Many peoples have myths trying to explain the changes in nature depending on the seasons of the year.
In ancient Greece, this was the myth of Persephone.
Persephone is the goddess of fertility and the kingdom of the dead. Hades kidnapped her and took her to his kingdom.
Demeter, the mother of Persephone, the goddess of fertility and agriculture, was looking for her daughter all over the world, indulging in inconsolable grief, and at this time the land was barren, nothing sprang up in the sown fields. Upon learning of the abduction, Demeter turned to Zeus for help with a demand to return Persephone. Hades released Persephone, but before the release he gave her seven pomegranate seeds. These grenades originated from drops of the elder Dionysus's blood. Persephone, all this time refusing food, swallowed the grains - and thus was doomed to return to the kingdom of Hades.

During the period of Demeter's wanderings on the earth, crops stopped growing. People died of hunger and did not sacrifice to the gods. Zeus began to send gods and goddesses for Demeter to persuade him to return to Olympus. But she, sitting in a black robe in the Eleusinian temple, did not notice them.

To calm Demeter, Zeus decided that Persephone would spend two-thirds of the year on Olympus, and a third in the kingdom of Hades. That is, Persephone spent spring and summer on Olympus, among other gods, next to her mother, and for autumn and winter she returned to the Kingdom of the dead to her husband.

Some legends say that Persephone, while on Olympus, ascended to heaven every morning and became the constellation Virgo, so that her mother Demeter could see her from everywhere.

When Persephone left her mother, wilting set in on the ground, the greenery withers, the trees shed their foliage. When Demeter returned to her mother again, the first shoots appeared and nature flourished.

In Egyptian mythology, there was a myth about the goddess Hator-Tefnut. Once the goddess of moisture Tefnut quarreled with her father, the ruler of all that exists, Ra, and, taking the form of a lioness, left Egypt, going south to the Nubian desert. Then a terrible disaster struck Egypt - drought and the beginning of sand storms. People began to die of thirst and hunger. Then Ra ordered the god Shu to find Tefnut and bring her back to Egypt. When they returned, the great river Nile immediately overflowed and saturated the meadows and arable lands with water, and life-giving rain poured down on the ground.

This myth symbolizes the changing seasons.

To answer

Greeks belong to the great Indo-European family of peoples. This means that their ideas about the world, gods and people have a common origin with the same ideas in Slavic, Scandinavian, Indian, Celtic and many other cultures. The Greek gods can be compared with the gods of the Slavs and Scandinavians in their attributes and the role they played in myths. This was reflected even in the names of the days of the week. For example, Thursday was dedicated to the god of thunder for all of these peoples. But Greek mythology also had a vivid originality.

Above all else, there was endless Chaos in the world. It was not emptiness - it contained the origins of all things, gods and people. Initially, from Chaos, mother earth - the goddess Gaia and the sky - Uranus arose. Cyclops - Bront, Sterop, Arg ("thunder", "shine", "lightning") originated from their union. High in the middle of their foreheads, their single eye shone, transforming the underground fire into heavenly. The second Uranus and Gaia gave birth to the hundred-handed and fifty-headed giants-Hecatoncheires - Cotta, Briareus and Gies ("anger", "strength", "arable land"). Finally, a great tribe of titans was born.

There were 12 of them - six sons and daughters of Uranus and Gaia. The ocean and Tethys gave birth to all the rivers. Hyperion and Theia became the ancestors of the Sun (Helios), the Moon (Selene) and the rose-fingered dawn (Eos). From Iapetus and Asia came the mighty Atlas, who now holds the heavenly firmament on his shoulders, as well as the cunning Prometheus, the close-minded Epimetheus and the impudent Menetius. Two more pairs of titans and the titanids gave birth to gorgons and other amazing creatures. But the future belonged to the children of the sixth couple - Crohn and Rhea.

Uranus did not like his offspring and he threw cyclops and hundred-handed giants into Tartarus, a terrible abyss (which was both a living creature and had a neck). Then Gaia, indignant at her husband, persuaded the titans to rebel against Heaven. They all attacked Uranus and deprived him of his power. From now on, Kron, the most cunning of the titans, became the ruler of the world. But he did not release the former captives from Tartarus, fearing their strength.

The Greeks called the period of Crohn's reign the golden age. However, this new ruler of the world was foretold that he would in turn be overthrown by his son. Therefore, Cronus decided to take a terrible measure - he began to swallow his sons and daughters. First he swallowed Hestia, then Demeter and Hera, then Hades and Poseidon. The very name Kron means “time” and it is not for nothing that people say that time consumes its sons. The last child, Zeus, was replaced by his unfortunate mother Rhea with a stone wrapped in a diaper. Cronus swallowed the stone, and young Zeus was hidden on the island of Crete, where the magic goat Amalthea fed him with her milk.

