The ancient civilization of the Greeks received the first name "Hellas" from the Romans. The Hellenes spoke of the people. The ancient Greeks, like representatives of other cultures, knew the story of the Flood that hit the world for people's disobedience to God. According to legend, only two people on Earth were saved during the disaster: Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha. From their marriage a son was born, whose name was Ellin. He was considered the progenitor of all Greeks. The descendants of Hellenes, the Achaeans, Dorians and Ionians became the founders of the Greek tribes.

The rise of Greece

Base Greek state was laid on the islands of the Aegean and Ionian seas, on southern territory Balkan Peninsula. The coast of Greece is washed by numerous bays. The Greeks have always lived by the sea, so their main trade was associated with this element. The division of the territory of the state was marked along the boundaries of the mountain ranges, which stretched across the entire area of ​​Greece. The climate zone depends on their location. Sailors and fishermen went to sea only in the summer season and early autumn, the rest of the time there were storms and travel by water was dangerous.

Regions of Greece

Initially, the entire territory of the Greek state was divided into three administrative centers. In Thessaly there was a famous mountain peak in the north, which received a certain status in the religion of Ancient Greece - Olympus. The snow cover did not leave it even in the summer months, therefore the statement of the Greeks that this place is the home of the gods was associated with Olympus. The region of Attica became famous for the city of Athens, the majestic capital of Ancient Greece. The Peloponnese has taken an important place in history ancient civilization thanks to the two main ports, from where ships left for the West - to Italy, and to the countries of the East. The coast of Greece, bordering Asia Minor, is dotted with lagoons. In this area, the most beautiful cities of Ephesus and Miletus were built near the Ionian Islands.

The development of agriculture in ancient Greece

Since there were few fertile lands in Greece, and the climate did not allow growing 4 crops a year, as was the case in ancient Egypt, wheat was sown in small quantities. Millet was imported for baking bread from other countries. But the humid Mediterranean climate was ideal for growing olives and grapes. Over time, the world's largest and best quality industry based on the processing of olives arose in Greece. They were processed into oil, eaten in salted and pickled form. Wine was made from grapes, the varieties of which are still recognized among winemakers as one of the best. Also in Greece they were engaged in the cultivation of walnuts, apples, peas and beans, garlic and onions. The ancient Greeks sowed fields with flax, from which they made magnificent fabrics. Products and linens made of Greek linen were sold to the East.

Quarries of Greece

In ancient Greece there was copper and iron mining. The main industry was the extraction of marble, from which numerous architectural monuments of the ancient civilization were built. The Greeks kept foodstuffs, oils, millet in clay vessels. Thanks to the excellent qualities of Greek clay, you can see the materials that the Hellenic masters worked with today in museums in Greece and around the world. These are vases, dishes, household items.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another student of Thales, Anaximander (610-547 BC), did not recognize any specific entity as the origin, but he considered something indefinite, which he called apeiron (infinite, infinite), meaning by this the infinite “restlessness” of material substance , i.e., as the movement of something that is infinite in space, material in essence, indefinite in sensations. Anaximander was also the founder of cosmology, believing that the Earth is the center of the Universe, which is surrounded by three fiery rings: solar, lunar and stellar. The earth, in his opinion, resides in world space, without relying on anything. This idea of ​​Anaximander is perhaps the most significant achievement of the Ionian (Miletian) school.

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

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

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

Eleatic school of logical physicists. The ancestor of this school was Xenophanes of Elea (580-485 BC, according to other sources, c. 570-470), whose God was the entire Universe as a whole (everything is one, he said, starry sky, in the transfer of this thought of his by Aristotle), but not in its sensual perception, but in formal logical comprehension, i.e., arising from logical reasoning, which became the basis qualitative analysis natural phenomena. The key to Xenophanes' understanding of being (God, cosmos, being, universe) is geometric sphere, the surface of which, although limited in space, is at the same time infinite. Indeed, all points of an infinite plane can be projected onto a sphere of finite radius.

The combination of opposites proposed by Xenophanes - finite and infinite, as well as the combination of movement and rest, give rise to a paradoxical situation. Speculating on the extremely broad concepts of being and not being, that is, being and nothing, Xenophanes generates a certain linguistic form, the forerunner formal logic. Xenophanes chooses earth and water as the material beginning (primary elements).

