Gasparov the Capitoline wolf read. Mikhail Gasparov - Capitoline Wolf

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Entertaining Greece
Stories about ancient Greek culture

From the author

If you, a young reader, leaf through this book, look at the pictures, look at the table of contents, read a few pages here and there, then the first question you ask will probably be: “Did this really happen?” I will answer: yes and no.

It is true that there were glorious victories of the Greeks over the Persians, and then the fabulously quick conquest of the East by Alexander the Great. It is true that the Spartans were invincible warriors, and the Athenians were better than others at building marble temples and composing tragedies for the theater. It is true that the word “philosophy” first appeared in the Greek language and that in the Library of Alexandria they studied almost all the same sciences that we study.

But around these events there were so many oracle predictions that came true; that all the heroes were heroes without fear and reproach, and the villains were villains to the depths of their black souls; that all the speeches that were said at the same time were so smart, brief and coherent; that all the wonders of earthly nature and human customs that the ancient Greeks heard about were really like this - of course, one cannot vouch for this. There's a lot of fiction here. Whose idea is this?

The Greek people themselves invented this. This is how it always happens: when some interesting event happens, news about it is passed on from mouth to mouth, acquiring new and new picturesque details, and in the end the facts are so closely intertwined with the legends that the learned historian has to work hard to separate one from the other. another.

How historians reconstruct the actual appearance of events from contradictory stories about them - this could be written very interestingly, but this would be a completely different book. Our book is about how the ancient Greeks themselves remembered their past. Is it possible to judge a person by what he says about himself? It’s possible: even when he composes, we see what he is and what he would like to be. This is how you can judge an entire ancient culture by its stories about itself.

Everything that now goes without saying for us was once discovered for the first time. And the fact that one must obey the law; and the fact that parallel lines do not intersect anywhere; and the fact that the beating of the pulse in a person comes from the heart; and the fact that the thought of a thing can say more about it than the look at this thing; and the fact that interesting stories can be played out in faces and then it is called drama. Such discoveries were made separately in Babylon, and in India, and in China, and in Greece. But our own civilization, the modern European one, developed mainly on the basis of the ancient Greek (and the ancient Roman one that replaced it). Therefore, ancient Greek discoveries are closer to us than any others.

From century to century, almost the same definitions that were once given by Euclid were rewritten in mathematics textbooks; and poets and artists mentioned and depicted Zeus and Apollo, Hercules and Achilles, Homer and Anacreon, Pericles and Alexander the Great, firmly knowing that the reader and viewer would immediately recognize these images. Therefore, getting to know ancient Greek culture better means better understanding Shakespeare, Raphael, and Pushkin. And ultimately – ourselves. Because it is impossible to answer the question: “Who are we?” without answering the question: “Where did we come from?”

However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Because “know yourself” is also one of the testaments of ancient Greek civilization, and you will encounter it more than once in this book. I wish you success!

Part one
Greece becomes Greece
or Before the law there was a legend

There is a tribe of people

There is a tribe of gods

The breath in us is from one mother,

But we have been given different powers:

Man is nothing

And the copper sky is an unshakable abode

Forever and ever.

But there is something

Raising us to the celestial level, -

Be it a powerful spirit,

Be it the force of nature, -

Although we do not know to what limit

Our path, day and night, is outlined

Rock.

In the beginning there was a fairy tale

Historical science begins with chronology. This may be the most boring part of the story, but it is also the most necessary. If you don’t know what happened in the past before and what happened next, then all other knowledge loses all meaning.

The Greeks understood this and memorized chronology diligently. On the island of Paros, the effort went so far that a large chronological table of Greek history was carved in marble and displayed in the square for passers-by to look at and enlighten. This table has been preserved. But it looks, to modern eyes, a little strange. Here is its beginning with minor abbreviations.

Year 1582 BC e. King Kekrop reigns in Athens.

Year 1529. The Great Flood, from which Deucalion and Pyrrha escaped.

The year is 1519. King Cadmus, the founder of Cadmeia, came to Thebes from Phenicia and taught the Greeks writing.

You say: “Is this history? This is a fairytale! It’s like compiling a table on the chronology of Kievan Rus and including dates in it: then Ilya Muromets killed the Nightingale the Robber, and then Ruslan killed Chernomor.”

A Greek, hearing such words, would be offended. Perhaps he himself is from a noble family, which traces his origin to one of the mythological heroes mentioned here. The Spartan king Leonidas, the hero of Thermopylae, considered himself the great-great (repeat this “great” 20 times!) - great-grandson of Hercules. The Greeks considered the lifespan of a human being to be 70 years; the best period for the birth of a son is 35 years. Leonidas died in 480 BC. e. Count from this date 23 times 35 years (the life of Leonidas and 22 generations of his ancestors) and you will find yourself in 1285 BC. e., just at the time in which the Parian Table settles Hercules. How can one not believe such a chronology?

And not only vain kings, but also more serious people often elevated their family to heroes and gods. Hippocrates was a great scientist, the father of Greek medicine; We will meet him again in this book. He was from a family of hereditary doctors, the Asclepiads, and this family began with Asclepius, the god of healing, the son of Apollo; Hippocrates was the 18th generation descendant of God. If you calculate the years, you will get: God lived shortly before the Trojan War. And it’s true: in the Iliad it is written that the son of the god Asclepius, Machaon, was, so to speak, the chief physician of the Greek army at Troy. (Do you know the big bright swallowtail butterfly? So, it is named after this very doctor-demigod, but I don’t know why.)

So let's not laugh in advance. For the Greek, the chronology of myths was an important matter. It was studied by great scientists. Eratosthenes, the great mathematician who first calculated the size of the globe (we will learn how he did it in the last part of this book), also assiduously calculated the date of the fall of Troy. By the way, he got it differently than on the Parian table: 1183. But these are minor things.