When Zeus became an adult, he managed to cunningly free his brothers and sisters and they began a fight with Kron and the Titans. They fought for ten years, but victory was not given to either side. Then Zeus, on the advice of Gaia, freed the hundred-handed and cyclops languishing in Tartarus. From now on, the Cyclops began to forge Zeus with his famous lightning. The old-handed ones rained down on the titans a hail of stones and rocks. Zeus and his brothers and sisters, who began to be called gods, won the victory. They, in turn, threw the titans into Tartarus (“where the roots of the sea and the earth are hidden”) and assigned a hundred-handed giants to guard them. The gods themselves began to rule the world.

THEN AND NOW
(The material is designed for 2 - 3 academic hours)

The main humanistic idea of \u200b\u200bthe section:
- humanity naturally went to the need to create rules that would organize the coexistence of different individuals. Respect for rules, including those that would limit the manifestation of violence in conflicts between people, is a prerequisite for the preservation of humanity.

Ethical purpose of the section:

Lead students to understand the meaning of the rules governing people's behavior in general and limiting violence in their power rivalry in particular.

Texts for reading followed by analysis or discussion
myth "Five centuries"(retelling by the historian N.A.Kun of a fragment of Hesiod's poem "Works and days"), which reflects the idea of \u200b\u200bthe ancient Greek poet about the tendency of the development of human society towards disrespect for the established rules;
R. Kipling's tale "A cat that walked by itself" , which allows you to discuss the possibility of a reasonable coexistence of different individuals who are able to respect the rights and obligations of each other.

Glossary of concepts:

Custom - the generally accepted order that traditionally established the rules of social behavior.

The rule - position, setting, principle, serving as a guide to something; the way of thinking, actions adopted by someone.

Contract - written or oral agreement, a condition of mutual obligations.

If the teacher considers it possible to begin work on mastering the concepts "humane", "humanistic", "humanitarian" already at the first lessons on this teaching material, he can refer to the definitions of these concepts on page 70 of the guidelines.

TO THE LESSON ON THE MYTH "FIVE CENTURIES"

Objectives:

are common - to acquaint students with the ideas of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod about the logic of the development of human society; discuss the problem reflected in the myth: "Which way is humanity moving: towards respecting generally accepted rules or neglecting them";

private - to acquaint with a new type of mythological narration; continue the formation of vocabulary skills; to enrich students' ideas about such artistic means as epithet, allegory, metonymy.

Possible course of the lesson

"The affairs of bygone days ..."

The teacher prepares in advance on the blackboard a record of the conventional name of the lesson.

Deeds of days gone by
Legends of deep antiquity ...

These lines from Pushkin will allow us to start a conversation about a really distant time, about matters so long ago that they seem to us now mythical ...

However, a little later I will ask you to turn to these lines again and answer the question: "The questions that we will discuss after getting acquainted with the works created a long time ago are really" things of bygone days "that were important and interesting THEN ? Or are they still worried about us, living NOW? "

Preparation for the perception of the text

On the blackboard, the teacher writes down the words "silver, iron, gold, copper". He then asks the students to arrange these words in a logical sequence and explain why they are proposing this particular arrangement of words. The following chains are possible: gold-silver-copper-iron or vice versa - in this case the words are arranged in descending or increasing order of the value of natural materials.

Further, the teacher can address the students with the words:
- Today we have to get acquainted with the ancient Greek myth - it is called "Five centuries"... It was retold by the historian N.A. Kuhn based on the poem of Hesiod "Works and days".

(You can recall the content of the term "myth": it should be presented as a "prelogical" and not "alogical" awareness of the world. There are more emotions than logic in myths. They reflect the original ideas of people about the universe and connections in it, based on behavior gods with human properties - emotions first of all.All the narration of Hesiod, with which children will get acquainted a little later, is based on the emotional comprehension of the world and its changes.This type of narration is close to a fairy tale in that there is no exact dating in the presentation of events (time in the myth indefinite) and evidence.However, it differs from a fairy tale by focusing on the most important events, problems in people's lives.)

In this myth, the words, from which you built logical chains, are arranged in a special way, "played out". Can you guess by the name of the myth how exactly the words gold, silver, copper, iron will be played out in it? (Students are given the opportunity to express their guesses; the teacher can briefly record their guesses on the chalkboard.) Read the text to make sure your guesses are correct or wrong.

Hesiod (end of VIII-VII centuries BC) - the founder of the didactic epic in ancient Greek literature. Basic information about Hesiod is drawn from his poem "Works and days"... Despite the bitterness that pervades the poem, her mood is not hopeless. The poet seeks to find traits of goodness in his century, to indicate the source of hope. First of all, he believes in gods and human labor. Another poem "Theogony", Hesiod affirms the idea of \u200b\u200bthe power and glory of Zeus, not only the most powerful, but also the wise ruler of the world. The order of the universe is helped to maintain Zeus by his spouses: the goddess of fertility Demeter and the personification of the natural order of things Themis, who, in turn, gives birth to three Ohr - goddesses of the changing seasons: Eunomia, Dika, Irina (Law, Justice, Peace), denoting the foundations of ethical social norms. These names are significant: they indicate precisely those phenomena, the observance of which, according to Hesiod, was threatened.

According to M. Nikola

Reading text

At the stage of preparing for the lesson, the teacher may need additional information about Hesiod.

