2016年5月18日功课

THE ÆGEAN SEA

爱琴海

THE PEOPLE OF THE ÆGEAN SEA CARRIED THE CIVILISATION OF OLD ASIA INTO THE WILDERNESS OF EUROPE

爱琴海人民将古老的亚洲文明带入到欧洲的不毛之地。

WHEN Heinrich Schliemann was a little boy his father told him the story of Troy. He liked that story better than anything else he had ever heard and he made up his mind, that as soon as he was big enough to leave home, he would travel to Greece and "find Troy." That he was the son of a poor country parson in a Mecklenburg village did not bother him. He knew that he would need money but he decided to gather a fortune first and do the digging afterwards. As a matter of fact, he managed to get a large fortune within a very short time, and as soon as he had enough money to equip an expedition, he went to the northwest corner of Asia Minor, where he supposed that Troy had been situated.

当海因里西.施利曼还是个小孩子的时候，他的父亲给他讲了特洛伊的故事。他无比地喜欢这个故事，于是立志一旦长大后可以离开家乡，他就去希腊寻找“特洛伊”。他只是梅克伦堡一个贫穷牧师的儿子，不过着并不妨碍他（实现梦想）。但他知道自己需要钱，于是第一步他决定先攒一笔钱，然后再进行探险。事实上，他想方设法在很短时间内取得了一大笔钱。他一获得足够的钱来装备探险队，他向着小亚细亚的西南角出发了，他认为特洛伊就在那里。

2016年5月19日功课

In that particular nook of old Asia Minor, stood a high mound covered with grainfields.According to tradition it had been the home of Priamus the king of Troy.Schliemann, whose enthusiasm was somewhat greater than his knowledge, wasted no time in preliminary explorations.At once he began to dig.And he dug with such zeal and such speed that his trench went straight through the heart of the city for which he was looking and carried him to the ruins of another buried town which was at least a thousand years older than the Troy of which Homer had written.Then something very interesting occurred.If Schliemann had found a few polished stone hammers and perhaps a few pieces of crude pottery, no one would have been surprised.Instead of discovering such objects, which people had generally associated with the prehistoric men who had lived in these regions before the coming of the Greeks, Schliemann found beautiful statuettes and very costly jewelry and ornamented vases of a pattern that was unknown to the Greeks. 

在小亚细亚那个独特的角落里，矗立着一个长满庄稼的高大土丘。相传，那里是特洛伊国王普里阿莫的故乡。施利曼是一个热情高于学识的人，根本没花时间进行预勘探。迫不及待的进行挖掘。他以极高的热情和极快的速度挖掘着，以至于他开挖的壕沟从他一直在寻找的城市中心直穿过去。他挖到了另一个被埋藏的城镇的废墟，依据何马的记载，这个城镇要比特洛伊至少早1000年。接着他发现了一些十分有趣的东西。如果施利曼发现的是几个精美的石锤，或着是几片粗陶，没有人会感到吃惊。相反地施利曼没发现些人们通常会和在希腊人到来之前就生活在这片区域的史前人联系起来的东西，他发现了精美的小型雕塑和非常昂贵的珍宝，以及装饰有希腊人都不认识的图案的花瓶。

2016年5月20日功课

He ventured the suggestion that fully ten centuries before the great Trojan war, the coast of the Ægean had been inhabited by a mysterious race of men who in many ways had been the superiors of the wild Greek tribes who had invaded their country and had destroyed their civilisation or absorbed it until it had lost all trace of originality. And this proved to be the case. In the late seventies of the last century, Schliemann visited the ruins of Mycenæ, ruins which were so old that Roman guide-books marvelled at their antiquity. There again, beneath the flat slabs of stone of a small round enclosure, Schliemann stumbled upon a wonderful treasure-trove, which had been left behind by those mysterious people who had covered the Greek coast with their cities and who had built walls, so big and so heavy and so strong, that the Greeks called them the work of the Titans, those god-like giants who in very olden days had used to play ball with mountain peaks.