And two more words. I said that I rewrote the beginning of the Parian Table with minor abbreviations. But I made one more change to it - very simple and very noticeable. Which? Try to guess. For those who don’t guess, I’ll tell you about it on page 52.

Relocation of the Dorians

If you review the Parian chronological table and try to guess in it the place where mythology ends and history begins, then most likely it will be a mysterious line: “Year 1128. Relocation of the Dorians led by the kings of the Heraclides to the Peloponnese.” Mysterious - because if any of you remember who the Heraclides were, you can hardly imagine what kind of migration it was.

And there was a resettlement: this is indeed not only mythology, but also history. The Greeks are not the original inhabitants of Greece, they are newcomers. They came here from the north, from across the Balkans; where and with whom they lived before – scientists are still arguing about this. The Greeks themselves did not remember this. But they remembered something else well - that they moved here in two waves. The Achaean tribes were the first to migrate; it is their kingdoms and principalities that are preserved in myth. The Dorian tribes were the second to migrate; and about this migration, one might say, the last Greek myth was composed, and then history began. The myth was like this.

The most famous Greek hero was Hercules. He was a descendant of the Argive kings. But he himself was not a king: he lived his whole life as a homeless worker in the services of others. Dying, he ordered himself to be burned at the stake on the top of Mount Eta. From this fire, hot springs bubbled up at the foot of Eta: from these springs, the neighboring mountain pass began to be called the “Hot Gate” - Thermopylae.

Next to Mount Eta lies a tiny mountain region - Dorida. The sons of Hercules found shelter here; the eldest and most important of them was Gill. They were cramped in little Doris. They gathered a squad of brave Dorian mountaineers and decided to go to the Peloponnese - to gain the Argive kingdom of their ancestors.

Before the campaign, as usual, they turned to the oracle. (An oracle is not a person, but a sanctuary where the priests made predictions on behalf of God; we will tell you how it was arranged later.) We received the answer: “Wait for the third fruits and step through the gorge.” Gill reasoned that the “third fruits” is the third harvest, the third summer; he waited two years, and in the third year he led his Dorians through the “gorge” of the Isthmus of Corinth. Local Achaeans came out to meet them. They agreed to resolve the dispute through single combat between the leaders. The leaders came together and Gill fell. The Dorians had to return to Dorida with nothing.

They turned to the oracle again: “Why did you deceive us?” The oracle replied: “You yourself did not want to understand the broadcast correctly. The fruits are not earthly, but human; The gorge is not land, but sea.” The Heraclides understood: victory would not go to them, but only to the third generation after them, and they had to go to it not along the narrow Isthmus of Corinth, but by swimming through the narrow Gulf of Corinth.

While three generations have passed, a hundred years have passed. The Heraclides waited patiently for their time. Finally, great-grandchildren grew up behind the sons and grandsons: three brothers - Aristodemus, Temen and Cresfont. They gathered an army and built ships for the crossing. The oracle was asked again: “What should we do to win?” The answer sounded mysterious: “Take the three-eyed guide.” The brothers thought. Suddenly a rider appeared on the road, blind in one eye. It was the Aetolian prince Oxilus: he killed a relative, lived in poverty for ten years in exile and was now returning to his homeland. They began to persuade him to join the campaign. He easily agreed, but immediately gave himself a reward: one of the best pieces of the Peloponnese - Elidu

With a three-eyed guide, the three brothers crossed to the Peloponnese, won a long-awaited victory over the Achaeans and began to share the conquered places. The middle of the Peloponnese is a wild, wooded highland, but on its sides lie four fertile valleys: in the east - Argos, in the west - Elis, in the south - Laconia and the best of all - Messenia. Elis was given to Oxylus, and the three brothers cast lots for the other three regions. Each one dropped a stone into a pot of water: the one that comes out first will rule Argos, the second will rule Laconia, and the third will rule Messenia. Aristodemus and Temen cast their lots honestly, but Cresphont cheated. He wanted to get a fruitful Messenia, and instead of a stone he threw a lump of earth into the water, which disintegrated in the water. Argos went to Temen Laconia - Aristodemus left Messenia to the lot of the crafty Cresphont.

Having made the division, the brothers made sacrifices to Zeus on three altars. And the next morning, an unexpected animal appeared on their altars: in Argive - a toad, in Laconian - a snake, in Messenian - a fox. The fortune tellers, after consulting, explained: the toad is a slow-moving animal, so it is better for the Argive Dorians not to go to war; the snake is formidable, so that victory will accompany the Laconian Dorians; and the fox is cunning, as everyone could and can be convinced of. The brothers looked at each other, understood Cresfont’s cunning and harbored a grudge against the Messenian Dorians.

King Kodr

When the Dorians occupied the Peloponnese, the Peloponnesian Achaeans either submitted to them or went into remote mountainous areas. And the most noble and proud families began to leave the country and move to the north: to Boeotia, where the third great Greek tribe lived - the Aeolians, and to Attica, where the fourth tribe lived - the Ionians.

They were received hospitably, especially in Attica. Here, just at this time, the last king from the line of the glorious Theseus, the conqueror of the Minotaur, died. The elders consulted and chose a newcomer as the new king - an Achaean from the royal family named Kodr.

The Peloponnesian Dorians were offended to see that a fugitive from their power became a king on a foreign side. They went to war against Attica and besieged Athens. The siege turned out to be difficult; they decided to send to the oracle and ask: “Shall we take Athens?” The oracle replied: “You will take it if you do not touch the king.” The Dorians announced a strict order throughout the army: not to touch King Kodr under any circumstances - and continued the siege.