Close to these thoughts were the ideas of Parmenides (540-470 BC) in meaning and form. He believed that the world has always existed, never came into being and will never disappear in the future; it is motionless, spherical and homogeneous; he is one. He identified the existent (God, being) and the mind (mind, consciousness), considering it inaccessible to sensory perception: “For to think is the same as to be. One can only speak and think what is.” The characteristics of the world indicated then refer more to thinking than to the real world of things. Descartes will say in 2,000 years: "I think, therefore I am."

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

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

The so-called aporias (difficulties) of Zeno about the absence of movement were especially famous. Here, for example, is the aporia "arrow". Everything that is in a space equal to itself is at rest, since movement can only be from somewhere to somewhere. An arrow fired from a bow at each moment of time is in an equal space, and, therefore, at these moments of time it is at rest. But then it rests for the entire time it flies. Thus, a moving arrow does not actually fly anywhere and only rests all the time. Also absurd is the run of Achilles, trying to catch up and overtake the tortoise. Particularly famous is the aporia dichotomy (literally, cutting, splitting in two), in which Zeno demonstrates the impossibility of movement due to the need to make infinite number divisions of any segment to reach its opposite end. It is amazing, but in the same ancient century, the Chinese thinker sophist Hui Shi expressed two such statements: “If you cut off half of a stick one chi (about 0.33 m long - author) every day, then even after ten generations its length will not be depleted” and "There is a moment in the swift flight of an arrowhead when it neither moves nor stands still." Feel the difference between pragmatic Chinese and abstract Greek thinking.

Zeno's conclusions turn out to be contrary to our feelings, speculation goes on the physical concept of movement, which always occurs in space and time. Splitting space to infinity, Zeno forgot to split time to infinity. The relations between space and time, overlooked in all these cases, are governed by such a dynamic quantity as speed, and the infinite sums of finite quantities arising from division turn out to be in fact finite quantities. The problems of division and their inverse summation, posed in the aporias of Zeno, subsequently, in modern times, led to the calculus of infinitesimals (differential calculus), integral calculus and the calculus of finite and infinite sums. But the very imperfection of Zeno's logical analysis entangled such the most important characteristics movements like speed and acceleration.

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

The basis of the teachings of Pythagoras and his students about the universe was the number (“The wisest thing in the world is the number,” said Pythagoras). Cosmos among the Pythagoreans was symbolically expressed by a tetraktida ("quaternary") - the sum of the first four numbers: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10, containing the main musical intervals - an octave (2: 1), a fifth (3: 2) and a quart (4: 3). The unit was the basis of the number and at the same time, as a point, it was the generatrix of geometric objects: the two symbolized the line, the three - the plane (triangle), the four - the spatial volume (pyramid). The ball was the most beautiful (perfect) of the spatial figures, and the circle - of the flat ones. They tried to convey the beauty and complexity of an outwardly monotonous natural series of numbers through the symmetry of geometric figures, thereby considering them algebraic properties, which are now being studied by group theory, created by E. Galois at the beginning of the 19th century. The Pythagoreans called their method of analysis arithmetical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to Plato, the world of sensible things is not the world of truly existing; sensible things arise and perish; there is nothing lasting and immutable in them. The true essence of sensible things, their causes are incorporeal forms comprehended by the mind. He called these causes (forms, foundations, origins) of things types or, much less often, ideas (in Russian, an “idea” is a thought, essence, concept, image, reason, model, idea, plan). Platonic ideas do not exist subjectively in our minds, but objectively, i.e. they are the real being of things, their true existence, while the material things themselves do not really exist (just like the current situation in the world of elementary particles with quarks and gluons, fundamentally unobservable micro-objects, due to the so-called concept of confinement (trapping)).

If we think in categories of atomists, then for them the world of ideas is the world of emptiness, that is, non-existence, nothing; according to the teachings of Plato, it is matter that is absolute non-existence, emptiness, nothing, and only by uniting with ideas, it manifests itself as such, so that the idea is the perfect existence of the object (matter), its true being (its essence).

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

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

The result of Plato's work is that:

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

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

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

Attic school. Natural philosophy and natural science of Aristotle. The greatest scientist and philosopher of antiquity was Aristotle (384-322 BC), a student of Plato (who largely disagreed with him), a teacher and educator of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC). The last circumstance gave German philosopher Karl Marx has reason to call him "Alexander of Macedonia of Greek philosophy", although Aristotle, as you might guess, does not need comparisons. The work of Aristotle is unprecedentedly large and diverse, he covered all the branches of knowledge available to his time. To understand the physics and cosmology of Aristotle, it is necessary to get acquainted with his logic. The very word logic appeared for the first time in Zeno (336-262 BC) from Kition, the founder of Stoicism, which at one time Aristotle understood as analytics, that is, the theory of inferences. His analytics is the main method of cognition, in which, first of all, you need to be able to determine the essence of the subject.

