Timaeus and Critias were in all probability the first two parts of a trilogy. Critias, however, was left unfinished, and the last part of the trilogy, whose title may have been Hermocrates, was not even begun. Timaeus opens with a scene describing a banquet, a sumposion in Greek. Literally sumposion means ‘a drinking together’, but the Greek banquet is an orchestrated event whose key entertainment element is the conversation of the participants, not a chaotic drinking party (although it may occasionally end up like this). The opening scene of Timaeus describes the second day of an ongoing banquet. The day before Socrates was sumposiarchos, that is, the leader of the banquet, and he entertained his guests—Timaeus, Critias, Hermocrates, and an unnamed participant—with a discourse about the ideal state. Today it is their turn to entertain him.
First, however, Socrates summarizes the discourse he gave ‘yesterday’ (which covers many points of Republic’s extensive discussion about the ideal state, including a scheme for education in the ideal state). Then he tells his banquet fellows that he is now seized with a desire of seeing the state he imagined in some action, such as war, which will point out its superiority more clearly. And what a coincidence! ‘As soon as we arrived yesterday at the guest-chamber of Critias, with whom we are staying,’ says Hermocrates, ‘and even while we were on the way there, this was exactly the topic of our discussion, and Critias told us an ancient story’ (20c). This story, Critias claims, was brought to Greece by Solon, who heard it from an Egyptian priest, and it is ‘a fact and not a fiction’ (26e). And it may satisfy Socrates’ desire to see his ideal state in action, for it tells how the ancient city of Athens engaged in war with the terrifying and mighty Atlantis, and how its political superiority helped it win the war. Socrates is of course eager to hear the story, but Critias gives him only a summary of it (2od–25d), saying that the feast they prepared for him is not confined to this story.
First Timaeus, an astronomer who ‘has made the nature of the universe his special study’, will speak about ‘the generation of the world and the creation of man’ (27a). Then Critias will follow; his discourse will, as it were, receive the men brought forth by Timaeus’ speech, give to some of them the education praised by Socrates in his discourse on the ideal state, and make them the citizens of the brave ancient city of Athens recovered from oblivion by the story Solon heard in Egypt. Socrates gives his approval, and Timaeus proceeds with his discourse, a fascinating cosmology that goes down to the end of Timaeus. This cosmology, held for centuries as Plato’s greatest philosophical achievement, features a Demiurge (that is, a craftsman) who frames the soul and body of the universe and man from pre-existing matter (passim), which is dominated by an inner impulse towards disorder called ‘necessity’ (48a).
Critias opens with a brief discussion about the merits of Timaeus’ discourse, and then goes on with a detailed version of Critias’ story about Atlantis and the ancient city of Athens (108d-121c). Of Critias, however, we have only the first pages, and we do not know why Plato stopped in the middle of it. But the story it tells is not unfinished: we know how it ends from Critias’ own summary, which occurs at the beginning of Timaeus. The question of the sources of Critias’ story (if any) has divided Platonists from ancient times. The lack of historical evidence for a city such as Atlantis, however, as well as Plato’s inclination towards the use of fiction for philosophical purposes, seems to suggest that he invented it.
The universe and human nature (Timaeus’ discourse), society (Socrates’ summary of the discourse he gave the day before), and history (Critias’ story about the ancient city of Athens and Atlantis) – these are the main themes of Timaeus and Critias. They are all united by the same motif: the relation between what is rational (the Demiurge, the rulers of the ideal state, the ancient city of Athens) and what is non-rational (necessity, the citizens that have to be ruled, Atlantis). But while the Demiurge persuaded Necessity to obey his rational plans, the rulers of the ideal state impose their regime upon their fellow citizens, and the evil Atlantis had to be conquered. The world we live in and our own nature, Plato seems to be saying, is grounded on co-operation between the rational and the non-rational, while our communal life and history always involves a confrontation between the two. Why? Because, one may venture to say, the Demiurge who created the universe did not choose to be men’s shepherd. The Demiurge ‘was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything. And being free of jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be’ (Ti. 29e-3oa). Thus the universe he created is said to be the best possible universe (92c). But, after he completed his creation, the Demiurge seems to retire and not have any interest in guiding the communal life of men. Our reason-which is the divine element in us (being framed by the Demiurge himself, as it is said in Timaeus)- is the only thing that could make our communal life get closer to a divine ruling. That is why everything in the Platonic attempt to imagine a better state, in Republic or Laws, is centred upon reason; see, for instance, L. 713e-714a: ‘When a community is ruled not by God but by a mortal human being, its members have no refuge from evil and misery. We should do our utmost … to order our private households and our public societies alike in obedience to the immortal element within us, giving the name of law to the regulations prescribed by reason.’ Which seems to imply that Plato – in spite of claiming that the traditional Greek gods were at first the herdsmen of men (cf. Criti. 109b) – perceived human society as being already deserted by gods, left with nothing but human reason to rely on.