施利曼追随着一个传说而来。相传在特洛伊战争前1000年，爱琴海沿岸曾居住着一个神秘的民族，这个民族在个方面都比野蛮的希腊部落高级。希腊人入侵了这个民族，摧毁了他们的文明，将他们同化的一点痕迹都不剩。这个传说被证明是真实的。在上世纪70年代末（指19世纪：施泽注），施利曼访问了迈锡尼遗址，这片遗址年代如此久远，以至于罗马教科书都惊叹与它的古老。在那里历史重演，施利曼在一个圆形围墙的石板下面发现了一个精美的地下宝藏。宝藏是那些神秘民族留下来的，他们的城市曾经布满希腊海岸。他们建造的围墙如此高大、沉重、坚强，以至于希腊人将其称之为泰坦的杰作。泰坦是经常在群山之间踢球的巨神。

2016年5月21日功课

A very careful study of these many relics has done away with some of the romantic features of the story.The makers of these early works of art and the builders of these strong fortresses were no sorcerers, but simple sailors and traders.They had lived in Crete, and on the many small islands of the Ægean Sea.They had been hardy mariners and they had turned the Ægean into a center of commerce for the exchange of goods between the highly civilised east and the slowly developing wilderness of the European mainland.

对这些遗迹进行深入研究后，使其褪去神话故事的浪漫色彩。这些早期艺术品的制造者以及强大城堡的建造者不是魔术师，只不过是一些普通的士兵和商人。他们居住在克里特岛，以及爱琴海其它的众多小岛上。他们曾经是勇敢的水手，是他们将爱琴海转变成一个贸易中心，可供东方高度发达的文明与欠发达的荒蛮欧洲大陆交换货物。

2016年5月22日功课

For more than a thousand years they had maintained an island empire which had developed a very high form of art.Indeed their most important city, Cnossus, on the northern coast of Crete, had been entirely modern in its insistence upon hygiene and comfort.The palace had been properly drained and the houses had been provided with stoves and the Cnossians had been the first people to make a daily use of the hitherto unknown bathtub.The palace of their King had been famous for its winding staircases and its large banqueting hall.The cellars underneath this palace, where the wine and the grain and the olive-oil were stored, had been so vast and had so greatly impressed the first Greek visitors, that they had given rise to the story of the "labyrinth," the name which we give to a structure with so many complicated passages that it is almost impossible to find our way out, once the front door has closed upon our frightened selves.

几千年以来，他们经营着这个岛上王国，并发展出高级的艺术形式。实际上，他们最重要的城市，位于克里特岛南岸的克里索斯已经完全是现代化城市的样子，从这个城市主张的卫生和舒适度来看。这个地方的排水系统完好，房子都配有火炉。克里索斯人最早开始使用浴缸，到现在人们还在使用。他们的王宫以旋转楼梯和大宴会厅闻名。王宫用来存放葡萄酒、粮食和橄榄油的地下室非常广阔，给第一次访问地窖的希腊人留下了深刻的印象，这让希腊人联想到“迷宫”的故事。“迷宫”是指一种拥有许多复杂通道的建筑物，让人几乎找不到出口。地宫的大门关闭，一阵恐惧感袭来。

2016年5月23日功课

But what finally became of this great Ægean Empire and what caused its sudden downfall, that I can not tell.

不过，是什么成就了爱琴文明，又是什么促使她突然衰落，原因不得而知。

The Cretans were familiar with the art of writing, but no one has yet been able to decipher their inscriptions. Their history therefore is unknown to us. We have to reconstruct the record of their adventures from the ruins which the Ægeans have left behind. These ruins make it clear that the Ægean world was suddenly conquered by a less civilised race which had recently come from the plains of northern Europe. Unless we are very much mistaken, the savages who were responsible for the destruction of the Cretan and the Ægean civilisation were none other than certain tribes of wandering shepherds who had just taken possession of the rocky peninsula between the Adriatic and the Ægean seas and who are known to us as Greeks.

克里特岛人熟悉书写的艺术，但至今没有人可以参透他们碑文的意义。因此，对于他们的历史我们无从而知。我们不得不通过爱琴人留下的遗迹来重建克里特岛人冒险历史。那些历史遗迹非常清晰的表明，爱琴文明是被一个刚从北欧平原出来的低级民族突然征服的。除非我们严重判断错误，否则葬送克里特岛和爱琴文明的刽子手就应该是那个游牧民族，他们占领了亚的里亚海与爱琴海之间的石头半岛，既我们所熟悉的希腊人。