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

The totality of axioms, assumptions, postulates, definitions, syllogisms - all this is the sphere, mainly, of speculative activity, the subject of deductive science, which unfolds in the direction from the general to the particular. However, there is an opposite cognitive process from the particular to the general, which is the subject of inductive science. By private, or even individual, Aristotle understood, first of all, sensually perceived, that is, what physics (nature) supplies us with. From here, induction makes it possible to build bridges between experimental knowledge and theoretical knowledge. Aristotle saw the purpose of science in full definition subject, achieved only by combining deduction and induction: 1) knowledge about each individual property must be acquired from experience; 2) the belief that this property is essential must be proved by an inference of a special logical form - a categorical syllogism.

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

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

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

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

2) the matter or substratum of a thing; this is the content of the thing from which it arises, i.e., the material cause;

3) the beginning of the movement - this is where the change or transition to a state of rest takes its first beginning, that is, the moving, acting cause;

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

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

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

Aristotle first considered the question of the shape of the Earth and celestial bodies on the basis of observational data. Since during lunar eclipses the shadow cast by the Earth on the lunar disk is always round, he came to the conclusion that the Earth and, by analogy, other celestial bodies have a spherical shape. At the same time, Aristotle recognized the Earth as a celestial body, of course, the center of the universe. The sun and moon in Aristotle's system of the world are the closest to the Earth celestial bodies, the planets are located at large (further) distances. The universe is bounded by a sphere of stars nine times farther from the earth than the sun. At the same time, the Universe appears to be finite, and all the bodies located inside it must inevitably gravitate toward the Earth as the central body.

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

From the history of Hellas

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

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

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

The archaic period is the time of the formation of the main policies and the expansion of the Hellenic world. In the 8th century BC e. the Great Greek colonization. During this period, the Greeks settled along the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. During the archaic, early forms of Hellenic art took shape.

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

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

The most famous cities of Hellas

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

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

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

Culture of Ancient Greece

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

Ancient Greek is also closely connected with mythology. literary tradition, theatrical art and music.

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

The most famous figures and heroes of Hellas

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

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

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

"Five cleanest seas, hundreds ancient monuments, a thousand colorful islands, millions of golden beaches, cozy hotels and luxurious resorts, taverns and boutiques...", - only a small fraction of what the director of the ITService travel company Dmitry Ignatiev told us, his ward tourists, about Greece. Neither the generously poured welcome glasses of "Metaxa", nor the eloquence of the guides, nor the two-week life "in Greek" helped to quickly assimilate the abundance of information. The unique versatility of Hellas is truly realized after the fact. When you look at each freshly printed photograph for half an hour, you involuntarily and inopportunely insert your catchphrase into any conversation " But in Greece..."and for the tenth time you enthusiastically describe your impressions to your friends ... Impressions from mountain serpentines with a ride reminiscent of Formula 1 races, from the lulling gaze of the velvet greenery of the Kastorian valleys, the hypnotic surface of the lakes hidden in them, which in half an hour is replaced by an irrepressible breeze sea ​​waves on the coast Cassandra. From the grottoes immersed in water and the road pink from flowering oleanders to Heraklion. From the enchanting sunset over the Acropolis, smoothly turning into the illumination of the Athenian night clubs... The kaleidoscope of landscapes of this small country will captivate the most pretentious aesthete. Even we, a group of basically morally stable journalists, could hardly restrain ourselves from asking for citizenship in some piece of paradise. Well, at least in a small province with villas buried in hibiscus bushes under tiled roofs and a flock of geese imposingly walking along the main street. Or in a village surrounded by olive plantations with white sheep grazing peacefully on the hills. Not to mention the resort centers, where you understand that you were born for the celebration of life, gourmetism and other bourgeois pleasures.

I admit, in the end, we still staged a "sabotage", at the cost of superhuman efforts, forcing the driver to turn to a picturesque place on the way to the airport. Half an hour of bliss with a glass of aromatic wine in a cafe near a mountain lake - "poly orea!", "omorphos!". We call it "beauty"! We are still surprised how we allowed ourselves to be "packed" back into the bus and transported to our homeland ...