In Athens they also learned about the oracle's answer. And King Kodr decided to save the city at the cost of his life.

He dressed himself in a torn peasant's dress, shouldered a sack, took a crooked sickle for cutting branches, went out of the gate and began collecting brushwood. He was captured and dragged to the Dorian camp. He began to fight back, swung his sickle and wounded some warrior. This enraged the Dorians, they killed him, and threw his corpse into the field.

The Athenian elders sent an embassy to the Dorian camp: “According to the sacred customs of our ancestors, return the body of our king to us for burial!” - “We didn’t touch your king!” - they answered. "Here he is!" - the Athenians pointed to a dead body in rags and with a bundle of brushwood over its shoulders. The Dorians took a closer look and realized that they had not followed the oracle’s warning. They handed over the murdered Codrus, lifted the siege and left Attica with nothing.

Codrus was buried like a hero at the gates of Athens, which he saved. A high mound was built over his grave and sowed with wheat - as a sign that he gave his life for the happiness and prosperity of his adopted fatherland.

And the elders, after reflection, decided: after Codrus, no one in Athens is worthy to bear the name “king” - from now on the head of state will be elected and will be called simply a ruler, in Greek - an archon.

The first archons in Athens were chosen for life and only from among the descendants of Codrus; then only for ten years; then only for one year - and from any noble families. The first archons ruled autocratically; then three more began to be chosen to help such an archon, dividing among themselves the three main royal concerns - the archon-priest, the archon-voivode and the archon-judge; then one archon-judge became not enough, and they began to choose as many as six. Thus was formed a college of nine archons who ruled Athens for a year; and after serving their term, they became members of the council of elders, which sat on the hill of the god Ares - the Areopagus. So in Athens, the power of the king was replaced by the power of the nobility - the monarchy was replaced by the aristocracy.

Homer leaves the fairy tale

Seven cities argue about Grandfather Homer -

In them, ou begged for alms at every door.

(English epigram)

After the resettlement of the Dorians, Greece immediately became crowded. It was necessary to look for new lands. People began to gather in groups, boarded ships and went overseas to found new Greek settlements on foreign, “barbarian” shores.

The first direction of this colonization suggested itself: through the Aegean Sea, to the opposite coast of Asia Minor. All four Greek tribes stirred and moved away. From island to island, as if from stone to stone, they crossed the Aegean Sea. The Aeolians occupied the north of the Asia Minor coast with the island of Lesbos, the Dorians - the south with the island of Rhodes, the Ionians - the middle with the islands of Chios and Samos and the newly founded cities of Smyrna, Ephesus, Miletus. The Achaeans turned in the other direction and sent the first ships into the stormy western sea, towards the shores of Italy and Sicily.

New places stirred up old memories. Settlers of the shores of Asia Minor recalled how, not far from these places, their ancient ancestors fought at Troy; scouts of the western seas recalled how Odysseus wandered in these same regions on the way to his homeland. And when the noble people of the new cities gathered at feasts and entertained themselves with songs, they increasingly demanded that they be sung about the Trojan War and the adventures of Odysseus.

These songs were sung by storytellers - aeds. They passed them on from generation to generation, changed or supplemented ancient songs, and composed new ones based on their model. Generations of Aeds developed a measured long verse for songs - hexameter, a poetic language rich in ancient words and phrases, a set of ready-made expressions for describing frequently repeated actions. Such songs were very similar to our epics. And they were as long as epics: for an hour or so of singing, so that the listeners would not get bored. If necessary, the singer could always compress and expand his story - for example, add details - how a hero, arming himself for battle, first puts on greaves, then a shell, then a helmet, takes a sword, then a shield, then a spear, and what craftsman made this shield, and from which ancestor he got this sword.

Such an aed, a wandering blind storyteller, was Homer - the one who first created, instead of short songs, two large epic poems: the Iliad about the Trojan War and the Odyssey about the return wanderings of the hero. No one remembered anything reliable about Homer himself - not even his place of birth:

Seven cities compete for the wise root of Homer:
Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Pylos, Argos, Athens.

These seven argued the most stubbornly; but other cities also considered themselves the birthplace of Homer - even Babylon and Rome. They only agreed that he lived as a wandering poor man, earning his living by singing songs. For example, these:

If you give me money, I’ll sing, potters, I’ll give you a song:
“Listen to prayers, Athena! guarding the stove with his right hand,
Let the pots and bottles and bowls come out beautifully,
So that you get a good burn and get enough profit,
So that they sell briskly in the market, on the streets briskly,
So that we can be rewarded from the fat profit for the song.”
If, shameless tribe, you deceive the singer boldly.
I will immediately call together all the enemies of the pottery kiln:
“Hey, Razbivaka, Treskun, Gorshkolom, insidious Syroglinnik,
Hey, Netushim, too keen on tricks to the detriment of his craft,
Hit the brazier and the house, turn the stove upside down,
Deliver everything; Let the potters fill the hut with their shouts...
Let them look at the cruel disaster with a pitiful groan!”
I will laugh and admire the pitiful lot of villains.
If anyone wants to save, let him have his head on fire
He will burn everything, and serve his fate to others as science.

“The Iliad” and “Odyssey” are very long poems, more than three hundred pages each. The transition from writing short epics to writing long, coherent epics is a difficult task. There were two ways. One is easier: it was possible to string episodes in a row, matching the end of one with the beginning of another, from the abduction of Elena to the return of all the heroes. The other is more difficult: it was possible to take one episode and, expanding it with details, fit into it everything that was poetically interesting in the entire Trojan War.

