Naval Events and Aquacades

Roman water spectacle took several forms. The literary sources favour bloody spectacles featuring condemned criminals and prisoners of war. In theatres or amphitheatres, the orchestra or arena might be flooded and convicts forced to play the parts of well-known mythic heroes facing mortal danger in some Greek tale with a ‘watery’ theme. Larger naval battle shows, called naumachiae, took place rarely, and almost exclusively at Rome, in specially designed basins. These pitted two teams in mortal naval combat, complete with custom-built ships and real weapons. Less commonly described, but frequently staged, was the hydromime—water pageantry taking numerous forms, such as synchronized swimming, mimed sketches of popular myths, and other kinds of light entertainment. There is little evidence that any form of Roman water spectacle had precursors in the Greek world, but the naumachia may bear a distant relationship to Athenian ephebic boating competitions first attested in the fourth century bce.

Mountain, cave and high altitude rescue – service, organization, areas of activity

Safety constitutes a priority for every society, especially in the areas where provision of help poses a great threat to both those in danger and the rescuers. Conducting rescue operations in mountains, caves and high-altitude facilities requires special preparation. Adequately trained services, which include the Volunteer Mountain Rescue Service, the Tatra Volunteer Rescue Service, the Cave Rescue Group, operating within the structures of the Polish Mountaineering Association, and the State Fire Service, help people who find themselves in mortal danger. Appropriate mutual cooperation of these entities in large and complex rescue operations is a recipe for saving the life, health or property of our society.

Witches and goddesses in modern prose

The article deals with the evolution of female demonic characters appearing in literature since the classics to this day. In Russian classics, infernal females with magical powers were not uncommon: described by V. Zhukovsky, O. Somov, N. Gogol, A. Kuprin, etc., they were mostly treated as ‘abnormal’ or negative. The perception has changed dramatically in modern literature: a woman with connections to infernal powers (e. g. princess Tichert in A. Ivanov’s novel The Heart of Parma [Serdtse Parmy] or Rogneda in M. Galina’s Mole Crickets [Medvedki], etc.) is no longer a manifestly negative character. A. Guskova discovers that the contemporary infernal (or demonic) female character is not so much part of a love theme but is rather connected to the magic of the story’s location: the Urals in A. Ivanov’s book and Transdniestria in M. Galina’s, respectively. Also transformed is the nature of the contact between the heroine and the male protagonist: the impossibility of a constructive interaction and mortal danger (in classic prose) are replaced with a positive tone, granting the protagonist an opportunity for development.

The Deposition of History in Prehistory: Copper Objects on Sites and in the Landscape

A variable proportion of finds from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of ‘Old Europe’ has come from places outside settlements, cemeteries, production sites, ritual sites, or caves. Such finds tend to be described as ‘chance/isolated/single/stray’ finds or, when in groups, as ‘hoards’. The frequent, modernist cause invoked for these finds is that they were either ‘hidden’ in times of mortal danger, represented a ‘gift to the gods’, or simply ‘lost’. One reason for these explanatory shortcomings is the over-attention to the types of objects deposited in the landscape and the frequent lack of attention to the often-distinctive place of deposition. We believe that we have misnamed, overlooked, or not accurately characterised an entire class of sites, which we term ‘landscape deposition sites’, whose defining feature was the transformation of a place by the deposition of a significant object or group of objects to create a qualitatively different place. The creation of such landscape deposit sites varied in time and space throughout Old Europe, but all sites were affected by this new dimension of the extended cultural domain.In this article, we consider the interpretations of metal deposition in North-west Europe and the light they shed on an earlier and geographically different region. The primary aim of this paper is an exploration of the variable relationships between landscape deposit sites and the coeval finds made in special deposits in settlements and cemeteries in the 5th and 4th millennia bc, which will lead to proposed new interpretations of landscape deposition sites.

ПОЭТИКА ЦИКЛА НОВОГОДНИХ СТИХОВ М. В. ИСАКОВСКОГО (СРАВНИТЕЛЬНО-ТИПОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ)

Six New Year (eonic) poems by M. V. Isakovsky, written between 1942 and 1972, are examined in the article as a non-author's cycle with its own ‘plot’. It captured such philosophical phenomena as death, guilt, suffering, chance, etc., which revealed themselves in a sacred moment of time — the New Year. The three “battlefield” toasts reflected Isakovsky's sense of guilt before himself and the people; the desire to cast a spell on hostile forces and thus bring victory closer. The humorous post-war toast of 1948 demonstrated the return of life in the USSR to a peaceful track, which was signified by the restoration of state and family holidays, dinner parties. The official ‘newspaper’ toast “for 1958” expresses the idea of “new happiness” that emphasizes the motive of peaceful labor exploits of the Soviet people, while the poems “for 1973” can be classified as confessional. Isakovsky's New Year poems are also analyzed in the context of two traditions — Russian aeonic poetry and ritual toasts. Connections with poems by V. A. Zhukovsky, P. A. Vyazemsky, M. I. Tsvetaeva, A. T. Tvardovsky are traced. New Year poetic toast, on the one hand, became one of the many genres that contributed to the unity of the Russian people in the face of mortal danger during the war; on the other hand, it preserved a number of archaic topoi (the experience of the New Year’s transition as a sacred time; ritual magic formulas that invoke Death, Time and Fate; the biblical archetype of the chosen people, etc.).