Athens

Long narrow streets, a minimum of greenery, buildings with dilapidated gray plaster, drizzling rain - this is the first, not the best impression of the capital of Greece. But when the sun's rays breaking through the clouds suddenly sparkle on the carved shutters of old mansions, the austere facades of state institutions, the wrought-iron fences of private houses, the city simply enchants. In any street tavern there is always a free place, each waiter has a smile for the visitor, the guide has the patience to repeat to the clumsy tourist centuries of history Mycenaean civilization, and passers-by have time to take the guest to the Acropolis. Which, by the way, is located in the very center of the metropolis and is the main attraction of the country. Although in Ancient Hellas there were such "upper cities" in every locality: they were built on the highest hill with palaces for the royal family and temples for worship. Only the Athenian survived. And let all the sculptures, caryatids and interior decorations be replaced with copies, and part of the Pentelian marble from which it was built, with modern slabs, striking white against the yellowish tint of millennial masonry. Let! After all, you can see with your own eyes the dilapidated amphitheater of Herodes Atticus, where music festivals are now held, a real olive tree, allegedly planted by the goddess herself, a square polished by the feet of tourists, where once stood a statue of the daughter of Zeus cast in bronze by Phidias himself and dressed in gold. And the Parthenon, remembered from a picture from a school history textbook... Its ten-meter columns are really located at different distances from each other and seem to be tilted inward! The cunning trick of the architects Kallikrates and Iktin still works: because of the optical illusion, the temple looks grandiose from any point of view. And especially from the terrace of the nearby fashionable restaurant "Akropolis" - under the fish baked in cheese and a shot of ouzo, Greek aniseed vodka - one thinks so well of eternal values ​​...

What to visit. National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Museum and Benaki Museum, National Park, antique shops in the old part of Athens - Plaka and boutiques on Kolonaki street.

Athena and Poseidon fought for the right to be the patron of the capital of Greece, who were supposed to present the most valuable gift to its inhabitants. The god of the seas granted water, the goddess of victory - an olive tree. Since this area did not lack water, Athena received patronage and the right to give the city its name.

One third of the population lives in the country.

There is no boredom in Greece

"What a hardworking people the Greeks are!" - the tourists who arrive in Greece in the morning and on the way to the hotels, watching the locals going somewhere at dawn. Yes, the Greeks are hardworking and believe: whoever works, so rests. And they "come off" before the first roosters, thereby misleading naive guests. Fortunately, entertainment establishments are at every step, whether it be a tiny town or a tourist complex. "We have better than in Ibiza!" - the Greeks say pathetically. If you want - a night club with a cocktail show, if you want - a disco with indefatigable DJs. Or restaurants with stiff serving and well-trained waiters. Or bouzouki - clubs in the national style with live music and sirtaki until you drop. With real sirtaki! When only one person dances to the applause of kneeling "spectators". He dances with his soul, and facial expressions, and gestures, conveying the tragedy of some folk song on the eternal theme "and this abyss swallowed up Iago." The Greek "dance" with ornate knees, familiar to foreigners, is also danced here, but only with tourists. For example, we were "taught" the choreography by pharmacists, who were intelligently resting at the next table in the tavern. Either the joint viewing of the Eurovision broadcast brought us so close, or the heady aroma of eucalyptus and fine wines, but the fraternization of peoples under the discordant "We are rich!" - My Number One and unanimous "Yamas!" - "Be it!" did not take long to wait. True, for some reason, none of our group could repeat all the “pas” in the morning ... Yes, and there was no time - excursions, excursions, excursions! And you definitely won't get bored with them. Ancient fortresses, ancient burials, Byzantine churches and Orthodox monasteries are everywhere. In addition, you can just wander around the "old town" of any village, go to wineries, olive plantations or fur coat factories, look into a pottery workshop or a souvenir market - in Greece any doors are open for the guest and always sounds "yasas!" - "hello!". Greece washed by the Ionian, Aegean, Libyan, Mediterranean, Cretan Seas - tourists have plenty to choose from!

The Greeks lovingly call this peninsula the trident of Poseidon, piercing the Aegean Sea. When you look at the golden beaches stretching from below, emerald pine groves and vineyards, wooden bays, a crystal-blue bay from the hotel pool, located right at the cliff, you understand how generously the god of the seas gave this land. The measured life of cities and fishing villages, aromas of sequoia, tamarisk and olives hovering in the air, the sparing sun ... The coast of Sithonia and Kassandra - two parts of the peninsula - are simply created for doing nothing. Although no: women will not be able to be lazy for a long time - after all, nearby, in Kastoria, fur factories, the world's mecca for fashionistas. True, this town is completely different from the capital of mink coats and chinchilla boas. Hidden between mountain hills, it resembles a crescent red from tiled roofs, admiring the mirror waters of a saucer lake. Fairy panorama! Which, alas, you barely have time to notice, running through hundreds of fur coat centers in search of "the same, but with mother-of-pearl buttons", bargaining hoarsely with the seller and trying to finally learn what exactly he said: "yes" (in Greek " ne") or "no" (Greek "oohs")? But fur shopping in Greece- that's a completely different story.