Homer took the hard road. He chose for each poem only one episode from the ten-year war and ten-year wanderings. For the Iliad, this is Achilles’ anger at Agamemnon and its cruel consequences: the death of Patroclaus and Achilles’ revenge on Hector. For the Odyssey, these are the last two transitions on the hero’s voyage: from the island of Calypso to the island of the Phaeacians and from the island of the Phaeacians to his native Ithaca, and there – a meeting with his son, reprisal with Penelope’s suitors and reconciliation. All previous episodes of Odysseus’s wanderings are contained in his story about himself at a feast among the Phaeacians; all other episodes of the Trojan War are included in passing mentions in the speeches of the characters. And behind all this - either in the course of the story, sometimes in a lengthy description, sometimes in a quick comparison - there passes a whole encyclopedia of pictures of folk life - the work of a plowman and a blacksmith, a national assembly and a court, a house and a battle, weapons and utensils, athletic competitions and children's games . To the modern reader they may seem lengthy and distracting from the action, but Homer's contemporaries enjoyed them.

This is no coincidence. This means that Homer’s contemporaries felt that an uncrossable line lay between them and mythical times. On this side - everyday life, labor, oppression, poverty, the dominance of the proud and cruel nobility; on the other side - exploits, greatness, wealth, brilliance, everyone is valiant, powerful and noble, and you want to carefully preserve every detail in your memory and admire it for a long time. This is why Homer's poems are so long and why they are so detailed. In them, Greece, entering the threshold of history, says goodbye to the kingdom of fairy tales.

Hector's farewell to Andromache

Here is one of the most famous episodes of the Iliad. The first big battle described in the poem is underway. Achilles had already quarreled with Agamemnon and had already withdrawn from the battles, but the Greeks were still strong and were pushing back the Trojans. Then the Trojan leader Hector leaves the battlefield and goes to Troy: let the Trojan women pray to the hostile Athena - maybe she will have mercy and spare the Trojans. Having given the orders, he wants to see his wife Andromache and his infant son Astyanax (“City Ruler”): what if he dies in battle and never sees them again? And he meets them at the very gate leading to the battlefield. In the general course of events of the Iliad, this is a pause, a respite; all this could not be talked about at all, but Homer includes here both the tragic contrast of a formidable military and peaceful family life, and - in the words of Andromache - an episode from the initial years of the Trojan War, and - in Hector's foreknowledge - the coming outcome of the war, and the duty of those who are with the shield, and the share of those who are behind the shield.

Hector, passing through the wide city, reaches the gate
Skeian - just through them there was an exit to the plain, -
Suddenly, his homely wife met him here,
Daughter of Etion of the magnanimous Andromache.
Etion the Father lived at the foot of the wooded Plaka
In Thebes, the Lower Plakians and the Cilicians ruled;
His daughter married the copper-armored Hector.
There she met her husband; the venerable nanny is behind her,
Gently pressing the baby to her chest, she carried the little one,
Dear Hector's son, he was like a star, he was beautiful,
Hector Scamandriem called him, and other people in the city
Astyanax because Hector was a stronghold for Troy.
As he looked at the child, the father involuntarily smiled.
Andromache's wife stood nearby and wept bitterly.
She took her husband's hand and said:
“You, amazing one, are destroying yourself with your courage.”
Apparently, you don’t feel sorry for either your son or me, the unfortunate one,
That I will soon remain a widow: after all, soon the Achaeans,
Everyone rushes at you and kills you, but for me it’s more gratifying
It would be better to go to the ground than to lose my husband. Which
Will I be warm in life when death befalls you?
Sorrow alone! After all, I have neither a father nor a darling:
Ah, God-like Achilles killed my father,
And he razed the native city of the Cilicians to the ground -
Thebes is high-turned. But Ethion's body,
He didn’t even expose the dead man, maintaining respect.
He burned it according to order with his armor together
And he built a burial ground. Elms grew all around
Mountain nymphs, Zeus the aegis-bearing maiden.
Hector, you are my father, and you are my mother, Hector,
You are my only brother, and you are my blooming husband,
Take pity on me now, stay with us on the tower,
Place your army near the wild fig tree: there are fewer things there
Our city is protected and accessible to attack by the wall.
Hector the Great, shining with his helmet, answers her:
“Everything you say here worries me, but it’s embarrassing.”
To me before the Trojans and Trojan women in long robes,
If I'm like a crappy coward, I shy away from battle.
I myself know perfectly well, believe me, in my heart and spirit:
There will be one day - and sacred Troy will perish,
Priam and the people of the spearman Priam will perish with her!
But it’s not the death of so many Trojans that I now lament,
Not about my brave brothers who will soon
They will fall into dust, killed by the hand of enraged enemies, -
I only grieve for you! Achaean in a copper shell
All in tears will take you far into captivity:
In Argos you will weave linen for a foreign mistress,
You will carry water from the Miseid and Hyper springs,
Heart reluctantly, involuntarily submitting to a joyless fate.
Someone, seeing you shed tears, will say:
“Hector’s wife, he was the first warrior in battles
He was among the Trojan army when Ilion was destroyed."
Someone will say this and it will pinch your heart even more:
There is no person who could save you from bondage.
Let me die and cover myself with shifting sand
Before I see your captivity and hear your plaintive cry! -
So speaking, the brilliant Hector leaned towards the child,
But the baby on the breast of his nanny in beautiful clothes
He pulled back with a cry, frightened by his father’s appearance:
He was afraid of copper, the sultan from the horse's mane,
Seeing how it hung from the very top of the helmet.
The dear father and kind mother laughed at this.
Hector quickly takes off the brilliant helmet from his head,
He quickly places his shiny helmet on the ground,
He himself kisses his son and, taking him in his arms, holds him high
He lifts up, praying to Zeus and other immortals:
– Zeus and the eternal gods! look at the baby son!
May he, like me, grow up to be outstanding among the Trojans.
Send him strength, virtue, let him reign powerfully,
So that they could say about him: “He has surpassed his father!” -
Seeing how he goes from battle, returning with bloody booty,
Taken from slain enemies, delighting a mother's heart.
He passes his son from hand to hand to his dear wife.
She pressed the child tighter to her fragrant breast
And she smiled through her tears. The husband looked, was touched,
He hugged her affectionately and said this at the end:
- Poor you! Don't worry your soul about me beyond measure.
If it’s fate for me to be alive, no one will send me to the next world,
And no mortal can escape his fate,
Neither bad nor good, from the first minute of birth.
You go home, mind your own business,
Sit at the machine or at the spinning wheel and watch, so that there is nothing to do
The girls didn't hang out. War is a man's business:
Of the men of Ilium, it is especially close to me.
So saying, the brilliant Hector raises his helmet
With a horse's mane. The wife went home,
But, turning around more than once, my eyes followed him...

