In the case of both the dialogues in this volume, I have translated the Oxford Classical Text of J. Burnet, Platonis Opera, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1905). The difficulties of Timaeus mean that it has suffered over the centuries from quite a bit of textual corruption, and the passages where I differ from Burnet’s OCT are listed in the Textual Notes (pp. 162–3), which have been marked in the translations with an obelus (†); the text of Critias has required no emendations. Asterisks in the translations refer to the Explanatory Notes (pp. 122–61).
The numbers and letters that appear in the margins of the translations are the standard means of precise reference to passages in Plato. They refer to the pages and sections of pages of the edition of Plato by Stephanus, or Henri Estienne (Geneva, 1578). This edition was published in three volumes, each with separate pagination. Each page was divided into two columns, with the Greek text on the right and a Latin translation on the left. Each column of Greek text contained (usually) five sections, labelled ‘a’ to ‘e’ by Estienne. Timaeus occupied pp. 17–92 of the third volume of his edition, and Critias pp. 106–21 of the same volume.
The Greek of Critias is relatively straightforward, with only occasional awkwardness due, perhaps, to its being a work that Plato never revised or even finished. Some of Timaeus, however, is written in condensed Greek, the difficulty of which is compounded by Plato’s frequent use in this dialogue of artificial sentence structure and word order, which sometimes make his words resemble unmetrical poetry more than anything else, and by his occasionally taking abnormal liberties with the ‘rules’ of grammar. As one or two previous translations of the work unfortunately testify, it is all too easy to render density as turgidity. I have rarely attempted to imitate Plato’s grammatical and syntactical liberties (which can scarcely be reproduced in good English), but only to produce an accurate translation into modern English which preserves both the occasional density, or intriguing opacity, and the moments of dazzling clarity, wit, insight, and figurative language.
My translations of the passages concerned with the Atlantis myth (Timaeus 20d–25d, and Critias 108e–121c), and many of the notes to these sections, originally appeared in C. Partenie (ed.), Plato: Selected Myths (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). They are reproduced here with minor changes. I would also like to thank Professor Vivian Nutton for checking an earlier version of Timaeus 81e–86a.
R.W.