What to visit. The tomb of King Philip, father of Alexander the Great, in Virginia; ruins of the ancient city of Olynthos; fur coat factories in Kastoria.

Beaches of five hundred kilometers of coast Halkidiki included in the register of the cleanest in the European Union.

Athos

Everyone has heard of this mountain. But few people know that it is located in the only monastic republic in the world on the third part of the Halkidiki peninsula - Agios Oros. The ascetic restraint of twenty men's monasteries of this state, the first cloisters of which were founded a thousand years ago at the behest of Emperor Basil the First, tourists can only see from the deck of the ferry, slowly circling the territory estranged from the world. True, with permission from higher dignitaries Athos ordinary men can also visit. This "flagrant injustice" caused righteous anger among the female half of our group, frivolous jokes among the male half and bewilderment among the Greeks. True Christians are very sensitive to religion. The question "Are you Orthodox?" practically means "You are a Greek" In Hellas, a student who comes to light a candle in broad daylight, or a business woman who retires in the evening in a temple is a normal phenomenon. They believe with their hearts, not for show, without fanaticism and moralizing. This is probably why there are so many tiny churches in quiet, remote places and virtually no crime. Here you go up the serpentine, and on a hill, outside the city, there is a miniature chapel: the doors are open, there is nobody inside, the icons are intact, the candles are free. You will come in, calm down, admire the city spreading from below ... Do you really want to do something bad after this?

According to legend, towering two thousand meters above the sea, it is named after the giant who threw this "block" into the sea, thereby trying to hit the gods.

There is no arrogance in Greece

Only in Hellas, kids can easily run around the hall of the city hall of their town. A real millionaire has breakfast with journalists, a good-natured prefect dances sirtaki with the guests of his region ... No arrogance, pride, swagger. Although, it would seem, whoever but the Greeks with their richest history and royal blood should ascend. Of course, they will not fail to recall the origins of aristocracy, democracy and aesthetics, but with such enthusiasm, so directly! Of course, for them their own dignity is the holy of holies, which often becomes the cause of temperamental dialogues. No one is surprised to hear loud bickering between simpleton drivers or oil-lined businessmen. Well, violent quarrels (and instant reconciliations) between newly embracing spouses are a common sight. Despite the fact that the family for the Hellenes is no less valuable than honor. The whole way of his life is subordinated to family interests. Apparently, therefore Greece takes last place in Europe in terms of divorces and one of the first in terms of the number of family businesses.

By the way, a high-ranking official who saw off our group was sincerely surprised that we were leaving Greece in full force! Many of our compatriots "remain married": only puritans, first-graders and pensioners can be indifferent to the ancient profiles and refined manners of the Greeks. Despite the patriarchal foundations, international marriages are not uncommon. Actually, for a Greek, it doesn't matter where you come from. The main thing is that a person should be a good person, who has something to say "eucharisto" - "thank you" for. How, for example, the musicians of the Ukrainian diaspora in Athens, to whom the city authorities, in gratitude for the amazing performances, offered to give a concert on main square cities.

If you mistakenly pronounce the name of the regional capital of Macedonia, no Greek will openly correct you out of politeness. But it will delicately emphasize the prefix "fes" lost in the Slavic transcription - Thessaloniki.

You will fall in love with this city once and for all. In the well-groomedness of its narrow streets and the echo of the sea surf, in the orderly rows of neat high-rise buildings with colorful flowerpots curling on each balcony. In the "orange" of orange trees along the sidewalks and in the evening promenade along the spacious embankment. Even in one-way traffic, because of which you wind around the city for a long time, but you find new low-key beauties. For example, triumphal arch A gallery of two thousand years ago with bas-reliefs that have survived to this day. The young people who chose it as a meeting place would not even think of tearing something off or writing painfully familiar to us "Here was ...". And the colonial villas of the century before last, hidden between new buildings! No one has the right to demolish the remnants of their former luxury, even if the owners did not appear here for half a century - private property!

However, you have not seen Thessaloniki, if you did not meet the sunset, sitting on the sheer walls of the former fort in the old city. A long time ago, only the nobility lived here, and now you, a mere mortal, are basking on the ancient bricks heated by the sun and waiting for Helios to sweep on his chariot, changing day to night and flooding the blue distance of the horizon with crimson. And it seems that in the melody of the waves of this port city you can hear the size of a hexameter...