Nezavisimaya Gazeta 08.28.2008 Balance of the familiar and the incomprehensible Hasan Huseynov Tags: Gasparov, Rome, poets “When we look around, we see only ruins...” Mikhail Gasparov. Capitoline wolf. Rome before the Caesars. – M.: Fortuna EL, 2008. – 144 p. This book by Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov (1935 – 2005) will very soon become a reference book for everyone who is just beginning to get acquainted with ancient culture, literature and history. “The Capitoline Wolf,” which was lovingly prepared for publication by the author’s widow, Alevtina Mikhailovna Zotova, is much smaller in volume than “Entertaining Greece,” which went through several editions. It is easier to talk about an adult who lived a long, interesting life than about a child who died untimely. Isn’t this the case with posthumously published books that the author himself did not manage to complete? Thirty-three chapters - thirty-three stories from the founding of the city by Romulus and Remus to the destruction of Carthage and the last conversation between Scipio and Polybius about the future of Rome - are equipped with many illustrations and maps. “She-Wolf” has quite wide margins: the young reader who learns to leave meaningful pencil traces of his own immersion in the subject on the pages of the books he owns will also rejoice. Everything is linked together by the unity of the narrative, but each chapter is built as an independent work of rhetorical art. Gasparov’s main exercise is on conciseness and clarity. Here is a chapter on the First Punic War. It tells the story of the struggle between Rome and Carthage for Sicily, the exploits of the consuls Duilius and Regulus, the honors bestowed upon them and the terrible death of one of them. But this chapter was built and made as an explanation of the meaning of several Russian words and realities (“Punic”, “rostral column”) and also as a commentary on Pushkin’s poems about Zaretsky in “Eugene Onegin”. After each chapter, the reader wants to bookmark it and follow the markers placed by Gasparov. I would like to learn, immediately, to read Russian poets the way he does, and to be able to explain Roman superstitions or the confrontation between plebeians and patricians just as concisely and comprehensibly. Once, it was in the mid-80s, referring to a Roman author, Mikhail Leonovich noted in a conversation that the times had once again come when we needed to think about repackaging our knowledge of ancient culture for a generation increasingly liberated from classical education. That it is better not to wait until something important is forgotten, but to consciously cut off everything that is not important. In fact, each of us has less and less time every day, but knowledge, on the contrary, accumulates. How to get out of this contradiction? Gasparov’s rhetoric is the science and art of putting big things into small things. The educational significance of his school is especially precious now, when it is so easy to succumb to temptation and Wikipedically slide through the shells of other people's knowledge. Some seriously believe that the main thing is not to know something, but to know where to look for it. Gasparov’s thin book is the key to a completely different approach: how to learn to manage time and words so as not to lose the most interesting of the flow of more and more new information that is coming at the young reader. 2 The simplifications and straightening that are inevitable along this path will be more than compensated for at the next stage, when the reader, after an introduction to the history of Rome, will inevitably want to plunge into other texts by Gasparov, for example, in his translation of Suetonius. In addition to being introduced to the history of Rome - the main historical root of modern Western civilization - the reader will note three things. First, he will see that knowledge of any foreign culture is determined and formalized by translators. If even a photographer who takes pictures of foreign cities invites us to see these cities from his own point of view, then what can we say about the one who rewrites the text in his own language. Not only does Gasparov look like Suetonius, but Suetonius, it turns out, looks like Gasparov. It seems to me that, asking himself whose style (of course, in his own Russian version) is most suitable for the purposes of the book, Gasparov chose not Livy, Plutarch or Tacitus, but Suetonius. How would Suetonius write about Rome before the Caesars? I probably would have written it that way. Another thing that the reader will certainly think about, moving from “She-Wolf” to Gasparov’s earlier and completely finished works, is the need of the connoisseur to find simple and clear, unraveling formulations for complex and confusing phenomena. Gasparov shows that in order to evaluate a complex historical event, you need to listen more often to poets: after all, poets are people who are able to convey the greatest content in the least number of words. That’s why, when you want to better understand the present and the past, don’t be afraid to turn to poetry. An unexpected and, to some, unpleasant juxtaposition: sometimes politicians are like poets. They utter a phrase - an aphorism, a political formula, just a random remark. The phrase is remembered, it is written down, and for more than two thousand years it has been repeated. There are dozens and hundreds of such statements. The phrase itself, its sound and superficial meaning are well known to everyone. But the majority repeat these verses of time almost mindlessly with the zeal of a parrot. In every generation there are people who don't want to be parrots. It is for such people that Gasparov writes when he explains the meaning of Cato’s words about “Carthage, which must be destroyed,” or the meaning of the expression “the laughter of augurs” in Pushkin’s poems: Holy friendship, the voice of nature. Looking at each other then, Like Cicero's augurs, We laughed secretly... The deliberate conciseness of Gaspar's text, the love for chiasmus, antithesis and two or three other simple figures of speech does not manage to bore the adult reader: the book is too short. But for the young reader, this is the most useful science of constructing thoughts. To learn more about it, he can turn (and will certainly turn) to another book by Gasparov - “Records and Extracts”. The first extract about the letter “A” is made from the diary of Evgeny Schwartz, these are words about the children’s writer Evgeny Charushin: “Charushin wrote simply, as if he were saying “a” to the doctor.” So Gasparov himself for the reader is not only Suetonius, but also Charushin. The pinnacle of this meeting is the chapter “Roman Gods,” in which Gasparov explains how the Roman pantheon differed from the Greek. I wouldn’t be surprised if a child with a sense of humor wants to learn Latin after reading this short text, and an older student wants to rewrite this chapter in poetry. What is her secret? In the balance of one’s own and someone else’s, the familiar and the incomprehensible. “There is such an abyss of gods in our country,” Gasparov quotes Petronius, “that it is easier to meet a god than a person.” The Roman lives in a world where every human action is under the auspices of a special deity - from birth to returning home from the village, from experiencing fear to the ability to listen to other people's advice. How did a person live in this world? “She-Wolf” does not answer such general questions. But she puts on her reader's nose wonderful glasses that make it possible to distinguish the first colors, words and sounds of the Roman world. My generation had wonderful children's books. But I am very sorry that this one was not among them.

