III. Read the following words:

Rubicon, triumph, catastrophe, fascination, Augustus

IV. Complete the following sentences according to the text.

1. The crossing of the Rubicon was …

2. Two challenges face a historian writing about ancient Rome. …

3. “As the traveller approached Rome's gates he might occasionally find …”

4. Caesar's decision changed the course of …

5. Octavian was the teenage instigator of …

6. It was Julius Caesar who crossed …

V. Choose the sentences which correspond to the description of Cicero, Sulla, Octavian and Julius Caesar.

When he went into retirement he expired at home in bed.

He reinvented himself as Augustus, father of a nation, instigator of the Pax Romana.

He hesitated too long in leaving Rome and died like the bravest of gladiators, stretching out his neck for the assassin's blade.

His loyalty to the Republic and its values endured to the end.

He crossed the narrow stream of the Rubicon, but it took Augustus to lubricate the transition from a republic to what was, in effect, an absolute monarchy. And he did it with words, not armies.

He was one of the cruelest of Romans.

He was the teenage instigator of widespread and brutal proscriptions.

He was, he reassured the old idealists, simply primus inter pares — first among equals.

VI. Answer the questions.

1. In terms of what does history remember wars?

2. What was the crossing of the Rubicon?

3. What word had the Romans for a choice hanging in the balance that might bring either triumph or catastrophe?

4. What was the Rubicon in regard to discrimen?

5. Why is Cicero considered to be the hero?

6. What was the name of the dictator, who was one of the cruelest of Romans?

7. What two challenges does a historian face writing about ancient Rome?

8. Who reinvented himself as Augustus?

9. Who achieved an absolute monarchy with words, not armies?

? If you had to, how would you carry out a policy of the country – with words or with armies? Provide your explanation.

Sea gives up top romans’ leizure liner

I. Write the transcription and memorize the following words:

Vessel		сосуд, судно, корабль
Octopus		осьминог
Engrave		гравировать
Significant		многозначительный
Secrecy		секретность
Exquisite		изысканный, прелестный
Worship		поклонение, обожание
Lavish		щедрый, расточительный
Exact		точный, аккуратный
Initial		первоначальный, исходный
Triclinium		Триклиний (столовая)
Expose		оставлять незащищённым
Stern		строгий, неумолимый, корма
Seafaring		мореплаванье

II. Read and translate the text.

ARCHEOLOGISTS are calling it the Roman Titanic. A luxury cruise ship for Roman noble­men, which sank more than 2,000 years ago during a storm, has emerged from the shifting sands of a Sicilian bay.

The vessel — up to 150ft long and equipped with ancient luxuries including candelabras, a hot tub and religious shrine — is thought to have ferried the Roman super-rich along the Mediterranean coast to various ports en route.

The cargo of upper-class Romans and their accoutre­ments was, however, wrecked in the bay of Camarina, near Ragusa, Sicily — to be found in

August last year by Giuseppe Russo, a swimming instructor who was hunting for octopus shortly after a huge storm.

"I was diving along the sea bed when I saw the engraved face of a black panther," said Russo. "I pulled it out and dis­covered that it was part of an oil lamp. I dug around, and a treas­ure of bronze items appeared from the sand, as if by magic."

Among his finds was a range of aristocratic artifacts, includ­ing a statuette, bronze sculp­tures and works of art, plus richly decorated jugs.

Russo put the find into the sack meant for his captured octopus and went straight to the local archeology department — which realised he had made what could be one of the most significant finds in decades.

The wreck lies about 10 yards from¹ the shore at a depth of about 13 ft and had been pro­tected by sand — until it was uncovered by the storm.

For the past year the archeologists have been working on it in total secrecy fearing that divers and swimmers from a nearby Club Med holiday camp could damage the site.

More than 30 bronze items have been recovered so far. They include an exquisite 20in-high statuette of Mercury, a Roman God, which was proba­bly the centrepiece of the lararium, a place of worship for pas­sengers and crew.

"We think the vessel was used as a cruise ship for rich families," said Giovanni Di Ste-fano, head of the Ragusa archeological department, who is over­seeing the excavation.

The fondness of Roman aris­tocrats for lavish ships and boats is well recorded. The most infamous belonged to the incestuous and lunatic emperor Caligula on Lake Nemi, near Rome, which he used for every kind of sensual pleasure.

The Roman historian Sueton­ius described how the boats had "sterns studded with gems while inside were baths, porti­coes, dining rooms and vines and fruit-bearing trees".

The Romans were reluctant to forgo such luxuries even in the more forbidding waters at sea. "Ancient sailing was dan­gerous," said Nicholas Purcell, an Oxford University don and authority on Roman seafaring. "Boating for pure pleasure was limited to calm summer waters on lakes and rivers or near the shore, but sometimes the super-rich needed to travel by sea. Then, it was a nice demonstra­tion of power to build a ship like a villa."

Di Stefano believes that who­ever owned the 'Titanic" of Camarina was trying to make just such an impression. It is too early to "get an exact picture of the boat, but an initial survey suggests that it boasted a suite of rooms, including two or more ornate passenger lounges, lit by bronze candelabras and oil lamps. Such rooms, known as tricliniums, were furnished-with sofas on which passengers would recline while talking and eating. They would have been kept, warm at night by small bra­ziers and been served by slaves with wine, shellfish, meat and garum — a fish sauce.

It may have been during just such a meal that the fatal tem­pest struck. Ancient Roman ships were strongly built with pine reinforced by oak to with­stand storms and groundings.

But even this relatively large vessel would have been no match for the conditions often found in Camarina Bay, which is known as the Bermuda Trian­gle of the Mediterranean because of the number of ves­sels that go missing there.

The bay's fatal feature is its sandbars, which move with the tides and can often lie just out of sight under the water. But as well as wrecking ships, the sand also preserves, then ex­poses them to historians when storms force it to move.

"We set huge waves in the bay during storms," said Russo. "It is poetic that the same kind of storm that sunk it and cov­ered it up two millennia ago has now brought it back to us."