City Thessaloniki Named by the Macedonian king Cassander in honor of his wife, sister of Alexander the Great.

What to visit. Monuments of Alexander the Great and Philip II of Macedon, Aristotle Square, Byzantine walls of Emperor Justinian I, the Rotunda, the temple of Dmitry Salunsky.

The city of rocks, a fantastic reserve, the eighth wonder of the world, a masterpiece of nature - no comparisons have been made to the sky-high mountain "towers" under the small town of Kalambaka. Polished by the winds for tens of millions of years (!) gray blocks have an inexplicable magnetism. They force brave climbers to conquer peaks again and again, curious tourists to climb incredible heights on foot to admire the most picturesque landscapes, and some cowards to take pictures on the edge of the abyss and fearlessly look down at the valleys of red poppies. However mysticism Meteor not only in the enchanting rocks - dozens of monasteries have been erected on the "spiers" of the mountains. How a man managed to build impressive temples, chapels, sketes at such heights - one wonders! One of the monasteries seems to have been under construction for one hundred and sixty years. And if you consider that then the hermits climbed to the peaks in baskets with the help of ingenious devices ... Fortunately, today pilgrims and visitors climb to the cloisters along a serpentine path of stone steps. And when it already seems that there is no strength to go, you suddenly find yourself in the refreshing coolness of one of the main monasteries - the Holy Transfiguration. Here - miraculous icons, ancient frescoes and monastic wineries. From the whirlpool of smells of dilapidated wood, church incense and melted wax, the head is slightly dizzy, from the next luxurious landscape that opens from the observation deck - a drunken state. I want to take a deep breath and jump from this colossal height, feeling like "floating in the clouds", as translated from ancient Greek " meteors".

What to visit. Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration, Mount Olympus, the ruins of the ancient city of Dion, the source of Aphrodite.

The first hermits began to settle in the gorges of the present Meteor in the 11th century. And in 1380, Saint Athanasius created the first male monastery.

No fuss in Greece

When the seller carefully packs every little thing bought, it touches. But when he does it so slowly that the driver of your tour bus, tired of waiting, honking furiously, is about to break the horn ... We, accustomed to the sprint rhythm of life, it is not easy to adapt to the measured life of the Greeks. First two days. On the third day of the journey, you involuntarily begin to be lazy. Slowly sipping a tonic frappe in a cafenio, risking being late for an excursion, leisurely exploring the streets, hopelessly lagging behind the group, having a long and plentiful meal, philosophizing about the frailty of everything earthly. And gradually you acquire a taste for life, long lost by the Slavs in the hectic everyday life and carefully observed by the Greeks. They do not live, but contemplate life. They do not speak, but reflect on their murmuring common language - dimotic. They do not eat, but savor each of the dishes served at the table and mezedes (snacks). They do not pursue wealth, but earn according to the principle of sufficiency. And they will never refuse a three-hour siesta. At first, this tradition brings restless tourists to white heat, but upon returning home, they all enthusiastically undertake to introduce the notorious breaks in their native teams ...

Thousand and one island

When you fly over the night Greece, the islands surrounding its mainland are like a thick scattering of multi-colored beads. Located within sight of each other, they often have a completely different past: the Ionian Islands were once under the rule of Venice, the islands of the Aegean Sea and the Southern Sporades belonged to the Genoese and Crusaders, the islands of the Saronic Gulf were inhabited by Albanians. To visit at least some, it will take at least a week. And then only a small fraction of their splendor will be remembered from the marathon run: the cave sanctuary of the nymphs in Ithaca, the birthplace of Odysseus, the blue caves, the fruit paradise of Skopelos, the healing springs of Lesvos, horse-drawn carriages instead of cars on Poros, volcanic rocks and black sand beaches - "a fragment of the disappeared Atlantis", the marine reserve of the Northern Sporades, whose night waters luminesce from the glow of the smallest living organisms. And to taste all the delights major islands- Cyclades - it will take two weeks for each! They are also a separate story: cypress forests, picturesque harbors, as if yachts and boats strung on the coastline, vibrant nightlife after a day's rest in cute hotels or trips to numerous historical monuments - worthy of a separate article. As well as the richest underwater world, which every swimmer can see. It is possible that, cruising between the islands on specially designed steamboat ferries or rented boats, some of the non-divers will be lucky enough to see a flock of common dolphins or a sailing jellyfish fluttering on the waves ...

