Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th or 6th century AD centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer, continues through the emergence of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity, blending into the Early Middle Ages. Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate periods. Classical antiquity may refer to an idealised vision among people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe's words, "the glory, Greece, the grandeur, Rome"; the culture of the ancient Greeks, together with some influences from the ancient Near East, was the basis of art, philosophy and educational ideals, until the Roman imperial period.
The Romans preserved and spread over Europe these ideals until they were able to competitively rival the Greek culture, as the Latin language became widespread and the classical world became bilingual and Latin. This Greco-Roman cultural foundation has been immensely influential on the language, law, educational systems, science, poetry, ethics, rhetoric and architecture of the modern world. From the surviving fragments of classical antiquity, a revival movement was formed from the 14th century onwards which came to be known in Europe as the Renaissance, again resurgent during various neo-classical revivals in the 18th and 19th centuries; the earliest period of classical antiquity takes place before the background of gradual re-appearance of historical sources following the Bronze Age collapse. The 8th and 7th centuries BC are still proto-historical, with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing in the first half of the 8th century. Homer is assumed to have lived in the 8th or 7th century BC, his lifetime is taken as marking the beginning of classical antiquity.
In the same period falls the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games, in 776 BC. The Phoenicians expanded from Canaan ports, by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean. Carthage was founded in 814 BC, the Carthaginians by 700 BC had established strongholds in Sicily and Sardinia, which created conflicts of interest with Etruria. A stela found in Kition, Cyprus commemorates the victory of king Sargon II in 709 BC over the seven kings of the island, marking an important step in the emancipation of Cyprus from Tyrian rule by the Assyrian military; the Archaic period followed the Greek Dark Ages, saw significant advancements in political theory, the rise of democracy, theatre, poetry, as well as the revitalisation of the written language. In pottery, the Archaic period sees the development of the Orientalizing style, which signals a shift from the Geometric style of the Dark Ages and the accumulation of influences derived from Egypt and Syria. Pottery styles associated with the part of the Archaic age are the black-figure pottery, which originated in Corinth during the 7th century BC and its successor, the red-figure style, developed by the Andokides Painter in about 530 BC.
The Etruscans had established political control in the region by the late 7th century BC, forming the aristocratic and monarchial elite. The Etruscans lost power in the area by the late 6th century BC, at this point, the Italic tribes reinvented their government by creating a republic, with much greater restraints on the ability of rulers to exercise power. According to legend, Rome was founded on April 21, 753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas and Remus; as the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins and the Sabines. Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid-8th century BC, though settlements on the Palatine Hill may date back to the 10th century BC; the seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus. As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and the son-in-law of Servius Tullius, Superbus was of Etruscan birth.
It was during his reign. Superbus removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock, enraging the people of Rome; the people came to object to his rule when he failed to recognize the rape of Lucretia, a patrician Roman, at the hands of his own son. Lucretia's kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus, summoned the Senate and had Superbus and the monarchy expelled from Rome in 510 BC. After Superbus' expulsion, the Senate voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government in 509 BC. In fact the Latin word "Rex" meaning King became a dirty and hated word throughout the Republic and on the Empire; the classical period of Ancient Greece corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, in particular, from the fall of the Athenian tyranny in 510 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow son of Peisistratos. Cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras
Kerch Strait ferry line
The Kerch Strait ferry line is the ferry connection across the Strait of Kerch in Russia that connects the Crimean Peninsula and Krasnodar Krai. The ferry runs across the narrowest part of the strait between Port Krym by the city of Kerch and Port Kavkaz on the Chushka Spit, it carries passengers and railroad transport. The ferry connects its parts, А290 and М-17 highways; the ferry line was established in 1953. From 1993 to 2004 railroad transportation was suspended due to replacement of aged train-ferries. Since dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was administered jointly by Ukraine. Since the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, participation of government of Ukraine in administration of the company cannot be confirmed. In June 2015, the ferry operator considered a daily passenger count of 11,000 normal; the May 2018 opening of the road section of the new Crimean Bridge, crossing the strait about 10 km further south, the projected 2019 opening of the railway section of that bridge, have reduced demand for the ferry.