Capitoline wolf. Rome before the Caesars
Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov

The Romans did not have such an abundance of mythological legends as the Greeks. But they had a lot of historical legends about the heroic past of their people. Just as every Greek from childhood heard stories about Hercules, Oedipus, Theseus, Achilles, so every Roman heard stories about the Horaces and Curiatius, the noble Lucretia and the fearless Mutius Scaevola, about Fabricius and Cato. These stories about the founding of the Eternal City on seven hills, the wisdom of its legislators, the simplicity of morals, the dedication of citizens and the valor of warriors formed the basis of this book. The style of its presentation in the popular manner characteristic of M.L. Gasparov, combining brevity and clarity of presentation with its accessibility and subtle humor, continues the traditions of “Entertaining Greece”.

The book is intended for a wide range of inquisitive readers.

FOUNDING OF ROME

In central Italy, in the lower reaches of the Tiber River, there was the region of Latium. The Latin people lived there. The Latins had a city called Alba Longa; According to legend, it was founded by the ancient Trojans who fled to Italy after the fall of Troy. In Alba Longa there were two brothers: Numitor and Amulius. The cruel Amulius deposed the meek Numitor and began to rule Alba Longa autocratically.

The deposed Numitor had a daughter, Rhea Silvia. She gave birth to two twin sons.

Who is their father? - Amulius asked sternly.

God Mars,” Rhea answered. Amulius did not believe it. He ordered Rhea Silvia to be imprisoned in an underground dungeon, and the twins to be put in a basket and thrown into the Tiber.

The Tiber was in flood; its waves picked up the basket, carried it to a quiet creek and, falling, left it there on the shore. A she-wolf, the sacred animal of the god Mars, ran up to the basket. She lay down next to him and began to feed the babies with her milk. At least that’s what the old shepherd who found the basket said. The shepherd took the twins into his hut and began to raise them as his own children. He named them: Romulus and Remus.

Romulus and Remus were bored with being shepherds. They became robbers. A group of friends gathered around them. The peasants loved the robbers because they protected them from the oppression of Amulius. The king ordered the brothers to be captured. Romulus fought back. Rem was brought to the king. The king handed him over to Numitor for interrogation. He asked the young man where he was from. Remus told what he had heard from the old shepherd: about the flood of the Tiber, about the twins in the basket, about the she-wolf of Mars. Numitor realized that in front of him was his grandson. At this time, noise and the clang of weapons were heard outside the city wall: it was Romulus and his comrades who came to the rescue of his brother. Numitor and Remus opened the gates for them. The cruel Amulius was killed. Numitor became the king of Alba Longa, and the robber brothers decided to found a new city for themselves and their friends - in the place where they had once been found on the banks of the Tiber.

The low coastal valley was surrounded by three hills: the Capitol, Palatine, Aventine, and behind them a second ring of hills could be seen: Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline and Caelius. On these seven hills the great Rome subsequently lay. In the meantime, the two brothers argued about which of the hills was best to establish the first settlement. Romulus proposed the Palatine, Remus - the Aventine. They decided to disperse and wait for the sign of the gods: whoever sees six kites above his hill first wins the argument, and the city will be there. We waited all night. At dawn, kites appeared first over Remus Hill, then over Romulus Hill. But six of them flew over the Aventine, and twelve over the Palatine. The controversy began again. Finally, they decided to build on the Palatine, but Remus was dissatisfied.

The founding of the city took place like this. On the Palatine they determined a place that would be the center of the city. There they dug a hole and buried in it the firstfruits of the fruits of the earth. In front of the pit, one after another, all the comrades of Romulus and Remus, future citizens of the new city, tanned, ragged and serious, passed by. Each person threw a handful of earth from their hometown into the hole. Now everyone could rightfully say that Rome was his desperate land. Then, using a plow, describing a circle, they drew the border of the city. The plow was made of copper, it was pulled by a white bull and a white cow, and Romulus walked behind the plow, singing prayers. His comrades followed and turned the cut earth towards the city so that not a single lump would remain on the wrong side. Where there should have been a gate, the plow was lifted and carried through the air. The furrow was sacred, but the gate could not be sacred: both clean and unclean objects would be transported through them.

Romulus began to dig a ditch and pour a shaft over the drawn furrow. Rem mockingly watched his brother's work. Romulus solemnly proclaimed:

From now on, no one will ever cross these walls with impunity.

