The Roman Republic was established around 509 BC, according to later writers such as Livy, when the last of the seven kings of Rome, Tarquin the Proud, was deposed, and a system based on annually-elected magistrates and various representative assemblies was established. A constitution of the Roman Republic set a series of checks and balances, and a separation of powers.
In the mid-1st century BC, three men, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, formed a secret pact-the First Triumvirate-to control the Republic. After Caesar's conquest of Gaul, a stand-off between Caesar and the Senate led to civil war, with Pompey leading the Senate's forces. Caesar emerged victorious, and was made dictator for life. In 44 BC, Caesar was assassinated by senators who opposed Caesar's assumption of absolute power and wanted to restore constitutional government, but in the aftermath a Second Triumvirate, consisting of Caesar's designated heir, Octavian, and his former supporters, Mark Antony and Lepidus, took power. However, this alliance soon descended into a struggle for dominance. Lepidus was exiled, and when Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra of Egypt at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, he became the undisputed ruler of Rome.
The city of Cambridge is an old English university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom. It lies approximately 50 miles (80 km) north-northeast of London and is surrounded by a number of smaller towns and villages. It is also at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen.
Cambridge is best known for the University of Cambridge, which includes the renowned Cavendish Laboratory, King's College Chapel, and the Cambridge University Library. The Cambridge skyline is dominated by the last two, along with the chimney of Addenbrooke's Hospital in the far south of the city and St John's College Chapel tower in the north.
Settlements have existed around the area since before the Roman Empire. The earliest clear evidence of occupation, a collection of hunting weapons, is from the Late Bronze Age, starting around 1000 BC. There is further archaeological evidence through the Iron Age, a Belgic tribe having settled on Castle Hill in the 1st century BC.
The first major development of the area began with the Roman invasion of Britain in about AD 40. Castle Hill made Cambridge a useful place for a military outpost from which to defend the River Cam.
After the Romans had left, Saxons took over the land on and around Castle Hill. Their grave goods have been found in the area. During Anglo-Saxon times Cambridge benefited from good trade links across the otherwise hard-to-travel fenlands.
The arrival of the Vikings in Cambridge was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 875. Viking rule, the Danelaw, had been imposed by 878. The Vikings' vigorous trading habits caused Cambridge to grow rapidly. During this period the centre of the town shifted from Castle Hill on the left bank of the river to the area now known as the Quayside on the right bank. After the end of the Viking period the Saxons enjoyed a brief return to power, building St Bene’t’s church in 1025, which still stands in Bene't Street.
Over time the name of the town changed to Cambridge, while the river Cam was still known as the Granta — indeed the Upper River (the stretch between the Millpond in Cambridge and Grantchester) is correctly known as the Granta to this day. It was only later that the river became known as the Cam, by analogy with the name Cambridge.
In 1209, students escaping from hostile townspeople in Oxford fled to Cambridge and formed a university there. The oldest college that still exists, Peterhouse, was founded in 1284. One of the most impressive buildings in Cambridge, King's College Chapel, was begun in 1446 by King Henry VI. The project was completed in 1515 during the reign of King Henry VIII.
Cambridge University Press originated with a printing license issued in 1534. Hobson's Conduit, the first project to bring clean drinking water to the town centre, was built in 1610 (by the Hobson of Hobson's choice). Parts of it survive today. Addenbrooke's Hospital was founded in 1766. The railway and station were built in 1845.
Original historical documents relating to the town of Cambridge (as opposed to the university or colleges within Cambridge) are held by Cambridge shire Archives and Local Studies at the County Record Office Cambridge and at the Cambridge shire Collection. These records include original registers for the parish churches dating back to the 1530s, local government records, maps, photographs, and records of some businesses, schools and charities.
The Royal Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest library in the world. It is generally thought to have been founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC, during the reign of Ptolemy II of Egypt. The Library was likely created after his father had built what would become the first part of the Library complex, the temple of the Muses - the Museion. It has been reasonably established that the Library, or parts of the collection, were destroyed by fire on a number of occasions (library fires were common and replacement of handwritten manuscripts was very difficult, expensive and time-consuming). To this day the details of the destruction (or destructions) remain a lively source of controversy. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was inaugurated in 2003 near the site of the old Library.
The Library was initially organized by Demetrius of Phaleron. Demetrius was a student of Aristotle. Initially the Library was closely linked to a "museum," or research center, that seems to have focused primarily on editing texts. Libraries were important for textual research in the ancient world, since the same text often existed in several different versions of varying quality and veracity.