Crimean Bridge Kerch-Yenikale Canal
Train ferry
A train ferry is a ship designed to carry railway vehicles. One level of the ship is fitted with railway tracks, the vessel has a door at the front and/or rear to give access to the wharves. In the United States, train ferries are sometimes referred to as "car ferries", as distinguished from "auto ferries" used to transport automobiles; the wharf has a ramp, a linkspan or "apron", balanced by weights, that connects the railway proper to the ship, allowing for the water level to rise and fall with the tides. While railway vehicles can be and are shipped on the decks or in the holds of ordinary ships, purpose-built train ferries can be loaded and unloaded by roll-on/roll-off as several vehicles can be loaded or unloaded at once. A train ferry, a barge is called a car float or rail barge. An early train ferry was established as early as 1833 by the Kirkintilloch Railway. To extend the line over the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland, the company began operating a wagon ferry to transport the rolling stock over the canal.
In April 1836, the first railroad car ferry in the U. S. Susquehanna, entered service on the Susquehanna River between Havre de Grace and Perryville, Maryland; the first modern train ferry was Leviathan, built in 1849. The Edinburgh and Newhaven Railway was formed in 1842 and the company wished to extend the East Coast Main Line further north to Dundee and Aberdeen; as bridge technology was not yet capable enough to provide adequate support for the crossing over the Firth of Forth, five miles across, a different solution had to be found for the transport of goods, where efficiency was key. The company hired the up-and-coming civil engineer Thomas Bouch who argued for a train ferry with an efficient roll-on roll-off mechanism to maximise the efficiency of the system. Custom-built ferries were to be built, with railway lines and matching harbour facilities at both ends to allow the rolling stock to drive on and off the boat. To compensate for the changing tides, adjustable ramps were positioned at the harbours and the gantry structure height was varied by moving it along the slipway.
The wagons were loaded off with the use of stationary steam engines. Although others had had similar ideas, it was Bouch who first put them into effect, did so with an attention to detail; this led a subsequent President of the Institution of Civil Engineers to settle any dispute over priority of invention with the observation that "there was little merit in a simple conception of this kind, compared with a work carried out in all its details, brought to perfection."The company was persuaded to install this train ferry service for the transportation of goods wagons across the Firth of Forth from Burntisland in Fife to Granton. The ferry itself was built by a partner of the firm Grainger and Miller; the service commenced on 3 February 1850. It was called "The Floating Railway" and intended as a temporary measure until the railway could build a bridge, but this was not opened until 1890, its construction delayed in part by repercussions from the catastrophic failure of Thomas Bouch's Tay Rail Bridge.
The largest train ferry built is MS Skåne on the Trelleborg-Rostock route, built in 1998, 200 meters long, 29 meters wide, with six tracks plus two on an elevator to the lower deck, having a total length of track of 1,110 meters. Train ferries sink because of sea hazards, although they have some weaknesses linked to the nature of transporting trains "on rail" on a ship; these weaknesses include: Trains are loaded at a rather high level, making the ship top-heavy. The train deck is difficult to compartmentalise, so that sloshing flood water can destabilise the ship; the sea doors where the trains go in and out are a weakness if placed at the rear of the ship. The train carriages need to be secured lest they break away and roll around on long, open-water routes; the Ann Arbor Railroad of Michigan developed a system of making cars secure, adopted by many other lines. Screw jacks were placed on the corners of the railcar and the car was raised to take its weight off of its wheels. Chains and turnbuckles were hooked onto the rails and tightened.
Clamps were placed behind the wheels on the rails. Deckhands engaged in continual tightening of the gear during the crossing; this system held the cars in place when the ship encountered rough weather. Some accidents have occurred at the slip during loading. Train ferries list when heavy cars are loaded onto a track on one side while the other side is empty. Normal procedure was to load half of a track on one side, all of the track on the other side, the rest of the original track. If this procedure was not followed, results could be disastrous. In 1909, SS Ann Arbor No. 4 capsized in its slip in Manistique, Michigan when a switching crew put eight cars of iron ore on its portside tracks. The crew got off without loss of life; the Japanese train ferry, Toya Maru, sank during typhoon Marie on 26 September 1954, killing more than a thousand. Four other train ferries, Seikan maru No.11, Kitami Maru, Tokachi Maru and Hidaka Maru sank on that day. At the time, Japanese train ferries did not have a rear sea-gate, because engineers believed that in-rushing water would flow out again and would not pose a danger.
