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The Lost Island Of Atlantis
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Plato's
Atlantis From the Socratic Dialogues of Timaeus and Critias
Did the Island of Atlantis Exist
and What Did Plato Mean by That?
The original story of the
lost island of Atlantis comes to us from two Socratic dialogues called Timaeus and Critias, both written
about 360 BCE by the Greek philosopher Plato.
Together the dialogues are a
festival speech, prepared by Plato to be told on the day of the Panathenaea, in
honor of the goddess Athena.
They describe a meeting of
men who had met the previous day to hear Socrates describe the ideal state.
A Socratic
Dialogue
According
to the dialogues, Socrates asked three men to meet him on this day:
Timaeus of Locri, Hermocrates of Syracuse, and Critias of Athens.
Socrates asked the men to
tell him stories about how ancient Athens interacted with other states.
The first to report was
Critias, who told how his grandfather had met with the Athenian poet and
lawgiver Solon, one of the Seven Sages.
Solon had been to Egypt where
priests had compared Egypt and Athens and talked about the gods and legends of
both lands. One such Egyptian story was about Atlantis.
The Atlantis tale is part of
a Socratic dialogue, not a historical treatise.
The story is preceded by an
account of the sun god's son Phaethon yoking horses to his father's
chariot and then driving them through the sky and scorching the earth.
Rather than exact reporting
of past events, the Atlantis story describes an impossible set of circumstances
which were designed by Plato to represent how a miniature utopia failed and
became a lesson to us defining the proper behavior of a state.
The Tale
According
to the Egyptians, or rather what Plato described Critias reporting what his
grandfather was told by Solon who heard it from the Egyptians, once upon a
time, there was a mighty power based on an island in the Atlantic Ocean.
This empire was called
Atlantis and it ruled over several other islands and parts of the continents of
Africa and Europe.
Atlantis was arranged in
concentric rings of alternating water and land. The soil was rich, said
Critias, the engineers technically accomplished, the architecture extravagant
with baths, harbor installations, and barracks.
The central plain outside the
city had canals and a magnificent irrigation system.
Atlantis had kings and a
civil administration, as well as an organized military. Their rituals matched
Athens for bull-baiting, sacrifice, and prayer.
But then it waged an
unprovoked imperialistic war on the remainder of Asia and Europe.
When Atlantis attacked,
Athens showed its excellence as the leader of the Greeks, the much smaller
city-state the only power to stand against Atlantis.
Alone, Athens triumphed over
the invading Atlantean forces, defeating the enemy, preventing the free from
being enslaved, and freeing those who had been enslaved.
After the battle, there were
violent earthquakes and floods, and Atlantis sank into the sea, and all the
Athenian warriors were swallowed up by the earth.
Is
Atlantis Based on a Real Island?
The
Atlantis story is clearly a parable: Plato's myth is of two cities which
compete with each other, not on legal grounds but rather cultural and political
confrontation and ultimately war.
A
small but just city (an Ur-Athens) triumphs over a mighty aggressor (Atlantis).
The
story also features a cultural war between wealth and modesty, between a
maritime and an agrarian society, and between an engineering science and a
spiritual force.
Atlantis as a
concentric-ringed island in the Atlantic which sank under the sea is almost
certainly a fiction based on some ancient political realities.
Scholars have suggested that
the idea of Atlantis as an aggressive barbarian civilization is a reference to
either Persia or Carthage, both of them military powers who had
imperialistic notions.
The explosive disappearance
of an island might have been a reference to the eruption of Minoan Santorini.
Atlantis as a tale really should be considered a myth, and one that closely
correlates with Plato's notions of The
Republic examining the deteriorating cycle of life in a state.
N.S. Gill is a Latinist and freelance writer
with a longtime focus on the classical world.
Experience
In addition to writing articles on ancient
history and classics for About.com, N.S. has been interviewed by Public Radio
and National Geographic on Valentine's Day and the Roman calendar. She has TA'd
classes in the Age of Pericles, technical terms, Classical culture and
mythology. She has also taught Latin.
Education
N.S. Gill has a B.A. in Latin and an M.A. in
linguistics from the University of Minnesota. She has also done graduate level
coursework on classics at the University of Minnesota, writing two master's
level papers, one on the misdating of an Oxyrhynchus papyrus and the other on
Ovid as part of the program.
N.S. Gill
I hope to help spread the updated classical
seed far abroad.
Like the inside of a seed, there is now a
full-grown plant waiting to bloom -- in you. Most of the information I am
providing is basic (never really "all there is to know about X, Y, or
Z"), and often simplified. Especially in citations, you will find many
ideas for further reading in the articles I submit, but if you want more, and
don't want to go looking all over the place (starting with figuring out what to
hunt for in JSTOR and L'Année philologique) for yourself, here is one simple
tip: Look at the bibliographies for general topics in
the Cambridge Ancient History.
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