Greece belongs to more than 2 thousand large and small islands, but only a hundred of them are inhabited. Islands make up one fifth of the country's territory

Corfu (or Kerkyra)

Goethe, Oscar Wilde, Alfred Sisley immortalized this tiny island in their creations, which you can drive around in just three hours. From the sparkling azure of the Ionian Sea and the juicy malachite slopes, at first your eyes get tired, in the unusual diversity of cultures that have mixed over a long history, you start to get confused. Venetian labyrinths of streets, Italian courtyards with openwork balconies, exquisite arches of French arcades, colonial villas of the British who dominated in the distant past - all this diversity is at every step in the capital of the island. Where starched laundry dries right above a cobbled and full of passers-by street, where you can get fed up with elegant cafes on the Boulevard Liston built in the image of the Parisian Rivoli Boulevard Liston, and proudly walk along the shady alleys of the Esplanade - a park-like city square, which was once allowed to walk exclusively to the nobles. Only in Kerkyra there is a croquet field laid out by the English on the site of a Venetian shooting range, the old fortress of Palio Frurio, in which summer evenings grandiose light and sound shows are thundering, and the Love Canal, which guarantees eternal passion for couples sailing through it. And exclusively for Corfu Ichthyander's followers can dive to their heart's content in the coastal arches of the caves and see the 100-kilogram carriage-carriage turtles migrating here from Africa to lay their eggs.

What to visit. Paper Money Museum, Byzantine Museum, Patron Church Kerkyra St. Spyridon, Cathedral, Byzantine Museum.

Rest on Corfu is rightfully considered elite: everything on the island is of the highest standard - in affordable hotels available to ordinary tourists, in campsites in mountain villages, and in luxurious five-star complexes.

And also in Greece no time. You don't feel it, you just get lost in it. Maybe because of the ubiquitous interweaving of antiquity with modernity, mythology with reality, characteristic of this country. Or maybe from the "point" measurement inherent in the Greeks - life according to the principle "here and now" ...

But the Slavic nature still takes its toll, returning to the "vector" perception of time - with the present and the past. Which I really want to return to. At least when viewing freshly printed photographs.

Useful information

• Greece 10 million tourists visit each year
• , the city of three civilizations - Antique, Roman and Byzantine, founded in 315 BC. e. The apostle Paul called it "the golden gate of Christianity."
• Fortress walls Thessaloniki saw the invasion of the Celts, Normans, Bulgarians, Mongols, Arabs. Now only lovers and tourists come to them.
• It is believed that in place Meteor sixty million years ago, the ocean raged, and the mountains themselves were underwater reefs.
• evoke a mystical feeling, as if in another dimension.
• monks Athos everything necessary for their modest existence is produced by themselves.
• The Acropolis was built in the 5th century BC. e. on top of a 155-meter hill. In the halls of the Parthenon in those days they kept the treasury of the Athenian state and made sacrifices to the gods.
• For the removal of pieces of marble from the Acropolis faces six years in prison.
• Africans trading in the center Athens bags-fake famous brands - a common occurrence.
• The best souvenirs from Greece: olive soap and oil, ceramics and spices - for loved ones, Metaxa, wine and ouzo - for a loved one and a mink coat - for yourself.
• Even the dogs in Hellas lazily recline at the houses, not wanting to burden themselves with watchdog duties - after all, everything around is calm!

Victoria Pasichnyk

04.06.2015

Under the general name Ancient Greece or Hellas - united numerous states that existed in the south of the Balkans, the Aegean Islands, the Thracian coast, the western coastline of Asia in the period from 3-2 millennia to 100 years. BC.

The social structure of Greece during this long period has undergone various changes - from simple tribal relationships to the formation of vast policies that own colonies, with developed culture and art, trade relations, science, politics and special religious beliefs. The ethnic composition of countries is constantly changing. So in Hellas in the 3000s. BC. Lelegs and Pelasgians predominated, but they were gradually supplanted by the proto-Greek tribes of the Ionians and Achaeans. The later developed Achaean and Ionian states disintegrated after the Dorians invaded.

State system of Hellas

By the 6th century B.C. Ancient Greece was inhabited by three powerful ethnic groups - the Aeolians in the northern territories, the Dorians - in the center, the Ionians - in Attica and on the numerous Aegean islands. City-policies were formed, and it was in them that arose and improved social principles, which became the basis for the future European civilization .

In just over 200 years - from the 8th to the 6th centuries. BC.- Hellas became the vanguard of culture, science, arts for the whole world.