However, when the frequency of waves bears the wrong relationship to the length of a ship, each wave arrives as the water f
Port Kavkaz
Port Kavkaz is a small harbour on the Kerch Strait in Krasnodar Krai, Russia. The port is able to handle vessels up to 130 metres in length, 14.5 metres in breadth and with draft up to 5 metres. It is the eastern terminal of the railroad and car Kerch Strait ferry line connecting Krasnodar Krai with Crimea; the southern zone of the port has been under renovation to increase the turnover of the port of Kavkaz up to 4 megatonnes. On August 2014 Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a government order to enlarge the area of the port near Crimea with the aim to increase cargo transportation volumes with the use of large ships; the borders of the port were changed to add a deep-water area south of the port of Taman for large vessels to anchor. Plans included an additional 15–18 anchor places for loading large ships; the additional area is 18.4 km2 with depths of 26–27.6 m
Krasnodar Krai
Krasnodar Krai is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region in Southern Russia and administratively a part of the Southern Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Krasnodar; the third most-populous federal subject, the krai had a population of 5,226,647 as of the 2010 Census. Krasnodar Krai is formally and informally referred to as Kuban, a term denoting former Kuban People's Republic and historic region of Kuban situated between the Sea of Azov and the Kuban River, composed of the krai's territory, it is bordered by Rostov Oblast to the north, Stavropol Krai to the east, Karachay-Cherkessia to the south-east, Adygea is an enclave within the krai. Krasnodar Krai shares an international border with Georgia to the south, a disputed border with Crimea across the Kerch Strait; the northern part of the krai belongs to the Don Steppe, while southern region's Mediterranean climate has made it a popular tourist location. Novorossiysk is Russia's main port on the Black Sea, one of the few cities awarded the title of the Hero City, Sochi was host of the XXII Olympic Winter Games in 2014.
Krasnodar Krai is home to significant infrastructure of the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet. Krasnodar Krai is located in the southwestern part of the North Caucasus and borders with Rostov Oblast in the northeast, Stavropol Krai and Karachay-Cherkessia in the east, with the Abkhazia region in the south; the Republic of Adygea is encircled by the krai territory. The krai's Taman Peninsula is situated between the Sea of Azov in the north and the Black Sea in the south. In the west, the Kerch Strait separates the krai from the contested Crimean Peninsula, internationally recognised as part of Ukraine but under de facto Russian control. At its widest extent, the krai stretches for 327 kilometers from north to south and for 360 kilometers from east to west; the krai is split into two distinct parts by the Kuban River, which gave its name to this entire geographic region. The southern, seaward part is the western extremity of the Caucasus range, lying within the Crimean Submediterranean forest complex ecoregion.
It is known as Circassia. The northern part is a steppe zone, it is known as Kuban region. The height of the mountains exceeds 3,000 meters, with Mount Tsakhvoa being the highest at 3,346 meters. Mount Fisht, at 2,867 meters, is the Great Caucasus' westernmost peak with a glacier; the Black Sea coast stretches from the Kerch Strait to Adler and is shielded by Caucasus Mountains from the cold northern winds. Numerous small mountain rivers flow in the coastal areas creating picturesque waterfalls. Lake Abrau, located in the wine-making region of Abrau-Dyurso, is the largest lake in the northeastern Caucasus region. Lake Ritsa is considered to be one of the most picturesque lakes in the region and "the diamond of Caucasus"; the region's earliest known inhabitants are referred to, generically, as the Maiōtai. During the 6th century BCE, Pontic Greeks founded the area's first cities, such as Phanagoria and Hermonassa, who traded with nomadic tribes including the Skuthai and Sindi. From the 8th to the 10th centuries, the area was dominated by the Khazars, a Turkic people who had earlier migrated from the east onto the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, where they reputedly converted to Judaism.