C.P.
20d CRITIAS: All right, then. Socrates, you are about to hear a story which, for all its strangeness, is absolutely true, with its truth affirmed by Solon, the wisest of the seven
e sages.* Now, Solon was a relative of my great-grandfather Dropides, and the two of them were very close, as Solon himself often says in his verses.* Dropides told the story to my grandfather Critias and the old man used to repeat it to us in his turn. He used to tell us that there were impressive and remarkable deeds performed long ago by Athens which had been obliterated by time and the destruction of human life.* One of these exploits was especially impressive, and
21a recalling it now will be a suitable way not only to pay you what we owe you, but also to praise the goddess with the kind of truth-telling she deserves in a hymn, so to speak, on the occasion of her festival.*
SOCRATES: That sounds good. So Critias told you, on Solon’s authority, of a deed performed long ago by our city, and he said that it was no mere story but an actual event. What was this deed?
CRITIAS: I shall tell you. I heard the ancient tale from a man who was no youngster himself, since Critias was, by his own reckoning, getting on for 90 years old by then, while I was
b 10 at the most. It was, as it happens, the Koureotis of the Apatouria,* and the usual children’s event, which happens every time the festival is held, took place then too – which is to say that our fathers instituted a recitation contest. Various works by various poets featured in the recital, but many of the children sang Solon’s verses because they were new at that time.
One of the members of our phratry* remarked (either because he really believed it at the time or just to please Critias) that Solon was not only a great sage in general, but
c as a poet was more independent than anyone else.* The old man, as I remember clearly, was delighted with this and said with a smile: ‘Yes, Amynander, and if only he had not taken up poetry merely as a hobby, but had worked as seriously at it as other poets do! And I wish that he had finished the story he brought back from Egypt, and hadn’t been forced to neglect it by the feuding and other evils he found here when he got home. If he had, I dare say that he would have become more famous as a poet than Hesiod, Homer, and all
d the rest.’ ‘What story was that, Critias?’ asked Amynander. ‘It was about our city’s most impressive achievement ever,’ Critias replied, ‘one which deserves to be better known than any other, but time and the destruction of the people involved have prevented the story from surviving until now.’ ‘Do please tell us it from start to finish,’ said Amynander. ‘What was this true story that Solon told? How did he come to hear it? Who told it to him?’
e ‘In Egypt,’ Critias said, ‘around that part of the Delta where the Nile forks at its crown, there is a district called the Saïtic province, where the largest city is Saïs, which was also the birthplace of King Amasis.* The founder of this city was a deity whose Egyptian name is Neïth, though in Greek, according to the Egyptians, she is Athena. The inhabitants claim to be very pro-Athenian and somehow to be related to us. Solon said that he was heaped with honours on his arrival there,* but the main thing he said was that,
22a when he once questioned those priests who were experts in history about the past, he discovered how almost completely ignorant about such matters he and every other Greek was. Once, he said, he wanted to draw them into a discussion of ancient history, and so he launched into an account of the earliest events known here: he began to talk about Phoroneus, who is said to have been the first man, and
b Niobe; he told the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha and of how they survived the flood, and traced the genealogies of their descendants; and he tried to calculate their dates by recording the number of years since the events he was talking about.*
‘Then one of the priests, a very old man, said: “Solon, Solon, you Greeks never grow up; there isn’t an old man among you.”
‘“What do you mean?” said Solon in response.
‘“You are all mentally immature,” the priest replied. “You have no ancient tradition to imbue your minds with old beliefs and with understanding aged by time. I shall tell you
c why this is so. The human race has often been destroyed in various ways, and will be in the future too. Fire and water have been responsible for the most devastating catastrophes, but there have also been countless causes of briefer disasters. For instance, you have a story of how Phaethon, scion of the Sun, once harnessed his father’s chariot, but was incapable of driving it along the path his father took and so burnt up everything on the surface of the earth and was himself killed by a thunderbolt. This story has the form of a fable, but it alludes to a real event*—the deviation* of the
d heavenly bodies that go around the earth and the periodic destruction at long intervals of the surface of the earth by a massive conflagration.