In the book for the student, not all the words that name the ancient Greek realities are explained, since some of them are already familiar to students from the history course. In addition to those indicated in the children's book, the following words may also need explanation:

Cadmus - the hero of ancient Greek myths, the founder of Thebes. After the abduction of Europa by Zeus, her brothers, including Cadmus, were sent by their father in search of their sister. The Delphic Oracle ordered K. to stop searching, follow the cow he meets, and build a city where she stops. Fulfilling this command, K. arrived in Boeotia (along with Attica, the most significant region of Ancient Greece), where he founded Cadmea - a citadel, around which later grew Thebes - the largest city of Boeotia, Homer - "sevenfold" Thebes.

Oedipus - the son of the Theban king Lai. The Delphic oracle predicted that in the future Oedipus would become the murderer of his father and the wife of his mother, therefore, by order of his father, he was thrown to be devoured by animals as a child. Found by the shepherds, Oedipus was handed over to the childless Corinthian king Poliv, who raised him as his son. Growing up, Oedipus met his father Lai at a crossroads and killed him, not knowing that it was his father. Oedipus freed Thebes from the Sphinx, solving its riddle, became king there and, suspecting nothing, married his mother. Having learned the truth, he blinded himself.

Kronos (Cronus) is one of the most ancient pre-Olympic gods, the son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), the youngest of the Titans, who overthrew and maimed his father. Kronos's mother predicted that, like his father, he would be overthrown by one of his children. Therefore, Kronos swallowed all his newborn children. Only the youngest son of Kronos Zeus escaped this fate, instead of whom a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes was swallowed. Subsequently, Zeus overthrew his father and forced him to vomit all the children he swallowed. Under the leadership of Zeus, the children of Kronos declared war on the Titans, which lasted ten years. Together with the other defeated Titans, Kronos was thrown into Tartarus.

Initially, Kronos, apparently, was the god of agriculture, harvest (in some myths, the sickle was considered a weapon and attribute of Kronos). Kronos is associated with a legend about the golden age, during which Kronos ruled the world.

Folk etymology brought the name of Kronos closer to the Greek designation of time - chronos, and Kronos began to be considered as the god of time.

Ocean. 1. According to Hesiod - the son of Uranus and Gaia, the titan, the brother of Kronos, the husband of Tephis, who bore him three thousand sons - river deities and three thousand daughters - oceanids. The ocean lives in solitude in an underwater palace and does not appear at the gathering of the gods. In later myths, it is supplanted by Poseidon. 2. The mythical river surrounding the earth. In the Ocean, according to the ideas of the ancients, all sea currents, rivers and springs originate. From the Ocean, the sun, moon and stars rise and descend into it (except for the constellation Ursa Major).

1. Name the five centuries in the order in which they are listed in the myth. (Gold, silver, copper, age of heroes, iron.) What is the name of the century for the first time (Age of heroes.) Do you know myths that would tell about the life of people and gods in the age of heroes? (Some myths about Achilles, Hercules, Argonauts.)
Write down the names of all five centuries. Find a word for a capacious, summarizing characteristics of each century. (Happy, cruel, heroic, tragic, noble, joyful, difficult, etc.)

2. What do you think, in the description of the centuries, is drawn our attention with the appearance in the logical chain of the name of the age of heroes? Find words and expressions in the description of each century that characterize the life of people in each century. Write them down.
(Gold: painless and happy life; people lived serenely.
Silver: "unreasonable" people ...
Copper: terrible and powerful people; loved the war, profuse with groans; destroyed each other.
Age of Heroes: the human race is more noble, more just, however, they also died in wars and bloody battles.
Iron: exhausting work, heavy worries; people do not honor each other, the guest does not find hospitality, do not keep the given oath, do not value truth and goodness; cities destroy each other, violence reigns everywhere; they have no protection from evil ...).

How, according to Hesiod, did the life of people on Earth change with the change of centuries? Why? What technique helps to draw such a conclusion? How do you think the emotional coloring of words that characterize the life of people of different ages is changing? (The names of the ages are given by analogy with metals, the comparative value of which is different: gold is more expensive than silver, silver is more expensive than copper, copper is more expensive than iron.)

3. In the lives of people of almost every century, which Hesiod spoke about, there were light and dark sides: joy and sorrow. Which of the ages is estimated by Hesiod as the most cloudless, the happiest for the people living in it? Why? Reread the description of their life. Based on this description, what synonyms could you choose for the word "happy"? (Serene, calm, quiet.) Find metonyms and comparisons in the text that help create a feeling of a happy, calm life for people in the golden age. ("Their painless and happy life was an eternal feast"; "death ... a calm, quiet sleep"; "The gods themselves came to consult them.")

4. Can the life of subsequent human genera be called calm, serene? In what centuries, according to the worldview of the ancient Greeks, by the gods of Olympus, did people have the opportunity to choose one or another line of behavior? What choice did they make? What were the consequences of this choice?

