शैडोइंग अभ्यास: Ancient Greece in 18 minutes - YouTube के साथ अंग्रेजी बोलना सीखें

The Parthenon The Parthenon The Parthenon The Parthenon The Parthenon The Parthenon We might think we already know everything about ancient Greece.

⏸ रुका हुआ

गति:

273 वाक्य

यदि वाक्य बहुत छोटे या लंबे हों, तो समायोजित करने के लिए Edit पर क्लिक करें।

The Parthenon The Parthenon The Parthenon The Parthenon The Parthenon The Parthenon We might think we already know everything about ancient Greece.

The Parthenon, the 300 Spartans,

and blind Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are familiar to all.

Yet there were far more than 300 Spartans.

The Parthenon was actually built as a kind of central bank bank

and no such unified state as ancient Greece with Athens as its capital ever existed.

The Trojan War was as distant in time to Alexander the Great as the Vikings are to ourselves.

So let's try to get our heads around ancient Greece and hopefully a little quicker than in 2000 years.

3,716 years ago, the pyramids of Egypt were already standing,

and Babylon was the world's first megapolis,

home to a prototype of the Tower of Babel.

On Crete, however, a mysterious civilization was flourishing.

It had three-storied palaces, and all this with no defenses.

The Cretans apparently led a relatively peaceful life,

admiring flowers, blue monkeys and beautiful women,

walked around topless, while the men preferred loincloths or skirts.

The Cretans had a navy and their own writing system,

and nobody has yet succeeded in deciphering them.

Until one day, on the island of Thera,

the modern-day wedding paradise of Santorini,

all this ended in the greatest volcanic eruption in European history.

Part of Thera sank beneath the waves,

presumably giving rise to the myth of Atlantis,

tsunamis hundred meters high, and vast ash clouds stretching for thousands of miles around.

Crete never recovered from this eruption,

and invaders soon swarmed in.

The once peaceful island then filled with bronze weapons and tablets written in a new strange language,

which turned out to be the earliest known form of Greek,

spoken by warlike tribes, which had settled the nearby Greek mainland,

building such cities as Thebes, Athens, Mycenae and Pylos.

But these cities already sheltered behind six-meter walls.

Life here was not peaceful at all.

A few centuries later, the Greeks themselves explained them with legends of Cyclopean builders

and were no longer aware that any other civilization had come before them on Crete.

By this logic, even the half-bull Minotaur was half-Greek.

Nobody batted an eyelid at the fact that games with bulls were a purely Cretan form of entertainment.

Greeks appropriated everything they met on their way with great virtuosity.

In conquering Crete, they had conquered the seas.

Marine trade saw them grow even richer.

Almost all the inscriptions found among the heaps of gold in the tombs of Mycenae are financial accounts.

Mycenae took the lead in the fight against Troy in Homer's Iliad.

As recently as 150 years ago,

this story was considered a fairy tale,

until a millionaire and amateur archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, excavated Mycenae.

And Troy, a replica of the legendary Trojan horse, now stands here.

Archaeologists have indeed found traces of fire and destructions at Troy,

but this was accompanied by the decline of virtually all regional settlements.

Unceasing attacks by barbarian tribes turned the whole Mediterranean into a war zone.

The next 400 years were a dark age.

Literacy fell into oblivion, leaving us with nothing to read about the events then taking place.

Fortunately, what we do have is Homer.

Everybody has heard about the blind poet,

the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

In actual fact, we don't know what Homer looked like,

or when he lived, whether he was one man or many.

But even though the Iliad and Odyssey were written down after the Dark Ages,

the daily routines of its characters take us right back to this time.

Odysseus, for instance, was only king by virtue of his larger flocks of flesh pigs and goats.

His father slept on the ground in ashes with his slaves.

Homer's characters were illiterate and used heads of cattle in place of money,

a far cry from Crete and Mycenae with their three-storied palaces.

What had happened?

The Mycenaean civilization was destroyed by the Dorians,

who, though Greek, were totally savage.

The earlier population either hid in the mountains or fled to the east.

Of all the achievements of the previous civilization,

the Dorians left only the essentials,

the sailing ship and the potter's wheel.