After the defeat of the Khazar Khanate in 965 Kievan prince Svyatoslav conquered the area, it came under the rule of Kievan Rus', it formed the Tmutarakan principality. Due to the increasing claims of Byzantium at the end of the 11th century, the Tmutarakan principality came under the authority of the Byzantine emperors. In that period of history, the Circassians were first mentioned, under the ethnonym Kasogs. For example, Rededi Prince Kasozhsky was mentioned in The Tale of Igor's Campaign. In 1243–1438 the current territory of the Kuban was part of the Golden Horde. After the collapse of the latter, parts of Kuban were held under the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire, which dominated the region; the Tsardom of Russia began to challenge the protectorate of the Ottoman Empire in the area during the Russian-Turkish wars. In April 1783, by decree of Catherine II, right-bank Kuban and Taman Peninsula were annexed to the Russian Empire. In 1792–1793 Cossacks moved there from Zaporozhye, now located in Ukraine, formed the Black Sea Area troops, with the creation of a solid cordon line for the Kuban River and the marginalization of the neighboring Circassians.
During the campaign for control of the North Caucasus Russia pushed away the Ottoman Empire from the region, followed by elimination of local population as well. For this see Russian conquest of the Western Caucasus. In 1783, the present northern territory of the Kuban region became part of Russia after the liquidation of the Crimean Khanate. A border garrison was located there from 1793 to 1794; the remaining area was relegated to the Cossacks. The administrative region was accorded the status of "Land of Black Sea Cossack Army". In 1860, most of the occupied area of the territory of the modern Kuban-Krasnodar region was formed of, controlled by, remnants of the Black Sea Cossack Host and the western p
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were centralized; the country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Minsk, Alma-Ata, Novosibirsk, it spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, steppes and mountains; the Soviet Union had its roots in the 1917 October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government which had replaced Tsar Nicholas II during World War I. In 1922, the Soviet Union was formed by a treaty which legalized the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian and Byelorussian republics that had occurred from 1918. Following Lenin's death in 1924 and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s.
Stalin committed the state's ideology to Marxism–Leninism and constructed a command economy which led to a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization. During his rule, political paranoia fermented and the Great Purge removed Stalin's opponents within and outside of the party via arbitrary arrests and persecutions of many people, resulting in at least 600,000 deaths. In 1933, a major famine struck the country. Before the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviets signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, after which the USSR invaded Poland on 17 September 1939. In June 1941, Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk; the territories overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Soviet Union.
The post-war division of Europe into capitalist and communist halves would lead to increased tensions with the United States-led Western Bloc, known as the Cold War. Stalin died in 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin and began the de-Stalinization; the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred during Khrushchev's rule, among the many factors that led to his downfall in 1964. In the early 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed with the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. In 1985, the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika, which caused political instability. In 1989, Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist governments; as part of an attempt to prevent the country's dissolution due to rising nationalist and separatist movements, a referendum was held in March 1991, boycotted by some republics, that resulted in a majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the union as a renewed federation.
Gorbachev's power was diminished after Russian President Boris Yeltsin's high-profile role in facing down a coup d'état attempted by Communist Party hardliners. In late 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union met and formally dissolved the Soviet Union; the remaining 12 constituent republics emerged as independent post-Soviet states, with the Russian Federation—formerly the Russian SFSR—assuming the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and being recognized as the successor state. The Soviet Union was a powerhouse of many significant technological achievements and innovations of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite, the first humans in space and the first probe to land on another planet, Venus; the country had the largest standing military in the world. The Soviet Union was recognized as one of the five nuclear weapons states and possessed the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, it was a founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the leading member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
The word "Soviet" is derived from a Russian word сове́т meaning council, advice, harmony and all deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of vět-iti, related to Slavic věst, English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or", or the Dutch weten. The word sovietnik means "councillor". A number of organizations in Russian history were called "council". For example, in the Russian Empire the State Council, which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers after the revolt of 1905. During the Georgian Affair, Vladimir Lenin envisioned an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Joseph Stalin and his supporters, calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of a greater union, which he named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. Stalin resisted the proposal, but accepted it, although with Lenin's agreement changed the name of the newly proposed sta
Bosporan Kingdom
The Bosporan Kingdom known as the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus, was an ancient state located in eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula on the shores of the Cimmerian Bosporus, the present-day Strait of Kerch. It was the first truly'Hellenistic' state in the sense that a mixed population adopted the Greek language and civilization; the Bosporan Kingdom became the longest surviving Roman client kingdom. The 1st and 2nd centuries BC saw a period of renewed golden age of the Bosporan state, it was a Roman province from 63 to 68 AD, under Emperor Nero. At the end of the 2nd century AD, King Sauromates II inflicted a critical defeat on the Scythians and included all the territories of the Crimea in the structure of his state; the prosperity of the Bosporan Kingdom was based on the export of wheat and slaves. The profit of the trade supported a class whose conspicuous wealth is still visible from newly discovered archaeological finds, excavated illegally, from numerous burial barrows known as kurgans.
