and at the same time all kinds of dirty and torn fabric. In the Middle Ages it passed into the Latin language and began to be pronounced sparganum, and in the 17th century. - from Latin to Polish, shpargal began to be pronounced and meant “smeared piece of paper.” From here, through the Ukrainian schools, this word safely reached our schools.