The shaft was barely knee-high for a man. Rem laughed and jumped over the shaft. Romulus did not understand jokes; he rushed at his brother and hit him with his sword. Rem fell dead. He was buried on the Aventine, where he dreamed of founding a city. Romulus was left alone as the leader of his friends. The city he founded began to be called after him: in Latin Rome is called Roma.

Modern archaeological scientists date the city's origins to the 8th century. BC e., and Roman historians even calculated the year and day of the founding of Rome - April 21, 754 BC. e.

This is how the history of Rome began with fratricide. And when, many centuries later, Rome, the world capital, was tormented by the storms of civil wars, people said:

This is retribution for the shed blood of Rem.

THE ABDUCTION OF THE SABINE WOMEN

The first inhabitants of Rome were robbers from the detachment of Romulus. There were few of them. Then Romulus founded the temple of the purifier god Veiovis on the nearby Capitoline Hill. Every fugitive slave, debtor or criminal who fled to this temple became free and justified. Six months have passed. Fugitive people from all over Latium began to flock to Rome. But they had no wives, no children - there was no one to leave the founded city to. Neighboring cities did not marry their daughters to the Romans.

“This is not a people, but a gang of robbers,” they said.

It was necessary to obtain wives by cunning and force.

Romulus spread a rumor that an altar built to an unknown god had been found on the territory of Rome. He was called Cons - the god of light (hence the consul - advisor, and the consilium - advice). In honor of this find, a holiday with games was declared. Both surrounding tribes converged on him: the Latins, inhabitants of the coastal plain, and the Sabines, inhabitants of the Apennine foothills. They stood mingled in the crowd, waiting for the games. Romulus waved his cloak - and the Roman youths pounced on the Sabine girls: each grabbed the first one they came across and carried it, screaming and fighting, to their hut. Confusion began and the guests fled. The Sabine women remained in Rome to get used to their fate as captives and wives. And the Sabines prepared for war - to punish the kidnappers.

The Sabine king was Titus Tatius. To attack the Palatine, he decided to first capture the neighboring Capitol. There was a small Roman fortress there. Her boss had a daughter, Tarpeia. The Romans were poor and the Sabines were rich. Tarpeia secretly promised Tatius to let the Sabines into the fortress if each warrior would give her what he wore on his left hand. The Sabines wore gold wristbands on their left hands. She forgot that she also had a shield on her left hand. The Sabines rejoiced at the betrayal, but despised the traitor. Tarpeia was pelted to death with heavy shields. The Capitoline cliff where this happened was called the Tarpeian Rock. From here they later threw convicted criminals into the abyss.

The next day a battle took place between the Capitol and the Palatine. First the Sabines pressed the Romans, then the Romans pressed the Sabines. Suddenly, the kidnapped Sabine women, with loose hair and torn clothes, fled from the Roman hill and rushed into the thick of the battle. They fearlessly separated the fighters.

We don't want to be either widows or orphans! - they shouted.

The warriors wavered, the battle stopped.

Romulus and Tatius began negotiations. It was agreed that the Romans and Sabines would live in Rome together, and Romulus and Tatius would rule over them together. And so it became. But a few years later Tatius died, and Romulus remained the only king over the doubled people.

Romulus reigned for thirty-seven years. He divided the Roman people into clans and tribes, established a Senate, waged wars, and won victories. He surrounded himself with bodyguards-lictors: there were twelve of them, according to the number of kites that once appeared to him over the Palatine.

How he died is unknown. It was said that his father Mars took him alive to heaven. But they also said that he was killed by senators who were dissatisfied with his autocracy: they tore him to pieces in the temple, and each carried out a piece of his body under his cloak so that no traces would remain.

GOOD NUMA

The second Roman king after Romulus was the Sabine Numa Pompilius. He was peaceful and wise. All military and political institutions in Rome were attributed to Romulus, and all religious institutions were attributed to Numa.

Numa erected a temple in Rome to Janus, the god of all beginnings. In honor of this Janus, the first month of the year is still called January. In it stood a statue of Janus with two faces, front and back: this god looked at once into the past and into the future. The temple had only two walls, and instead of the other two there were gates. When the war was going on, the gates were open and the Roman army marched through them. Numa ruled for 43 years, and for all 43 years the temple of Janus was closed: Rome lived peacefully. But after Numa, for several centuries the temple was not closed for a single day: wars went on continuously. The second time it was closed briefly only 500 years after Numa - at the end of the first Punic War; for the third time - 700 years after Numa, already under Emperor Augustus.

Numa happened to meet and talk with the gods themselves, and even bargain with them. The Aventine Hill was struck by lightning; Numa asked Jupiter what kind of sacrifice should be made at this place. Jupiter wanted a human sacrifice, but did not want to say it directly.

Sacrifice with heads, said God.

“Okay,” Numa agreed, “bulbous.”

No, human, said God.

“Okay, human hair,” Numa answered.

No, alive, said God.

Okay, live fish,” Numa clarified. Jupiter laughed and stopped insisting. And in Rome, from then on, cleansing after a lightning strike was always carried out with the help of onions, hair and fish.

Numa was the founder or organizer of all the main Roman priestly colleges: pontiffs, flamines, vestals, salii, fetials, not to mention the even more ancient college of Luperci. Since there is nothing more to tell about Numa himself, we will tell you something about these priests.

ROMAN PRIESTS

The pontiffs were priests who supervised the correct performance of all rituals. The Romans looked at relations with the gods in a businesslike way: people are obliged to honor the gods with established rituals, and the gods are obliged to help people for this. If you break the ritual, you will lose the help of the gods. And the rituals were extremely complex.