5. How does the story of the life of the people of the Iron Age end? Who or what could have changed their lives? (In the Iron Age, violence reigns on earth, because people themselves do not behave as they should. Conscience and Justice have left the Earth. Therefore, positive changes depend primarily on the people themselves: they will begin to respect established, generally accepted rules - Conscience and Justice will be able to to return.)

7. Imagine that you have been asked to describe the past centuries and the time in which you live now. Come up with, if you like, your names for the centuries and their time limits. Describe the life of people living in these centuries. Try to describe "your age" (that is, the time in which you live) from the most different sides, not missing either its bright sides or any problems that concern you.

Lesson conclusions do the students themselves, answering the teacher's questions:
Today we talked about organizing people's lives according to the rules. Can this topic be classified as an "eternal" topic? Why?

Explanation of homework

Read this myth to your family or friends who are older than you. Ask them about that "century", that is, the time in which they lived, being at your age. How does it seem to them now? And how do they characterize the time in which they live now? Write down the definitions, epithets that they will use to describe the past and present. Prepare a story about your conversation.

TO THE LESSON ON THE TALE OF R. KIPLING "THE CAT WALKING ON ITSELF"
(The material is designed for 1-2 academic hours)

Objectives:

general - encourage students to think about the meaning of the rules and laws that allow different individuals to coexist;

private - to deepen the idea of \u200b\u200bschoolchildren about the genre of literary fairy tales; continue work on the formation of skills of lexical analysis of the text; to draw the attention of schoolchildren to the role of lexical and compositional repetitions.

Possible course of the lesson

Preparing to discuss the central problem of the work (2 min.)

Fast forward from Ancient Greece to another time - the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. It was during this period that the English writer Rudyard Kipling created his works. Along with the most varied problems, he was also interested in the question of the possibility of a reasonable coexistence of various individuals capable of respecting the rights and obligations of each other. Reflections on this matter were reflected in his tale " A cat that walked by itself. "

During the lesson preparation phase, the teacher may need additional information about the writer.

Rudyard Kipling- English writer (1865-1936). He was born and spent his early childhood in India. At that time, India was dependent on Great Britain, it was its colony. In an ancient beautiful country, English officials were in charge. Rudyard Kipling's father also served in India. He was the director of the Bombay Museum of Art. In this large Indian city, the future writer spent his childhood. And when Rudyard Kipling grew up and it was time to go to school, he was sent to England ...

In England, Kipling did not live with relatives, but with strangers who were found through an ad. Soon the boy's life became unbearable: the mistress of the house completely persecuted him: she beat him, locked him in a dark room, humiliated him in every possible way ... He learned to read very late and with great difficulty, and when he got bad marks, he tried to hide them. The hostess found, as it seemed to her, a way to deal with this. Once, when Kipling threw away his diary with monthly marks, she pasted a sheet of paper with the words "liar" on the boy's back and sent him to school in this form. But that didn't help either ...

The only thing in which he found salvation over time was reading. Rudyard read voraciously everything, every printed page he came across. But his tormentor began to take books away from him.

The boy suffered from nervous exhaustion and was rapidly losing his sight.

Upon learning of what was happening, his mother came to England, and when she entered her son's room and bent over to kiss him goodnight, he instinctively barred himself from the blow. This settled the matter. The boy was sent to another school, after which he returned to India.

According to N.P. Mikhalskaya and Yu.I. Kagarlitsky

After leaving college, Kipling became a journalist in India, famed as a writer and poet. In our country, he received special fame "Jungle Books" and "Fairy tales just like that" . "Fairy tales" were composed in the family circle, literally at the hearth. Therefore, probably, there is so much home warmth in them. Their first listeners were the Kipling children. Fairy tales were written for them and, in a sense, about them. "Fairy Tales" are imbued with the spirit of the home, or rather - the idea of \u200b\u200bthe House.

Over the years, the attitude towards the personality and work of Kipling has changed in his homeland and in our country. Nevertheless, time is the best critic. The British Empire has fallen, but the best of Kipling's writing lives on. It's not only " Jungle Books " and "Fairy tales just like that." T.S. Eliot, who sneered at Kipling on the eve of the First World War, published his selected poems during the second, accompanied by a large preface in which he recognized him as a great Master of the Word. S. Maugham published in the middle of the century an anthology of stories by R. Kipling and concludes his essay about him with a categorical statement: "Rudyard Kipling is the only author in our country who can be put alongside Maupassant and Chekhov. He is our greatest master of story." This is how he will enter the 21st century.

According to G. Ionica

Reading text by role

There is a continuation in the text of the fairy tale - a poem translated by S. Marshak, which interested schoolchildren can get acquainted with on their own by contacting the library.

Analytical work on the text:

After reading the tale, students are asked to answer questions that help to identify their perception, for example: "Did you like the tale? Which of the episodes, characters you remember most vividly?" etc.