The center of ancient Greece was considered Athens with the predominance of democratic trends in the state system. Other policies are also known, such as Sparta or Lakonika, where social order was headed by the oligarchs, and a paramilitary regime was introduced among the population with the cult of a physically perfect body. in Athens, Corinth, Thebes slavery became widespread, which was then a sign of the high economic status of city-states.

Contradictions constantly arose between the policies, based on competition in trade relations and power. This regularly led to military conflicts, with skirmishes occurring mainly between Athens and other cities. In addition to internal clashes, the ancient Greek cities constantly defended themselves from external enemies. 5th-6th centuries BC. characterized by wars with Persia - the ancient Greek states united in Delian League, of which Athens was elected head.

In 400s. Macedonia reached its peak. The father of the future legendary commander - King Philip II - subjugated the country after the victory at Chaeronea, when the coalition troops of the Greek policies were defeated. Alexander the Great subsequently created a huge state, which increased due to numerous colonies on the territory of conquered Persia, Egypt, but his power was short-lived. The vast empire quickly fell apart after the death of the king, but it was then that science, art and advanced political ideas spread from ancient Greece to the developed states of that era.

Ancient Rome, its legislation, culture were based on the ancient Greek principles of social relations, continued and developed the traditions that originated in Athens - the main policy of Hellas. In the 30s. 1st century BC Hellas became a region of the Roman Empire, almost 5 centuries later Greece formed the core of the eastern part of Rome - Byzantium.

Culture of Ancient Hellas

Ancient art arose and took shape in the ancient Greek city-states, when the rest of Europe was ruled by barbarian tribes. Various crafts were available to ancient Greek masters, which gradually developed into the highest forms of art - sculpture, architecture, painting, music, theater and choreography, rhetoric, philosophy and poetry.

The culture of Greece was far from homogeneous throughout the vast territory of Hellas. Crafts and culture, worldview and philosophical currents were formed under the influence of ideas from Egypt, Phenicia and Assyria, and yet the ancient Greeks created a direction peculiar only to them, which cannot be confused with other currents. Artisans and artists of Hellas are characterized by a special view of life and the world, a philosophical orientation of creativity. The very technique of ancient Greek architects, sculptors and painters is the subject of imitation and study. contemporary masters, the basis of many masterpiece works that appeared centuries after the collapse of Ancient Hellas.

Religious views the ancient Greeks undoubtedly deserve special attention. It is their beliefs that reflect the worldview of the entire society of that time, a penchant for symbolism, which helped build the relationship of man with nature and with the whole world. Ancient Greek symbols, designations, plots, names are deeply rooted in the minds of modern people - this knowledge is now considered elementary, and without them it is impossible to penetrate and study new and recent history and culture, to read works classical masters, understand the origins of creativity of many artists, composers, poets.

Historical figures of Hellas

Ancient Greek philosophers, historians, sculptors and artists, as well as generals, strategists and orators laid the foundations of modern sciences, arts, politics, and social relationships. It is difficult to overestimate the activities of historical figures of that time. After all, without their ideas and their implementation, the modern world would undoubtedly look completely different.

Plutarch and Ovid, Demosthenes and Homer, Lycurgus and Solon - their works are still interesting today, they cause admiration and often become the basis for new views. The works of famous philosophers of that time are included in mandatory list the educational program of influential universities, where future statesmen and politicians study. The laws of most countries are based on democratic principles that first arose in Hellas.

"Golden Age" of Hellas - the era prominent politician strategist, orator Pericles marked the rise of democracy. It was then that the foundations of taxation were established, taking into account the incomes of various segments of the population, the possibility of allocating material assistance to the poor, teaching them the crafts, arts and knowledge of that time. Free citizens participated in the election of rulers and had the right to control the work of the state administration. The Society of Advanced Democracy gave impetus to the emergence of such famous personalities like Herodotus, Phidias, Aeschylus.

The greatest commander Alexander the Great contributed to the even greater enrichment of Greek culture through the achievements of the conquered peoples. Being a highly developed person who has gone through school Aristotle, Alexander the Great spread the Hellenic worldview over vast territories far beyond the Balkan Peninsula, created new policies with philosophical and art schools, libraries.

Even Roman conquerors and, having subdued the Greek territories and caused the actual end of Hellas, they treated the works of Greek scientists with special awe and respect.

Many outstanding philosophers, artists and scientists enjoyed great honor and worked already at the court of the Roman emperors, continuing to preach progressive views and forming famous schools, improving and honing their skills already on the territory of Ancient Rome.