It took a further four centuries for them to start adding the most primitive depictions of animals and people.

At around the same time,

the turn of the ninth and eighth centuries BC,

the Greeks in Ionia borrowed a completely new alphabet from their Phoenician neighbors.

This bore little resemblance to the linear writing styles of Crete and Mycenae.

Do you recognize the modern Greek letters?

The fog of Dark Ages had started to clear.

Only here do we begin to recognize ancient Greece,

the country that never actually existed.

This was no state with an established border or capital,

but rather a multitude of distinct and completely independent cities, polices.

How did this come about?

Greece is a land divided by sea and mountains into separate little parts of which only a handful was suitable for agriculture.

Even grain had to be imported.

But why not grow it yourself,

over there, across the sea?

Thus, the great colonization began.

If the first historians are to be believed,

Miletus alone founded 90 colonies.

The heel of the Italian boot was colonized too,

followed by the alphabet that would form the basis for Latin,

for Latin and take over the world.

Greek civilizations spread from the modern-day Rostov-on-Don to Marseille,

laying the foundations of the French wine industry.

Fragments of amphoriae scattered from Gibraltar to Georgia.

These were containers for grain and wine.

The latter was diluted with water in proportions of one to three.

Only barbarians would drink it neatly.

For trading purposes, coins appeared.

Like the alphabet, these too were borrowed from their neighbors.

According to Plato, a few centuries saw the Greeks settled around the Mediterranean like frogs around a pond.

100

And yet, two cities, Athens and Sparta,

101

almost did not participate in colonization.

102

The Spartans descended from the warlike Dorians that had destroyed the Mycenaean civilization.

103

They solved the land issue by conquering their neighbors in the broad,

104

fertile region of Massinia.

105

The locals were declared helots,

106

something midway between slaves and serfs,

107

and greatly outnumbered the Spartans proper.

108

Sparta transformed from an ordinary polis into a military camp,

109

whose main task was the prevention of any uprising.

110

Things were quite different in Athens.

111

Land hunger there had forced the aristocracy and the people to come to terms.

112

And from this, democracy was born.

113

But first, the tyrants took power.

114

A Greek tyrant did not necessarily terrorize people, rather the opposite.

115

Typically, he was an aristocrat who had quarreled with his peers,

116

holding out promises of a better life.

117

He used the common people's support to seize power by force.

118

From then on, all his energies were focused on retaining power.

119

The tyrant therefore made no reforms and simply drove any rival aristocrats from the polis.

120

To divert the attention of the populace,

121

tyrants introduced and fostered new festivals and cults.

122

The dissatisfied could perish in the brazen bull.

123

But you can't roast everyone.

124

The tyrants were overthrown, and the suppressed aristocracy attempted to negotiate with the people,

125

giving birth to Greek democracy.

126

If an ancient Greek were to see modern democracy,

127

he would just say one word, oligarchy.

128

Ancient democracy was direct, with no representatives.

129

If a polis had 6,000 citizens,

130

they could all freely participate in the assembly.

131

Admittedly, the number of citizens was less than a quarter of all residents,

132

excluding slaves, women, and the migrant workers called metics.

133

By the middle of the 6th century,

134

the Ionian cities were most advanced, eclipsing Athens and Sparta.

135

They were the first to master such Eastern innovations as the alphabet,

136

coinage, mathematics, naval fleets, and complex trade logistics.

137

Meanwhile, a sudden threat appeared to their rear, the vast Persian Empire.

138

Meletus still hoped to preserve its independence,

139

and with Athenian aid attempted to resist.

140

Unfortunately, this was in vain,

141

and the Persians torched the city and pressed on.

142

Their attempts to subdue Greece lasted 20 years.

143

We owe our knowledge of this to the first historian, Herodotus.

144

According to his account, as many Greeks fought for the Persians as supported Athens and Sparta,

145

how did they win?

146

The first reason was military innovation.

147

At the Battle of Marathon,

148

the Greeks used the phalanx,

149

a body of troops fighting in close formation.

150

The Persians allegedly lost 6,400 men and the Athenians a mere 192.