1. Why is the word "wild" repeated so often in the text of the tale? Find synonyms for this word.

2. The Woman sets a condition for each of the newly arriving animals, the observance of which guarantees him certain benefits. Why do animals agree to abide by these conditions? In what way does a woman achieve this - peaceful or violent? (Each animal has a reason why it voluntarily accepts the offer of the Woman; each animal receives a reward for meeting the conditions. If time permits, you can ask the question: "Why is it the woman who makes the author change the life of this world and conclude a contract?" with a comparison of male and female principles (matriarchal and patriarchal) in the organization of the life of human society.)

3. There are several contracts in the tale: The Cat concludes contracts with the Woman, Man and Dog; A woman makes contracts with animals. What are the clauses of these agreements? How are they similar and how are they different? (It is important to identify the typological similarity of all contracts: they consist of the formulation of the rights and obligations of each of the contracting parties.)

4. We have already watched the "transformations" of three characters - Dog, Horse. Cows. What is the role of a Cat in a fairy tale?
The cat "wanders wherever it pleases and walks by itself." How do you understand the expression "by itself"? What do you think: to be "on your own" is always good, always bad, or otherwise?

5. Why does the Cat, who values \u200b\u200bfreedom so much, seek to enter the cave? How does the Cat manage to get the right to sit by the fire and lap milk? Has the Cat changed after the conclusion of the contract with the Woman?

6. With the help of what artistic means does the author emphasize at the beginning of the tale the existence of animals and people according to the principle "each by himself"?

Possible work on the board or in notebooks:
How?
- the word "wild"

You can familiarize students with the meaning of this word:

" Wild: 1. Being in a primitive state (about people), uncultivated (about plants), untamed, not domesticated (about animals). 2. transfer. Rough, unbridled. 3. transfer. Ridiculous. 4. Not associated with any organizations, acting independently (colloquial) ".

But it is better to first listen to the statements of the students and rely on them in analytical work. Acquaintance with the dictionary entry summarizes, but does not replace the statements of schoolchildren. It is important to emphasize that "wild" is chaotic, disorganized;

Repetition of the word "wild": "The dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild ..." (lexical repeat);

The repetition of the word "wild" with epithets that reinforce the emotionally negative assessment: "The man, of course, was also wild, terribly wild, terribly wild"; "wild-predicate, the wildest";

Opposition "tame - wild" (antithesis).

To make the chalkboard appear complete, students are asked to answer the following question:

Is it possible to find a literary term that is common to all of these techniques? (Students will name an epithet.)

7. With the help of what artistic means does the author emphasize the transition from one level of relationships between people and animals to another level?

As a result of work, the following entry appears on the board:
Wild Homemade
My enemy my friend
My Enemy's Wife My Friend's Wife
Wild Dog First Friend
Wild Horse First Servant
Wild Cow Giver of Good Food

8. Find in the text and write down all the words that call all the participants in the events taking place.

The teacher writes down the words on the board following the students in such a way that the result is the following:

Cave
Woman Dog Curtain Fire
Man Cat Milk Pot Witchcraft
Child Horse Song
Cow
Bat

Would anything change in the fairy tale if these same words were written not with a capital, but with a lowercase letter? (The use of a capital letter reinforces the symbolic meaning of the tale.)

Why did the Wild Cat become simply called the Cat and did not receive a new name, like the rest of the wild animals after the conclusion of an agreement with the Woman?

9. Does this tale resemble the folk tales you know? Than? What effect does Kipling achieve by repeatedly using the method of threefold compositional repetition, characteristic of the fairy tale genre?

Explanation of homework

1. Is this tale known to your family? If not, briefly summarize its content (remember to convey the main point). What episodes are you sure to include in your retelling? Find out the attitude of your listeners to the need to follow generally accepted rules in relationships between people, even if they are very different from each other. Ask what is more difficult for your interlocutors: to exercise their rights or to fulfill their duties.

2. Prepare an answer to the question: "Can the life of a human society be organized according to the principle" each by himself "?

Final work on the section

1. You had the opportunity to get acquainted with the reflections of Hesiod and R. Kipling. These people lived for a long time, "then."
You yourself thought, heard the opinions of your classmates. It just happened, "now."
What in the old, "then" reflections of Hesiod and Kipling seems to you important, relevant in today's "present" day?

2. Discuss in writing about one of the following topics:
My hypothesis about the reasons for the emergence of rules in people's lives. Why do people need rules?
Describe those situations in which the rules must be followed, and those situations in which they are not needed.

In the following lessons, you will get acquainted with those works (or fragments from them) in which various problems will be discussed, in particular, such as:

The role of rules in people's lives;

Vulnerable, defenseless position of people who find themselves at the mercy of natural forces or at the mercy of arbitrary actions of other people (including during armed conflicts) and the need to protect victims of such circumstances;

Consequences of actions committed and responsibility for them and many others.

Prepare for the beginning of such a conversation and read excerpts from the novel by W. Scott "Ivanhoe", from the novel by A. Dumas " Three Musketeers", which you will find in the section "The eternal controversy: Who is better? Who is stronger?"

1... Periodization of ancient culture

The history of ancient art includes several stages:

1. Cretan-Mycenaean. III-II millennium BC At this stage, the art of the masters of Fr. Crete. It is here that one of the palaces is located, known as the palace of King Minos, where the labyrinth of the Minotaur was located (16,000 thousand sq. M.)

