Faces of History, or History in Faces

С.Г. Шишкина

FACES OF HISTORY,
OR HISTORY IN FACES

Учебное пособие

Рекомендовано Учебнометодическим объединением
по образованию в области лингвистики
Министерства образования и науки Российской Федерации
в качестве учебного пособия для студентов, обучающихся
по специальности «Культурология»

Москва
Издательство «ФЛИНТА»
2013

2-е издание, стереотипное

УДК 811.111(075.8)
ББК 81.2Англ923
Ш65

Р е ц е н з е н т ы:
Кафедра английского языка
Ивановского государственного университета; канд. 
филол. наук Г.Н. Шастина (СанктПетербургский
государственный университет);
канд. филол. наук, доцент кафедры лексикологии англ. языка МГЛУ
М.В. Смирнова

Шишкина С.Г.
Ш65 
Faces of History, or History in Faces [Электронный ресурс]: учеб. 
пособие / С.Г. Шишкина. — 2-е изд., стер. — М. : ФЛИНТА,
2013. — 117 с.

ISBN 9785976502307 

Пособие состоит из шести разделов, каждый из которых даетпредставление о духовной жизни разных эпох. Структура уроков предполагает 
поэтапное 
овладение 
лексикой, 
расширение 
культуроведческой компетенции и, в конечном счете, формирует умение 
извлекать из текста максимум необходимой смысловой и лингвистической информации. При составлении пособия использовались аутентичные тексты. 
Издание рассчитано на 50—60 аудиторных и самостоятельних занятий.
Для студентов и аспирантов гуманитарных вузов, преподавателей средних и высших учебных заведений.
УДК 811.111(075.8)
ББК 81.2Англ923

ISBN 9785976502307 
© Издательство «ФЛИНТА», 2013

УВАЖАЕМЫЙ ЧИТАТЕЛЬ!

Мы с Вами живём в XXI веке — веке научных открытий, веке
превращения фантастики в реальность, в веке неограниченных
возможностей самореализации. За прошедшие XX веков человечество накопило солидный багаж интеллектуальных знаний,
нравственного и культурного опыта. Если я правильно цитирую
строчки, пришедшие мне на память из моего уже далёкого детства, както, ещё в советские времена, один из наших поэтов,
кажется, Феликс Чуев, заметил:
«Чтобы открыть мне бокситы и космос,
Чтобы дожить мне до этого дня,
Васко де Гама, Платон, Маяковский
Столько столетий растили меня!»
И действительно, большая история развивается по своим
диалектическим законам. Но каждая эпоха оставляет в памяти
потомков не только события, но и имена... Имена тех, кто волею
судеб оказался на том или ином историческом витке в том или
ином месте, и по воле случая или в силу закономерности заставил ассоциировать ту или иную эпоху со своим именем, своей
жизнью и реализацией своего микромира, заполняя отдельные
страницы бесконечной Книги развития человечества. Есть век
Шекспира и Леонардо да Винчи, есть эпоха Горбачёва или Юрия
Гагарина, есть метод Сократа и история Великобритании времён Уинстона Черчилля... Прикосновение к жизни тех, чьи имена
вошли в историю, даёт благодатный материал для понимания
непрерывности законов бытия. «Каждый человек есть Вселенная, которая с ним родилась и с ним умрёт. Под каждым надгробным камнем погребена целая всемирная история», — писал
ещё в XVIII веке Генрих Гейне. Одухотворённая личным опытом, воплощённая в мечтах, деяниях, ошибках и победах наших
предшественников, она — история — предстаёт перед нами, в
известной степени, гораздо более объёмно и наглядно по сравнению с летописью истории, запечатлённой в учебниках или
исторических хрониках. Общее познаётся через частное, и ещё

раз проиллюстрировать это положение — задача, которую я перед собой поставила, составляя лежащее перед вами пособие.
Понимаю, что выбор имён может показаться несколько произвольным, но ведь история ещё создается... И если вы сможете
рассказать об отдельных её этапах на английском языке (а ход
истории убедительно доказывает необходимость владения им),
если повествования о судьбах, представленные в пособии, заставили вас задуматься о том, что мы — лишь частичка мировой
сокровищницы опыта и можем плодотворно эту сокровищницу
не только познать, но и пополнить, я буду считать, что моя цель
достигнута.