The once-thriving cities of the Bosporus left extensive architectural and sculptural remains, while the kurgans continue to yield spectacular Greco-Sarmatian objects, the best examples of which are now preserved in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg; these include gold work, vases imported from Athens, coarse terracottas, textile fragments and specimens of carpentry and marquetry. The whole area was dotted with Greek cities: in the west, Panticapaeum —the most significant city in the region and Myrmekion; these Greek colonies were settled by Milesians in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Phanagoria was a colony of Teos, the foundation of Nymphaeum may have had a connection with Athens; the Bosporan Kingdom was centred around the Kerch Strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, known in antiquity as the Cimmerian Bosporus from where the kingdom's name derived. See Also: List of kings of Cimmerian Bosporus According to Greek historian Diodorus Siculus the region was governed between 480 and 438 BC by a line of kings called the Archaeanactidae a ruling family, usurped by a tyrant called Spartocus, a Thracian.
Spartocus founded a dynasty. The Spartocids left many inscriptions, indicating that the earliest members of the house ruled under the titles of archons of the Greek cities and kings of various minor native tribes, notably the Sindi and other branches of the Maeotae. Surviving material do not supply enough information to reconstruct a complete chronology of kings of the region. Satyrus, successor to Spartocus, established his rule over the whole region, adding Nymphaeum to his kingdom and besieging Theodosia, wealthy because, unlike other cities in the region, it had a port, free of ice throughout the year, allowing it to trade grain with the rest of the Greek world in winter. Satyrus' son Leucon took the city, he was succeeded jointly by his two sons, Spartocus II, Paerisades. After Paerisades' death, a civil war between his sons Satyrus and Eumelus was fought. Satyrus defeated his younger brother Eumelus at the Battle of the River Thatis in 310 BC but was killed in battle, giving Eumelus the throne.
Eumelus' successor was Spartocus III and after him Paerisades II. Succeeding princes repeated the family names, so it is impossible to assign them a definite order; the last of them, Paerisades V, unable to make headway against violent attacks from nomadic tribes in the area, called in the help of Diophantus, general of King Mithridates VI of Pontus, leaving him his kingdom. Paerisades was killed by a Scythian named Saumacus; the house of Spartocus was well known as a line of enlightened and wise princes. They maintained close relations with Athens, their best customer for the Bosporan grain exports: Leucon I of Bosporus created privileges for Athenian ships at Bosporan ports; the Attic orators make numerous references to this. In return the Athenians granted Leucon Athenian citizenship and made decrees in honour of him and his sons. After his defeat by Roman General Pompey in 63 BC, King Mithridates VI of Pontus fled with a small army from Colchis over the Caucasus Mountains to Crimea and made plans to raise yet another army to take on the Romans.
His eldest living son, regent of Cimmerian Bosporus, was unwilling to aid his father, so Mithridates had Machares killed, acquiring the throne for himself. Mithridates ordered the conscriptions and preparations for war. In 63 BC, the youngest son of Mithridates, led a rebellion against his father, joined by Roman exiles in the core of Mithridates's Pontic army. Mithridates VI withdrew to the citadel in Panticapaeum. Pompey buried Mithridates VI in a rock-cut tomb in either Sinope or Amasia, the capital of the Kingdom of Pontus. After the death of Mithridates VI, Pharnaces II supplicated to Pompey, tried to regain his dominion during Julius Caesar's Civil War, but was defeated by Caesar at Zela and was killed by his former governor
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Minns, Ellis (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 286–287.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the 