2. Homeric. XI-VIII c. BC. It is characterized by the famous epic, the proliferation of small-scale ceramics of the geometric style.

3. Archaic. VII-VI c. BC. The time of the emergence of city-states (policies) and the rapid development of art. During this period, the Greek religion was formed, which is characterized by polytheism, which resulted in the creation of a rich mythology, the Olympic Games, the Greek theater were born, the first philosophical system (natural philosophy) appeared, it was represented by Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, they tried to comprehend nature and its laws, to reveal the fundamental principle of the material world.

4. Classic. Beginning V-IV c. BC. During this period, Greek democracy received great development, which resulted in the rise of economic and political life, Athens became the center, monumentality, architecture (the temple of the victorious Athena, Acropolis, Parthenon) developed, this was the flowering of Greek philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle).

5. Hellenism. III-I c. BC. The widespread spread of Hellenistic culture among the cities of the Mediterranean coast, hence Sencritism.

2. The mythology of the ancient Greeks

Greek mythology has evolved over several centuries, passed from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation. The myths have reached us already in the poetry of Hesiod and Homer, as well as in the works of the Greek playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and others. This is why they had to be collected from a variety of sources.

Mythographers appeared in Greece around the 4th century BC. These include the sophist Hippias, as well as Herodotus of Heracles, Heraclitus of Pontic, and many others. For example, Dionysius Samoisky compiled genealogical tables and studied tragic myths.

In the heroic period, mythological images are centralized around the myths associated with the legendary Mount Olympus.

According to the myths of Ancient Greece, you can recreate the picture of the world in the representation of its ancient inhabitants. So, according to Greek mythology, the world was inhabited by monsters and giants: giants, one-eyed cyclops (Cyclops) and mighty Titans - the formidable children of Earth (Gaia) and Heaven (Uranus). In these images, the Greeks personified the elemental forces of nature, which were conquered by Zeus (Diaz) - the Thunderer and the Thunderbolt, who established order in the world and became the ruler of the Universe.

In the beginning, there was only eternal, boundless, dark Chaos, which contained the source of the life of the world: everything arose from Chaos - both the whole world, and the immortal gods, and the goddess Earth - Gaia, giving life to everything that lives and grows on it; and the mighty force that animates everything, Love - Eros.

Deep underground, gloomy Tartarus was born - a terrible abyss, full of eternal darkness.

Creating the world, Chaos gave birth to the Eternal Darkness - Erebus and the dark Night - Nikta. And from the Night and Darkness came the eternal Light - Ether and the joyful bright Day - Hemera (Imera). The light spread all over the world, and night and day began to replace each other.

Mighty, blessed Gaia gave birth to the boundless blue Sky - Uranus, which stretched over the Earth, reigning in the whole world. The high Mountains, born of the Earth, proudly rose to him, and the eternally rustling Sea spread wide.

After Heaven, Mountains and Sea originated from Mother Earth, Uranus took the blessed Gaia as his wife, from whom he had six sons - powerful, formidable titans - and six daughters. The son of Uranus and Gaia - the titan Ocean, flowing around like a boundless river, the whole earth, and the goddess Thetis gave birth to all the rivers that rolled their waves to the sea, as well as sea goddesses - oceanids. The Titan Hiperion and Theia gave the world the Sun - Helios, the Moon - Selene and the ruddy Dawn - rosy-finned Eos. From Astrea and Eos came all the stars that burn in the night sky, and all the winds: the north wind - Boreas (Βορριάς), the east - Evrus (Εύρος), the southern Note (Νοτιάς) and the western, gentle wind Zephyr (Ζέφυρος), carrying abundant rain clouds.

In addition to the titans, the mighty Earth gave birth to three giants - cyclops with one eye in their forehead - and three fifty-headed hundred-handed giants - Hecatoncheires, against whom nothing could resist, because their elemental strength knew no limit.

Uranus hated his giant children and imprisoned them in the bowels of the Earth, not allowing them to come out into the light. Mother Earth suffered from the fact that she was pressed by a terrible burden, enclosed in the depths of her bowels. Then she summoned her children, the Titans, to persuade them to rebel against Uranus. However, the titans were afraid to raise a hand against their father. Only the younger of them, the insidious Kronos, by cunning overthrew Uranus, taking away his power.

In punishment to Kronos, the goddess Night gave birth to Thanat - death, Eridu - discord, Apatu - deception, Ker - destruction, Hypnos - a dream with nightmarish visions, Nemesis - revenge for crimes - and many other gods who brought into the world Kronos, who reigned on the throne of his father , horror, strife, deception, strife and misfortune.

Kronos himself did not have confidence in the strength and durability of his power: he was afraid that his children would rebel against him and he would suffer the fate of his own father Uranus. In this regard, Kronos ordered his wife Rhea to bring him children who were born, five of which he mercilessly swallowed: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon.