С уважением, С.Г. Шишкина

THINK AND ANSWER

PEOPLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

1. Match the inventors with their inventions:

1. Alfred Nobel; 2. Alexander Fleming; 3. Lumiere brothers;
4. Charles Babbage; 5. Alexander Graham Bell; 6. John Logie
Baird; 7. James Watt; 8. Johannes Gutenberg; 9. Louis Daguerre;
10. Thomas Alva Edison.
__________________________________________________

a) printing machine; b) telephone; c) dynamite; d) photography;
e) moving pictures; f) penicillin; g) electric bulb; h) television;
i) steam engine; j) computer.

2. What were these people?

1. Paul Cezanne; 2. Marco Polo; 3. Anna Pavlova; 4. Tamerlan;
5. Voltaire; 6. Gugliemo Marconi; 7. Winston Churchill; 8. Elvis
Presley; 9. Richard Wagner; 10. John Milton; 11. Sofia Kovalevskaya; 12. Muhammad Ali; 13. Jack the Ripper; 14. John D.
Rockefeller.
__________________________________________________
a) singer; b) inventor; c) composer; d) thinker; e) conqueror; f) dancer; g) sportsman; h) painter; i) explorer; j) political leader; k) mathematician; l) criminal; m) businessman; n) poet.

3. Do you know..?

1. Who discovered the law of gravity when an apple fell on his
head?

2. Who heard voices which told her to help the French to fight
against the English?

3. Who was the first man to fly in space?

4. Who became King of the Mongols at the age of 13 and became
one of the greatest conquerors in history?

5. Who painted the famous portrait of a woman with a mysterious
smile?

6. Who was born in England, lived in the USA, died in Switzerland
and was one of the greatest comic actors of all times?

7. Who discovered radium and later died from the effects of
experiments with Xrays?

8. Who was born in Austria and became the music wonder of the
world by the age of 10?

9. Who wanted to conquer the whole world and died on the Isle
of St Helen?

10. Who was the only American president to be elected for a fourth
term of office?

11. Who founded cubism and continued to produce pictures at the
age of 90?

12. Who said: “I have a body of a weak and feeble woman, but I
have the heart and stomach of a King?”

ANSWERS

1. 1 — c; 2 — f; 3 — e; 4 — j; 5 — b; 6 — d; 7 — i; 8 — a; 9 — d; 10 — g;

2. 1 — h; 2 — i; 3 — f; 4 — e; 5 — d; 6 — b; 7 — j; 8 — a; 9 — c; 10 — n; 11 — k;
12 — g; 13 — l; 14 — m.

3. 1. Isaak Newton; 2. Joan of Arc; 3. Yury Gagarin; 4. Genghis Khan;
5. Leonardo da Vinci; 6. Charlie Chaplin; 7. Marie Curie; 8. Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart; 9. Napoleon Bonaparte; 10. Franklin Delano Roozvelt;
11. Pablo Picasso; 12. Elizabeth 1, Queen of England.

LET’S TURN OVER SOME PAGES OF HISTORY IN FACES...

U N I T  I

SOCRATES: THE MAN OF CHARACTER

Socrates, who was born 2500 years ago,
can be called the patron saint of all who
want to know the truth about life. Besides
being one of the clearest thinkers ever born,
he was tremendously strong, fearless, a
soldier, and most lovable. He was short,
squat, bearded, broad and very ugly, with a
snub nose, wide nostrils, and thick lips; yet
young people flocked around him, and he
enjoyed their company.
When he was forty, Socrates was told
that the oracle at Delphi said that no one at
Athens was wiser than he. Staggered by this, he devoted the rest of life
to an attempt to find out what human beings were doing on earth, and
why they had been put there. The conclusions he came to were so
disturbing to the official beliefs that important folk became very angry,
and accused him of misleading the young. Finally, Socrates was publicly
tried and sentenced to death. He might get off if he apologized but he
refused and at the age of seventy he became one of the many martyrs in
the cause of truth and justice.
Of Socrates’ early life we know little. Our knowledge of him is drawn
from two main sources: his friend and pupil, Plato, who kept detailed
records of his conversations and doings; and the historian Xenophon.
Each presents a different character. He was born in Athens in 470 or
469 BC. His father was a stonecutter. They were not really poor. As a
child he had religious training. The Athens into which Socrates was
born was not the capital city of all Greece, but one of a number of
small separate states. In 431 Athens went to war with a confederation

