В. Выберите предложение, смысл которого противоречит содержанию текста.

1. War is probably the most potent of all the forces of historical change.

2. Kings always neglected military duties.

3. Early Sumer cities were a comparatively small area of civilization.

Задание V

Выполните письменный перевод текста.

Unit 3

Подберите русские эквиваленты следующим словам и словосочетаниям, содержащим интернациональные корни:

bureaucratic, civilisation, alphabet, colonies, form, political, classical, antiquity, geography, attack, physical, economic, dominate, miles, empire, control, centres, imperial, exported, triumph, period, experiments, democracy, history

Прочитайте текст. Пользуясь словарем, определите значение незнакомых слов и выпишите их в тетрадь.

The city-state of Greece

The Greeks were originally Indo-European nomads (кочевники), who gradually made their way down to the Aegean and there took to the sea. They built on the achievements of earlier peoples, even taking over the first bureaucratic monarchy to appear on European soil: the Minoan civilisation of the island of Crete, which succumbed to the invaders about 1450 BC. Continuing invasions from the north overthrew the mainland kingdoms of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos in about 1200 BC. The so-called dark ages of Greece that then began lasted until the 8th century BC, by which time the Greeks had not only recovered literacy, by adapting the Phoenician alphabet, and begun to found overseas colonies, but had also brought the city-state to something near maturity. This form of government was the great political invention of classical antiquity.

Mediterranean geography is such that every little fishing village had to be able to defend itself against attack from land or sea, for outside help could not reach it easily. A man's dependence on his community, for physical as well as economic survival, was therefore obvious and complete. The city had first claim on his labour and loyalty, a claim that was usually freely recognised. It was this reality that led Aristotle to define man as a political animal.

Coastal mountain ranges made it difficult for any community to dominate more than a few square miles of land. They also for a long time deterred the rise of an empire to federate and control all the cities. If a few of these centres nevertheless rose to imperial greatness, like Tyre and Sidon before them, it was in the main because, like their Phoenician predecessors, they traded across the sea successfully. Athens, for example, exported olive oil, silver, and pottery. The profits of this trade enabled it to build a great navy and formidable city walls. Athenian ships defeated Persia (480 BC) and won a small empire in the Aegean Sea; the combination of ships and walls enabled Athens long to defy, and nearly to defeat, its chief rival among the Greek cities, Sparta. Even after Sparta's triumph at the end of the Peloponnesian War (404 BC), Athens remained an independent sovereign state until its defeat by Philip of Macedon at the battle of Chaeronea (338 BC). In short, during the period of its prime Athens was free to make what experiments it liked in the realm of government, and to that period are owed not just the first example of successful democracy in world history but also the first investigations in political thought.