KronosZeus (Diaz) - the ruler of the sky, the father of gods and people. Ares (Aris) - the god of war

Rhea, in order not to lose her last child, on the advice of her parents, Uranus-Heaven and Gaia-Earth, retired to the island of Crete, where she gave birth to her youngest son Zeus in a deep cave. Hiding the newborn in a cave, Rhea let the cruel Kronos swallow a long stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead of his son. Kronos did not even suspect that he was deceived by his wife, while Zeus grew up in Crete under the supervision of the nymphs Adrastea and Idea, who fed him with the milk of the divine goat Amalfea. Bees carried honey to little Zeus from the slopes of the high mountain of Dikta, and at the entrance to the cave, young kuretas hit their shields with swords whenever little Zeus cried so that the all-powerful Kronos would not inadvertently hear his cry.

The Titans were replaced by the kingdom of Zeus, who defeated his father Kronos and became the supreme deity of the Olympic pantheon; the lord of heavenly forces, commanding thunder, lightning, clouds and showers. Dominating the universe, Zeus gave people laws and kept order.

In the view of the ancient Greeks, the Olympian gods were like people and the relationship between them resembled the relationship between people: they quarreled and reconciled, envied and interfered in people's lives, took offense, took part in wars, rejoiced, had fun and fell in love. Each of the gods had a specific occupation, being responsible for a specific area of \u200b\u200blife:

Zeus (Diaz) is the ruler of the sky, the father of gods and people.

Hera (Ira) is the wife of Zeus, the patroness of the family.

Poseidon is the lord of the seas.

Hestia (Estia) is the protector of the family hearth.

Demeter (Dimitra) - the goddess of agriculture.

Apollo is the god of light and music.

Athena is the goddess of wisdom.

Hermes (Ermis) - god of trade and messenger of the gods.

Hephaestus (Ifestos) is the god of fire.

Aphrodite is the goddess of beauty.

Ares (Aris) is the god of war.

Artemis is the goddess of the hunt.

People on earth turned to the gods - to each according to his "specialty", erected temples for them and, in order to propitiate them, brought gifts as sacrifices.

According to Greek mythology, in addition to the children of Chaos, the Titans and the Olympian gods, the earth was inhabited by many other deities who personified the forces of nature.

Poseidon - Lord of the Seas Hercules Nymphs

So, in the rivers and streams lived the nymphs of Naiads, in the sea - the Nereids, in the forests - Dryads and Satyrs, in the mountains - the nymph Echo.

The life of a person was ruled by three goddesses of Fate - Moira (Lachesis, Cloto, Atropos). It was they who spun the thread of human life from birth to death and could cut it off when they wanted ...

According to Karl Marx, the myths of Ancient Greece capture the "childhood of human society", which in Hellas "developed most beautifully and has eternal charm for us."

The earliest initial period in the development of Greek art is called Homeric (12th - 8th centuries BC). This time was reflected in the epic poems - "Iliad" and "Odyssey", the author of which the ancient Greeks considered the legendary poet Homer. Although Homer's poems were formed in their final form later (in the 8th - 7th centuries BC), they tell about more ancient social relations characteristic of the time of the decay of the primitive communal system and the emergence of a slave society.

During the Homeric period, Greek society as a whole still retained its clan structure. Ordinary members of the tribe and clan were free farmers, partly shepherds. Handicrafts, which were predominantly rural in nature, received some development.

But the gradual transition to iron implements, the improvement of farming methods increased labor productivity and created conditions for the accumulation of wealth, the development of property inequality and slavery. However, slavery in this era was still of an episodic and patriarchal nature, slave labor was used (especially at the beginning) mainly in the economy of the tribal leader and military leader - Basileus.

Basileus was the head of the tribe; he united in his person judicial, military and priestly power. Basilevs ruled the community together with the council of clan elders, called bule. In the most important cases, a popular assembly was called - agora, consisting of all the free members of the community.

Tribes that settled at the end of the 2nd millennium BC on the territory of modern Greece, were then still at a late stage in the development of pre-class society. Therefore, the art and culture of the Homeric period took shape in the process of processing and development of those, essentially still primitive, skills and ideas that the Greek tribes brought with them, who only to a small extent adopted the traditions of a higher and more mature artistic culture of the Aegean world.

However, some legends and mythological images that developed in the culture of the Aegean world entered the circle of mythological and poetic representations of the ancient Greeks, just as various events in the history of the Aegean world received figurative and mythological transformation in the legends and in the epic of the ancient Greeks (the myth of the Minotaur, the Trojan epic cycle, etc.). The monumental architecture of ancient Greek temples, which originated in the Homeric period, used and reworked the type of megaron that had developed in Mycenae and Tiryns - a hall with a passage and a portico. Some of the technical skills and experience of Mycenaean architects were also used by Greek craftsmen. But in general, the entire aesthetic and figurative structure of the art of the Aegean world, its picturesque, subtly expressive character and ornamental, patterned forms were alien to the artistic consciousness of the ancient Greeks, who originally stood at an earlier stage of social development than the states of the Aegean world that had gone over to slavery.

