Читать книгу Bible of the Time. …from the Big Bang to the present day… - Rem Word - Страница 9

Ancient Greece. One thousand hundred years BC – the beginning of the so-called polis period. The first cities, houses, temples and fortress walls. The invasion of the Dorians from the north (in their pure form – the Spartans), the high achievements of culture and social structure. Amphoras and Forums. Militant Sparta rules over the Greek world on a par with the wise Athens. Mighty, albeit imperceptibly withering, Persia concludes a de jure treaty with the Greeks, on the protectorate, which Sparta monitors.

Greco-Persian Wars 500—479 BC.

By this time (or, to be precise, 492 BC), the new ruler of Persia, Darius the First, founds the Achaemenid empire, including, among other things, Syria, Asia Minor and Egypt. Accusing the Greeks of violating the union treaty, formalized in a "small text" as an entry into this empire, he sends an expeditionary force of 25,000 soldiers to Greece, but receives a decisive rebuff from the founders of democracy. The Persians lose 7,000 soldiers, the Greeks – only 194. 19 years after the Battle of Marathon that has not faded for two and a half millennia, the Battle of Thermopylae and the naval battle of Salamis follow. The troops of the son of Darius, Xerxes, suffer a final defeat at the Greek Plataea.

Ancient Greek poetry:

(Sappho, Lesvos Island, 570—630 BC, translated by V. Krestovsky)

Greece and Asia Minor on the eve of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC). Numerous, relatively independent Greek colonies stand for Athens

But the testosterone-soaked, muscle-flexing allies now turn their gaze to each other. … In the First Peloponnesian, ancient Greek Civil War, Sparta prevailed. The country of aggressive ascetics seizes Athens, exhausted by struggle, and ends the century of its democracy with the accession of a militaristic oligarchy devoid of any creative principle. This is not at all pleasant to the freedom-loving Greek colonies on all sides of the Ecumene (the world mastered by mankind). Detachments of volunteers, grasping the oars, amicably rush to the metropolis. In the end, the troops of Thebes (a powerful polis somewhat north of Athens) and Athens, which are reborn in spite of the enemies, unite, and step by step, push the Dorians back to the southeast of the Peloponnesian peninsula. Here the Spartans, becoming, in their own way, a relic of the poor, but implacable warriors, century after century, turn into ordinary Greeks.

…Macedonia (northern part of the Balkan Peninsula), the Greek kingdom, before that, by the way, the former vassal of Persia rises and sets up its garrisons in all the major city-states of Greece.

The ruler of the now united Greece, the commander Alexander the Great, conquered Persia and part of the adjacent countries in 330 BC. e. Seven years later, this huge, but loose, like a jellyfish state disintegrates into Seleucia, Parthia and Egypt. Egypt is now ruled by the wise companion of Alexander Ptolemy, who becomes the new pharaoh and the founder of the dynasty of his name.

But quite soon, by historical standards, even more powerful western neighbor – Rome, will pay attention to sunny, even Great Greece…

Second Peloponnesian War (197—200 BC). Macedonia and Greece on the eve of their conquest by Great Rome. Under the sun of Hellas, phalanxes and long spears will lose to legions and short swords

Ancient China. Thirty-six centuries BC. This is the bottom of the world history known to us.

The first state covered by written sources is the semi-mythical Shang-Yin (1600 BC – 1046 BC). Difference from states, for example, European ones – both in ancient and modern China there are no temples dedicated to the great gods. Everywhere there are only home altars dedicated to deceased ancestors, a kind of technical points of contact with them. The Great Sky, in which the souls of ancestors and great rulers live, is not a personified deity, the giver of the meaning of life and the resonator of all your actions.

…After Shang slides into the abyss of corruption and debauchery, the whole kingdom is easily conquered by the army of the benevolent rebel general U-Wang. Now it is called Zhou, after the ruler of one of the provinces, Wu-Wang’s father.

The flowering of Confucianism and Taoism falls on the fourth century BC. Be that as it may, prosperous Zhou is divided into seven warring states – Qin, Wei, Zhao, Han, Qi, Yan, Chu.

Emperor Qin Shi Huang in a medieval Chinese painting

For two centuries BC. the legendary emperor of one of them, Qin Shi Huang, deprives all his neighbors of independence. The northern sections of the walls of the former kingdoms are joined together and henceforth form the Great Wall of China. The dictator massively destroys scientists in whom he sees the main reason for the changes in the beneficial Heavenly Order and burns every single book, as far as possible. However, shortly after the physical death of Qin Shi Huang, this whole «unchanging» order, together with the state and the Qin dynasty, disintegrated.