A story concerns how its collection grew so large: by decree of Ptolemy III of Egypt, all visitors to the city were required to surrender all books and scrolls in their possession; these writings were then swiftly copied by official scribes. Sometimes the copies were so precise that the originals were put into the Library, and the copies were delivered to the unsuspecting previous owners. This process also helped to create a reservoir of books in the relatively new city. The Ptolemies also purchased additional materials from throughout the Mediterranean area, including from Rhodes and Athens.
The Library's collection was already famous in the ancient world, and became even more storied in later years. It is impossible, however, to determine how large the collection was in any era. The collection was made of papyrus scrolls. Later, parchment codices (predominant as a writing material after 300) may have been substituted for papyrus. A single piece of writing might occupy several scrolls, and this division into self-contained "books" was a major aspect of editorial work. King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) is said to have set 500,000 scrolls as an objective.
Mark Antony was supposed to have given Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls for the Library as a wedding gift. These scrolls were taken from the great Library of Pergamum, impoverishing its collection. Carl Sagan, in his series Cosmos, states that the Library contained nearly one million scrolls, though other experts have estimated a smaller number. No index of the Library survives, and it is not possible to know with certainty how large and how diverse the collection was. It is likely, for example, that even if the Library had hundreds of thousands of scrolls (and thus, perhaps, tens of thousands of individual works), many of these were duplicate copies or alternate versions of the same texts.
Ancient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the destruction of the Library:
1. Caesar's conquest 48 BC;
2. The attack of Aurelian in the 3rd century;
3. The decree of Theophilus in 391;
4. The Muslim conquest in 642 or thereafter.
Saint Petersburg
Founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 27, 1703 as a “window to Europe”, it served as the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years. Tsar Peter the Great founded the city on May 27, 1703. He named it after his patron saint, the apostle Saint Peter. At the same time Peter hired a large number of engineers, architects, shipbuilders, scientists and businessmen from all countries of Europe. Peter the Great transferred the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712. Inspired by example of Venice and Amsterdam, Peter the Great proposed boats and coracles as principal means of transport in his city of canals. Initially there were only 12 permanent bridges over smaller branches, while the Bolshaya Neva was crossed by boats in the summertime and by a horse carriage during winter. The first permanent bridge over Bolshaya Neva was built in 1850.
Several revolutions, uprisings, assassinations of Tsars, and power takeovers in St. Petersburg had shaped the course of history in Russia and influenced the world. During World War I, the name Sankt Peterburg was seen to be too German and it was renamed Petrograd, three days after Lenin`s death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor.
Probably the most illustrious of imperial palaces is the baroque Winter Palace, a vast stately building with over 600 rooms and dazzlingly luxurious interiors, now housing the Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage is the most famous of St. Petersburg's museums, one of the world's largest and richest collections of Western European art. The largest cathedral in the city is St Isaac's Cathedral; it is the biggest gold-plated dome in the world. The Kazan Cathedral on the Nevsky Prospekt is a national landmark in the Empire style, modeled after St Peter's, Vatican. The Church of the Savior on Blood, is a monument in the Old Russian style which marks the spot of Alexander II's assassination. The Peter and Paul Cathedral, a long-time symbol of the city, contains the sepulchers of Peter the Great and other.
Other popular tourist destinations include the Kunstkammer, the State Russian Museum and the Summer Garden, the Ethnography Museum, Stieglitz Museum of Applied Arts, the Suvorov Museum of Military History, and the Political History Museum. Nevsky Prospekt is the main avenue of St. Petersburg connecting the Winter Palace with the ancient monastery at Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Probably the most familiar symbol of St Petersburg is the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, known as the Bronze Horseman and installed in 1782 on the Senate Square. Considered the greatest masterpiece of the French-born Etienne Maurice Falconet, Aleksandr Pushkin's poem about the statue figures prominently in the Russian literature under the name of The Bronze Horseman. The Palace Square is dominated by the unique Alexander Column, the tallest of its kind in the world and so nicely set that no attachment to the base is needed.
Использованная литература.
Березина О.А., Шпилюк Е.М. Английский язык для студентов университетов. Упражнения по грамматике-СПб: Издательство «Союз», 2002.
Бонди Е. А. Английский язык для студентов-историков. Москва, 2003.
Голицынский Ю. Грамматика. Сборник упражнений. С.-П., 2005.
Лариса Романова. Практическая грамматика английского языка. Айрис Пресс, Рольф, Москва, 2001.
Христорождественская Л. П. Английский язык. Практический курс. Часть 1, 2. Минск, 2004.
Христорождественская Л. П. Английский язык. Упражнения по грамматике. Минск, 2004.
Michael Duckworth, Kathy Gude. Countdown, Oxford, 1999.
Raymond Murphy. English grammar in use. Cambridge, 2004.
Bob Obee, Virginia Evans. Express Publishing, 2003.
Wikipedia. Free Encyclopedia.