12th - 8th centuries BC. were the era of the addition of Greek mythology. During this period, the mythological character of the consciousness of the ancient Greeks received its most complete and consistent expression in epic poetry. In large cycles of epic songs, the people's ideas about their life in the past and present, about gods and heroes, about the origin of earth and heaven, as well as the people's ideals of valor and nobility, were reflected. Later, already in the archaic period, these oral songs were consolidated into large artistically completed poems.

The ancient epic, along with the mythology inextricably linked with it, expressed in its images the life of the people and their spiritual aspirations, having a tremendous impact on all subsequent development of Greek culture. His themes and plots, rethought in accordance with the spirit of the times, were developed in drama and lyrics, reflected in sculpture, painting, drawings on vases.

The fine arts and architecture of Homeric Greece, with all their direct folk origin, did not reach either the breadth of coverage of public life, or the artistic perfection of epic poetry.

The earliest (of the extant) works of art are vases of the "geometric style", decorated with geometric patterns applied in brown paint over the pale yellowish background of an earthen vessel. Ornament covered the vase, usually in its upper part, with a row of ring belts, sometimes filling its entire surface. The most complete picture of the "geometric style" is given by the so-called Dipylon vases dating back to the 9th - 8th centuries. BC. and found by archaeologists in an ancient cemetery near the Dipylon gate in Athens. These very large vessels, sometimes almost as tall as a person, had a funerary and cult purpose, repeating in shape the clay vessels that served to store large quantities of grain or vegetable oil. On the Dipylon amphoras, the ornament is especially abundant: the pattern most often consists of purely geometric motifs, in particular the meander braids (the meander pattern was preserved as an ornamental motive throughout the development of Greek art). In addition to geometric ornamentation, schematized plant and animal designs were widely used. The figures of animals (birds, animals, for example, a fallow deer, etc.) are repeated many times over individual stripes of the ornament, giving the image a clear, albeit monotonous, rhythmic structure.

An important feature of the later Dipylon vases (8th century BC) is the introduction into the pattern of primitive subject images with schematized figures of people reduced to an almost geometric sign. These plot motives are very diverse (the rite of mourning for the deceased, the chariot race, sailing ships, etc.). For all their schematic and primitive figures, the figures of people and especially animals have a certain expressiveness in conveying the general nature of movement and the clarity of the story. If, in comparison with the paintings of the Cretan-Mycenaean vases, the images on the Dipylon vases are coarser and more primitive, then in relation to the art of pre-class society they certainly signify a step forward.

The sculpture of Homeric time has come down to us only in the form of small plastic, for the most part of an obviously cult character. These small figurines depicting gods or heroes were made of terracotta, ivory, or bronze. The terracotta figurines found in Boeotia, completely covered with ornaments, are distinguished by their primitiveness and indivisibility of forms; some parts of the body are barely outlined, others are inordinately highlighted. Such is, for example, the figure of a seated goddess with a child: her legs are fused with the seat (throne or bench), her nose is huge and like a beak, the transfer of the anatomical structure of the body does not interest the master at all.

Along with terracotta figurines, bronze ones also existed. "Hercules and the Centaur" and "Horse", found in Olympia and dating back to the end of the Homeric period, give a very clear idea of \u200b\u200bthe naive primitiveness and schematism of this small bronze sculpture intended for dedication to the gods. The statuette of the so-called "Apollo" from Boeotia (8th century BC) with its elongated proportions and general construction of the figure resembles images of a person in Crete-Mycenaean art, but sharply differs from them in frontal stiffness and schematic convention of the transfer of face and body.

Monumental sculpture of Homeric Greece has not reached our time. Its character can be judged from the descriptions of ancient authors. The main type of this sculpture was the so-called xoans - idols made of wood or stone and which were, apparently, a roughly cut tree trunk or a block of stone, completed with a barely outlined image of the head and facial features. Some idea of \u200b\u200bthis sculpture can be given by geometrically simplified bronze images of gods found during excavations of a temple in Dreros in Crete, built in the 8th century. BC. the Dorians, who had already settled on this island long before.

Only a few terracotta figurines from Boeotia dating back to the 8th century, such as the figurine depicting a peasant with a rogue, have features of a more lively attitude to the real world; despite the naivety of the decision, this group is comparatively more truthful in terms of the motive of movement and is less bound by the immobility and conventionality of the art of the Homeric period. In such images, one can see a certain parallel to the epic of Hesiod, created at the same time, glorifying peasant labor, although here, too, the fine arts seem to be very far behind literature.

By the 8th century, and possibly also by the 9th century. BC, include the most ancient remains of monuments of early Greek architecture (the temple of Artemis Orphia in Sparta, the temple in Thermos in Aetolia, the mentioned temple in Dreros in Crete). They used some of the traditions of Mycenaean architecture, mainly a general plan similar to the megaron; the altar-hearth was placed inside the temple; on the façade, as in the megaron, there were two columns. The most ancient of these structures had walls of adobe bricks and timber frames, set on a stone plinth. Remains of the ceramic facing of the upper parts of the temple have been preserved. In general, the architecture of Greece in the Homeric period was at the initial stage of its development.