151

Plus the messenger who ran the 42,192 meters to Athens to announce the victory,

152

after which he dropped dead.

153

The second reason was already becoming a meme.

154

At the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae,

155

King Leonidas led the 300 Spartans,

156

who held back hundreds and thousands of Persians for three days.

157

Sure, a few thousand Greeks from other cities and their helot subjects were a big help,

158

yet the Spartan spirit was key.

159

Not for nothing did they live in barracks,

160

even during times of peace.

161

And the third reason was the fleet.

162

Several years prior to the invasion,

163

silver deposits had been found near Athens.

164

This windfall might have been spent on anything,

165

but it was decided to put towards a construction of 200 trirums.

166

Fast and maneuverable warships with three rows of oars.

167

Thanks to this new naval force,

168

the Greeks broke the Persians in a decisive naval battle.

169

A counter-offensive began.

170

The Greeks of Sicily defeated their old rival Carthage.

171

A scattered array of polices thus defended the territory in which classical Greek culture was born.

172

To permanently defeat Persia and liberate the cities in Asia,

173

Athens founded a maritime union.

174

Finally, Athens had become the center of the Greek world.

175

150 cities agreed to make annual payments for the maintenance of a common army and navy.

176

The treasure was kept on Delos,

177

the sacred island of Apollo.

178

Shortly afterwards, however, patronage was passed to Athene,

179

motivated by greater fiscal reliability, of course.

180

Little imagination is required to suppose which polis was chosen for her headquarters.

181

The most elite real estate in the 5th century BC was the Parthenon.

182

It was constructed not so much as a temple,

183

but as a kind of central bank,

184

housing all the Allied treasury.

185

Without these funds, the Greek classics wouldn't have existed at all.

186

No sculpture, drama, philosophy.

187

The strategist and orator Pericles became the head of this new financial center.

188

He concluded a 30 years peace with Sparta,

189

restored the Acropolis that had been sacked by the Persians,

190

and extended fortress walls to the city harbor.

191

This was rebuilt to a grid layout,

192

a forerunner to New York.

193

While the sculptor Phidias was immortalizing grease and stone,

194

the philosopher Anaxagoras expressed an outrageous idea But the sun was not the god Helus,

195

but a burning body equal in size to Theloponnese.

196

A whole great culture was created in half a century.

197

Sparta and its allies grew jealous of Athens' prosperity.

198

A Cold War had smoldered between them ever since the victory over the Persians,

199

and things warmed up in 431 BC.

200

The Spartans and their allies besieged impregnable Athens.

201

The two inhabitants took cover behind the walls.

202

The grain supply from Africa was cut off,

203

and those shipments that made it through brought either typhus or the plague.

204

Even Pericles himself perished.

205

He was replaced by demagogues.

206

Whoever promised the most was elected strategist.

207

So Alcibiades, the unscrupulous nephew of Pericles,

208

became the head of the Athenian armed forces.

209

He proposed a short but victorious war.

210

Let's pack it all in and sail for Sicily,

211

as if the altercations with Sparta weren't enough.

212

The fleet was ready, but something inexplicable happened the night before the voyage.

213

All around the city, someone smashed off the most prominent parts of the Hermes statues.

214

Alcibiades was accused of provocation,

215

but he fled to Spartan to beg political asylum.

216

The chief strategist then proceeded to advise the enemy.

217

The Allies began to drop out one by one.

218

Athens agreed to a humiliating peace with the condition of demolishing its defensive walls.

219

They had targeted Hermes, and the might of Athens was crushed.

220

On the bright side, this was the heyday for Greek tragedy and comedy.

221

Aeschylus, Sophotus, and Euripides, the three great tragedians,

222

and the comedic playwright Aristophanes,

223

created plays that are still relevant today.

224

And yet they penned them in the full confidence that the first production would be the last,

225

as was the way in theatre at the time.

226

Classical drama was always about current events,

227

and while things may have been getting worse in the city, culture flourished.

228

There was no winner in the Peloponnesian War.

229

All Greek cities fell into decline.