‘“When this happens, all those people who live in mountainous regions and in places that are high and dry are far more likely to die than those who live by rivers and the sea. The Nile, which is invariably our saviour, saves us at these times from disaster by being released.* On the other hand, when the gods purge the earth with a flood of water, it is the herdsmen and shepherds in the mountains who are saved, while the inhabitants of your cities are swept into the
e sea by the rivers. In our land, however, water never flows on to our fields from above*—it doesn’t on these occasions and it doesn’t at other times either—but instead its nature is such that it rises up from below.*
‘“This explains why the legends preserved here are the most ancient, although in actual fact the human race is continuous, in larger or smaller numbers, everywhere in the world where there is neither excessive cold nor excessive
23a heat to prevent it. But every impressive or important or otherwise outstanding event we hear about, whether it happens in your part of the world or here or elsewhere, has from ancient times been written down here in the temples and preserved. However, what happens in your part of the world and elsewhere is that no sooner have you been equipped at any time with literacy and the other resources of city life when once again, after the usual interval, a heavenly flood pours down on you like a plague and leaves only those who are illiterate and uncivilized. As a result,
b you once again regain your childlike state of ignorance about things which happened both here and in your part of the world in ancient times.
‘“For instance, Solon, the genealogies you just went through for people from your part of the world hardly differ from childish tales. In the first place, you remember just the one flood when there have been many in earlier times, and in addition you are unaware that the finest and most heroic race in all humankind once existed in your land. You and
c all your current fellow citizens are the descendants of what little of their stock remained, but none of you realizes it, because for many generations the survivors died without leaving a written record. But in fact there was a time, Solon, before the greatest and most destructive flood, when the city which is now Athens not only excelled in warfare, but was also outstandingly well governed in all respects. The finest achievements and the finest political institutions we have
d ever heard of on earth are attributed to it.”
‘Solon told us of his astonishment at this and said that he begged the priests with all the determination he could muster to give him a detailed and thorough account of those citizens of long ago. And the priest replied: “I’ll do so gladly, Solon, not just for your sake and for Athens, but especially for the sake of the goddess who is the patron, nurse, and governess of both our cities. Your city was
e founded first, when the goddess received your rootstock from Earth and Hephaestus, and ours was founded a thousand years later.* The written records in our temples give the figure of 8,000 years as the age of our system, so it is citizens who lived 9,000 years ago whose customs and whose finest achievement I shall briefly explain to you. You and I will consult the written records on some future occasion,
24a when we have time, and go through them thoroughly and in detail.
‘“It’s worth comparing their way of life with ours here, because you will find many current instances here of customs that used in those days to obtain in your part of the world.* First, the priestly caste is separated off from all the rest, and next you’ll find that each set of craftsmen – such as herdsmen, hunters, and farmers — works independently, without involvement in anyone else’s craft. Then I’m sure
b you’ve noticed how the warrior caste here is set apart from all the others, and that it is a legal requirement that they should focus exclusively on military matters. Moreover, their weaponry consists of shields and spears, which we were the first in Asia* to adopt, following the example of the goddess,* just as you did first in those regions where you Greeks live. Then again, where intellectual matters are concerned, I’m sure you can see how much attention our way of life here has devoted to the thorough study of the universe, until on the basis of these divine principles we have discovered everything relevant to human affairs, up to and
c including divination and the medical skills necessary for health, and have acquired all the other branches of knowledge which follow from these principles.
‘“The system and arrangement I have been describing from those days was in fact first instituted and founded by the goddess among your people. She chose the region in which you had been born because she noticed how the temperate climate there would produce men of outstanding intelligence.* Because the goddess is fond of both war and wisdom, she chose this region as the one which would produce
men who would most closely resemble herself and founded a city there first. And so your people began to live there and to rely on customs such as those I have described. In fact, you had an even better system of government than ours and there was no people on earth which came close to your all-round excellence — which is hardly surprising since you were the offspring and the wards of gods.
‘“Many of your city’s exploits which have been written down here are impressive enough to excite admiration, but there is one above all which stands out for its importance and courage. Our documents record how your city once
e halted an enormous force which was marching insolently against not just the whole of Europe, but Asia as well, from its base beyond Europe in the Atlantic Ocean. I should mention that in those days the ocean there was navigable, since there was an island in front of the strait which, I’ve heard you say, your people call the Pillars of Heracles.* The island was bigger than both Asia and Libya combined, and travellers in those days used it to gain access to the remaining islands, from which they could travel over to
25a any point of the mainland opposite which surrounds that genuine sea.* You see, everything this side of the strait we mentioned is like a harbour with a narrow entrance, whereas that is the true sea and the land which completely surrounds it truly deserves the name ‘mainland’.