If you stumble or miss a word in prayer, the prayer loses its power. Therefore, for an important prayer, at least four people were required - one read the prayer, another repeated after him, the third monitored the silence, the fourth played the flute so that the gods would not hear anything except the prayer. The sacrificial animals had to be of a precisely certain height and type: if the calf’s tail did not reach the knees, it was no longer suitable for sacrifice.

The victim's forehead was sprinkled with flour and salt: this flour was ground by three priestesses from the ears of corn that they collected in turn only in the second week of May; and the salt was pounded in a mortar, melted in a furnace, and the resulting ingot was sawed with an iron saw. Wine for libations was taken only from unpruned vines, from a vineyard where no wounded foot had ever set foot. The water had to be spring water, tap water was not suitable.

The gods were touchy and could punish for violation of rituals. Sometimes it was even difficult to guess what caused the wrath of the gods. One day a pestilence (plague or some other deadly disease) began in Rome. They asked the oracle about the reason. He replied:

This is because the gods are looked down upon.

Nobody understood what this meant. One boy told his father that from the top floor of their house he saw sacred objects lying on stretchers during a festive procession. Everything became clear. The stretchers began to be covered, and the pestilence passed.

The Flamins were the most important of the priests. All their actions were surrounded by the most complex regulations and prohibitions. The Flaminus of Jupiter has no right to ride a horse and look at the army, has no right to swear and wear a stone in a ring. He cannot touch or even name a goat, a dog, ivy, raw meat, sour dough or beans. Fire from his house can only be taken for sacrifice. If a person in chains enters his house, the person must be unchained and the chains lowered into the street through a hole in the roof.

There is not a single knot on the flamen's clothing. It should not be cut by a slave, but only by a free person. And cut hair and nails should be buried in the ground under a tree without needles and without black berries. The foot of his bed must be dirty. He sleeps on one bed for no more than three days, and no one else can sleep on it. In the open air he walks only in a priest's hat. He cannot divorce his wife, and if the wife dies, the priest is deprived of his rank.

Scientists say that such a complex system of taboos can only be found on the wildest islands of Oceania. It is not surprising that there were few hunters to receive this high rank.

The Vestals were priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth, guardian of harmony. Her round temple was considered the center of Rome; an unquenchable fire burned in it. They lit it not in the usual way, with the help of flint, but in the old way - by friction. If it went out, the Vestals were flogged with rods. There were six of them. The Vestals were taken to the temple as seven-year-old girls for 30 years: they studied for ten years, served the goddess for ten years, and taught the young for ten years. All this time they could not get married. For violating her vow of virginity, the Vestal Virgin was executed with a terrible execution: she was buried alive in a dungeon. To prevent her death from becoming a sin on the state, they pretended that it was not an execution at all: they gave her food and drink for the day. She lived for a day, and then died a slow death of starvation.

The Salii were priests of Mars and guardians of his sacred shields. They say that under Numa there was a pestilence in Rome. The king prayed to the god Mars for salvation. Then a copper shield fell from the sky onto the royal meadow, and the pestilence ended. Numa realized that this shield contained the salvation of Rome. To prevent anyone from stealing the shield, he ordered eleven more exactly the same ones to be made: it was impossible to find a real one among all these shields. The shields were kept in the temple of Mars; Once a year, on the first of March, the salii carried them through the city, hitting them with their spears with a ringing sound, dancing and singing an ancient song, the meaning of which no one understood for a long time.

FOUNDING OF ROME

The deposed Numitor had a daughter, Rhea Silvia. She gave birth to two twin sons.

Who is their father? - Amulius asked sternly.

God Mars,” Rhea answered. Amulius did not believe it. He ordered Rhea Silvia to be imprisoned in an underground dungeon, and the twins to be put in a basket and thrown into the Tiber.

Romulus began to dig a ditch and pour a shaft over the drawn furrow. Rem mockingly watched his brother's work. Romulus solemnly proclaimed:

From now on, no one will ever cross these walls with impunity.

Modern archaeological scientists date the city's origins to the 8th century. BC e., and Roman historians even calculated the year and day of the founding of Rome - April 21, 754 BC. e.

This is how the history of Rome began with fratricide. And when, many centuries later, Rome, the world capital, was tormented by the storms of civil wars, people said:

This is retribution for the shed blood of Rem.

THE ABDUCTION OF THE SABINE WOMEN

“This is not a people, but a gang of robbers,” they said.

It was necessary to obtain wives by cunning and force.

We don't want to be either widows or orphans! - they shouted.

The warriors wavered, the battle stopped.

GOOD NUMA

Part one

Greece becomes Greece

or Before the law there was a legend

There is a tribe of people

There is a tribe of gods

The breath in us is from one mother,

But we have been given different powers:

Man is nothing

And the copper sky is an unshakable abode

Forever and ever.

But there is something

Raising us to the celestial level, -

Be it a powerful spirit,

Be it the force of nature, -

Although we do not know to what limit

Our path, day and night, is outlined

Rock.

In the beginning there was a fairy tale

Year 1582 BC e. King Kekrop reigns in Athens.

Year 1529. The Great Flood, from which Deucalion and Pyrrha escaped.

The year is 1519. King Cadmus, the founder of Cadmeia, came to Thebes from Phenicia and taught the Greeks writing.

Gasparov the Capitoline wolf read. Mikhail Gasparov - Capitoline Wolf

* * *

Entertaining Greece Stories about ancient Greek culture

From the author

Part one Greece becomes Greece or Before the law there was a legend

In the beginning there was a fairy tale

Relocation of the Dorians

King Kodr

Homer leaves the fairy tale

Hector's farewell to Andromache

Entertaining Greece
Stories about ancient Greek culture

Part one
Greece becomes Greece
or Before the law there was a legend