230

On the other hand, unexpected surprises would come from the Macedonians,

231

distant relatives of the Greeks who had always been regarded as semi-barbarians.

232

And then even the great philosopher Aristotle went to work in Macedonia as tutor to an extremely talented boy boy.

233

The boy's father was Philip II.

234

It was he who built up the Macedonian kingdom, defeating a Greek coalition.

235

He almost managed to unite Greece in order to fight the Persians.

236

But Philip was killed, and his son,

237

known to us as Alexander the Great,

238

blazed his way through Asia,

239

broke the army of the Persian king Darius,

240

but still refused to turn back, reaching India.

241

Thus, A new world was born, the Hellenistic world.

242

Greek and Eastern culture blended to form a new home,

243

as cities by the name of Alexandria sprang up in almost every land,

244

though without any democracy.

245

All officials in Asia spoke Greek,

246

and new Oriental gods became neighbors with the old Greek ones at Mount Olympus.

247

Alexander was proclaimed a god himself in Egypt.

248

Protocol obliged all to follow Eastern tradition and fall at his feet.

249

We can only wonder at how this might have ended.

250

Greek decrees have been found urging the spread of Buddhism,

251

but Alexander died young.

252

Babylon, the place of his death,

253

had become the capital of an empire,

254

which immediately began to crack at the seams.

255

While the successors of Alexander warred with one another,

256

a new ambitious power was growing in the West.

257

In 146 BC, the Romans conquered Greece,

258

and in 30 BC, they conquered the last stronghold of Hellenism, Egypt.

259

But Greek culture was victorious even here.

260

Spread by the Romans, it finally conquered the world.

261

Romans began to read the Iliad and Odyssey in Greek,

262

followed by the Greek New Testament too.

263

In 330, Emperor Constantine built a new city on the site of the old Greek colony of Byzantium, Constantinople.

264

This was the starting point for the history of the Byzantine Empire,

265

which extended the life of Greek culture another thousand years,

266

leaving us the weird Russian alphabet for instance.

267

Did you like our video?

268

We have another one.

269

This time about ancient Rome.

270

Or you can watch the shortest history of Russian art of the 20th century.

271

We've squeezed 100 years into just 25 minutes.

272

And that's not all.

273

Subscribe to the Arzamas channel and you'll be sure not to miss out anything.

TRENDING

शैडोइंग तकनीक क्या है?

शैडोइंग (Shadowing) एक विज्ञान-समर्थित भाषा सीखने की तकनीक है जो मूल रूप से पेशेवर दुभाषिया प्रशिक्षण के लिए विकसित की गई थी। विधि सरल लेकिन शक्तिशाली है: आप मूल अंग्रेज़ी ऑडियो सुनते हैं और तुरंत इसे ज़ोर से दोहराते हैं — जैसे वक्ता की छाया 1-2 सेकंड की देरी से। शोध से पता चलता है कि यह उच्चारण सटीकता, स्वर, लय, जुड़ी हुई ध्वनियाँ, सुनने की समझ और बोलने की प्रवाहशीलता में काफ़ी सुधार करता है।

☕ हमें एक कॉफी पिलाएं

आपके समर्थन के कारण ShadowingEnglish 100% मुफ्त है। सर्वर और AI की लागत अधिक है — आपकी कॉफी हमें आगे बढ़ने में मदद करती है! 🙏

PayPal के माध्यम से दान करें

ShadowingEnglish.com – अंग्रेज़ी शैडोइंग अभ्यास

शैडोइंग अभ्यास: Ancient Greece in 18 minutes - YouTube के साथ अंग्रेजी बोलना सीखें

लोकप्रिय

इस पाठ के बारे में

मुख्य शब्दावली और वाक्यांश

व्यवहारिक सुझाव

शैडोइंग तकनीक क्या है?

शैडोइंग अभ्यास: Ancient Greece in 18 minutes - YouTube के साथ अंग्रेजी बोलना सीखें

ऐप डाउनलोड करें

इस पाठ के बारे में

मुख्य शब्दावली और वाक्यांश

व्यवहारिक सुझाव

शैडोइंग तकनीक क्या है?