of small states led by Sparta. Socrates had already won fame as a
philosopher. Still, his first duty to Athens was as a soldier. In the war
against Sparta he showed not only courage but astonishing indifference
to hardships. The Athenian general, Laches, said there would have been
no defeat if all had been as brave, as Socrates.
At some time in ten years after the start of the war in 431, Socrates
married Xanthippe. This unfortunate woman’s name has gone down
in history as the proverbial type of shrew and nagging wife. There is no
contemporary evidence for this.
Athens lost the war, and the Spartan conqueror Lysander appointed
thirty men to govern the city. Their misrule earned them their title of
the Thirty Tyrants: and two of them were former friends of Socrates.
Thus those who disliked him now had something solid to go on.
As a matter of fact the Thirty didn’t like Socrates any better.
They ordered him and four other men to arrest and accuse an innocent man. Socrates refused, and would probably have lost his life
if the city had not risen against the Thirty and driven them out. As
soon as the city had settled down, Socrates was put on trial for
“corrupting the young” (that is misleading them and teaching them
to doubt the traditional beliefs of their elders with the sort of results),
“disbelieving in the official gods, and teaching the existence of
strange new gods.”
Before we come to his trial and defense, let us see, very briefly, the
sort of thing Socrates had been doing to arouse such enmity. The
possessor of a clear, logical mind, he applied it to matters of every kind,
religious and practical. His methods was to seek out the persons who
were thought to be authorities on whatever subject he was interested
in, and ask them a series of questions.
Socrates’ discussions were by no means always destructive. Most
of them reach solid and positive conclusions. But we can see how
this steady and bland questioning must have irritated people, the
more so when young disciples imitated it and crossexamined their
elders.
The court which tried Socrates was not like a modern court of law.
The jury numbered 500, and the verdict depended on the majority. The
accusation, prepared by a man, called Anytus, nominally claimed the

death penalty, but its real purpose was to frighten Socrates and drive
him into voluntary exile.
Socrates’ defense is one of the great documents in the history of
the human mind. It goes far beyond the ethics of a pagan civilization,
and, in its reference to a single god, anticipates some of the teaching of
Christianity.
He then proceeded to crossquestion his accuser, soon had him
tied up in knots, and demolished every point of the charge. Turning to
the general quarrel between himself and the people, he asserted that,
far from doing them harm by obeying the inner voice of his conscience,
his daemon, he had conferred great benefit on them. He had a stronger
religious faith than any of his accusers. “I leave this verdict to you and
to God.”
Incensed by what seemed to them sheer effrontery, the court
condemned him to death.
The nobility of Socrates’ final speech has been an inspiration to
free men ever since he made it. Death had no terror: it did not run so
fast as wickedness. If it were but a dreamless sleep, what sleep was
happier? If, as we were told, it joined us to the great men of earlier
times, how good to meet and question them.
“Sirs, you ought to be of good cheer with regard to death, and to
consider that this one thing is certainly true. Nothing evil befalls a good
man, nor are his affairs neglected by the gods. That which has now befallen
me has not come by chance, but I can see clearly now that is better for me
to die and to be set free from material things. This is why my accustomed
sign (his daemon) nowhere forbade me... . And now the time has come to
depart, I to die, you to live; but which of us goes to a better thing is unknown
to all save God.”
His last day he spent in telling his friends about the immortality of
a soul. The officer who announced the hour of death thanked Socrates
for all his courtesy and submission, and burst into tears on saying
farewell. A man brought in the cup of hemlock, which was the painless
method of execution. Socrates drank it, walked about for a little until
his legs were heavy, than lay down, and, reminding his friend Crito
that they owed a sacrifice to the god of medicine, covered his face with
the cloak and died.