The “Killer Wife” (Qatlanit) in Jewish Law: A Survey of Sources

This article traces the development of Jewish law regarding the qatlanit or “killer-wife,” a woman who was twice widowed. The Jewish law examines the dilemma whether she should be allowed to marry again because of the risk that she poses a mortal danger to men whom she marries. Fear of marrying a woman twice-widowed plays a role in the story of Tamar, but Genesis 38 makes it clear that it is God who is responsible for the deaths of Er and Onan, and not the innocent widow. The Talmud prohibits the marriage of a twice-widowed woman, and attributes the demise of her husbands not to any intention on her part, but rather her “source” (sexual organs) or her “mazal” (fate as determined by astrology). Later responsa generally reflect a more lenient attitude towards the remarriage of the qatlanit in response to the tumult and tragedy of medieval Jewish history, as well as the growing influence of rationalism in Jewish thought. Modern rabbis, because of their openness to scientific thought and concern for the loneliness of old age, show a marked leniency towards the remarriage of a twice-widowed woman.

Ecological approach as part of greater environmental awareness

Chapter 7 shows that the emergence of the Ecological approach to rivers is a part of the broader process of greater recognition of the importance of protection of environment, in general. The huge increase in population and production following the Industrial Revolution led to breaches in planetary boundaries, putting the earth and human civilization in a jeopardy. Since the 1970s there has been growing recognition of this mortal danger, and various initiatives were begun along different directions to confront this danger, many focused on protection of rivers and waterbodies. Among these are the Ramsar Convention of 1971, UN Convention on International Rivers of 1997, and formation and report of the World Commission on Dams in 2000. The rise of the Ecological approach to rivers is a continuation of this process.

Phenomenon of pandemy from the point of view of system theory: to the formulation of the problem

Proposed system theory for researching phenomenon of pandemic. The matter of this conception includes the next idea: pandemic is showed as a certain variant of antisystem. In this case pandemic has median nature, it emerges as an interferential picture of crossing of two systems – biocenosis and anthropocenosis.A system in its inner structure and organization is showed as totality of homogeneous and heterogeneous units in their union and relations. There are four types of systems create biocenosis and anthropocenosis: discrete, stiff, open and closed. The successful existence of a system must take into account quality of its elements, quantity of its elements, architectonics of elements of a system. Together with that a system should have a degree of order, a character of order, a functional effect and a compliance of a system with its functions. Relations in a system make a system as it. A basic element of a system is its relations. A system is organic, but not mechanic, forming.Biocenosis is a definite completed complex of forms, that physically, ecologically, historically is united in a whole by the conditions of existence. It consists of zoocenosis, plant community, viruscenosis etc. Anthropocenosis is a core of ethnocenosis. Showed that union of biocenosis and anthropocenosis is in possibility to autoreproduction and difference is dependence of anthropocenosis from not only biological, but social, cultural, spiritual laws. If biocenosis can evaluate by simple summation of changes, that anthropocenosis can evaluate by prognostics and combinations of complex and growing coordination of development.Antisystem as a notion is a system with negative level of consistency, it’s a union of multiple elements at the expense of their interaction of a whole, that that prevents of achievements of aims. Proposed that antisystem is emerged as negative meeting of two different systems.Pandemic belongs to hostile type of relations between biocenosis and anthropocenosis. During their collision biocenosis has some entropic processes and aims to compensate them for anthropocenosis. Biocenosis uses anthropocenosis as negentropy. In its turn anthropocenosis has the same processes. That’s why pandemic is a war between biocenosis and anthropocenosis and median space between of them.Pandemic can initiate not only dissipative, negative, antievolution processes. It’s an existential, limit situation. Pandemic has mortal danger and new possibilities at the same time.

JESUS CHRIST’S IMAGE TRANSFORMATION IN THE WORKS BY A. BLOK: FROM EARLY WORKS TO THE POEM “THE TWELVE”

We present the analysis the image of Jesus Christ in the early lyric poetry and the final chapters of the poem “The Twelve” by A. Blok from the point of view of Orthodox spiritual thought. The study allows us to conclude that the poet, despite the specific creative manner of symbolism, very accurately conveys in his early works not only the crisis perception of the world, typical of society at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, but also a deep personal insight into the essence of Orthodox faith. As a result of comparing the image of Christ in the analyzed lyric works with the final image in the poem “The Twelve”, which received many different interpretations in critical literary practice, as well as the writings of philosophers and theologians, we conclude that Alexander Blok with his fine poetic ear and spiritual vision, astonishing accuracy portrayed the moral emptiness of people who had created an idol for themselves from a false idea. The element of destruction, the whirlwind of snow, which gave rise to the “tender” image of the false Christ, in fact poses a mortal danger to the human soul.