‘“On this island of Atlantis a great and remarkable dynasty had arisen, which ruled the whole island, many of the other islands, and parts of the mainland too. They also
b governed some of the lands here inside the strait too — Libya up to Egypt and Europe up to Etruria.* Once upon a time, then, they combined their forces and set out en masse to try to enslave in one swoop your part of the world, and ours, and all the territory this side of the strait. This was the occasion, Solon, when the capacity of your city, its courage and strength, were revealed for all to see;* its bravery and military expertise made it stand out from all others. At
c first it was the leader of the Greek cause, and then later, abandoned by everyone else and compelled to stand alone, it came to the very brink of disaster, but it overcame the invaders and erected a trophy, thereby preventing the enslavement of those who remained unenslaved and unhesitatingly liberating all the rest of us who lived this side of the boundaries of Heracles.
‘“Some time later appalling earthquakes and floods
d occurred, and in the course of a single, terrible day and night the whole fighting force of your city sank all at once beneath the earth, and the island of Atlantis likewise sank beneath the sea and vanished. That is why the sea there cannot now be navigated or explored; the mud which the island left behind as it settled lies a little below the surface* and gets in the way.’”
‘Let’s recall, first, that in all nine thousand years* have passed
108e since war was declared between between those who lived beyond and all those who lived within the Pillars of Heracles. This is the war whose course I shall now describe. It is said that one side was led right through to the end of the fighting by Athens, while the other side was commanded by the kings of Atlantis — an island which, we said, was once larger than Libya and Asia, though by now earthquakes have caused it to sink and it has left behind unnavigable mud which obstructs
109a those who sail out there into the ocean.* As our tale unfolds, so to speak, along its course, there will be opportunities to reveal details of the many non-Greek peoples and all the Greek communities that existed then, but to begin with we must start with an account of the resources and the political systems of the Athenians of the time and their opponents in the war. And of the two sides, we should give preference to an account of affairs here in Athens.
‘Once upon a time the gods divided the whole earth among
b themselves, region by region. There were no disputes involved;* after all, it makes no sense for the gods not to know what is appropriate to each of them and, since they do have such knowledge, it is illogical to believe that they would dispute claims and try to gain what is properly suited to someone else. So each gained by just allotment what belonged to him, established communities in his lands, and, having done so, began to look after us, his property and creatures, as a shepherd does his flocks,* with the difference that they did not use physical means of compulsion. Shepherds use blows as
c they tend to their flocks, but the gods focused on that part of each creature which makes it most easy to direct, like helmsmen steering from the prow; they took hold of its mind, employed the rudder of persuasion as they saw fit, and in this way guided and led every mortal creature as a whole.
‘As a result of the allotment various gods gained various regions to govern, but Hephaestus and Athena (who are very similar in nature, not just because they are brother and sister, with a common father, but also because their love of wisdom and of craft give them the same goals) gained Athens here as their common allocation, since the nature of the district
d was such that it was suitable for courage and intelligence.* So they created men of courage who were born from the ground* and implanted in their minds the plan of their political system.
‘Although the names of these first Athenians have been preserved, their achievements have been obliterated by the destruction of their successors and the long passage of time. I have already mentioned* the reason for this: those who survived on each occasion were illiterate mountain-dwellers who had heard only the names of the rulers of the land and knew hardly anything about their achievements. They were
e happy to name their children after their predecessors, but were unaware of their acts of courage and their customs, except for the occasional obscure rumour about this or that. For many generations they and their children were short of essentials
110a and this problem was what occupied their minds and conversations, rather than events of the distant past. After all, story-telling and enquiring about the past arrive in communities along with leisure, when and only when they see that some people have been adequately supplied with the necessities of life.
‘Anyway, this is how the names but not the achievements of those men of old came to be preserved. My evidence for saying this is that, according to Solon, the account those priests gave of the war of that time included not only most of the names of Cecrops, Erechtheus, Erichthonius, Erysichthon, and the other predecessors of Theseus, but also a great many of the
b achievements that are attributed to each of their names; and the same went, he said, for their wives. Moreover, as for the way the goddess is portrayed, Solon said that in those days military training was undertaken by women as well as by men, and that it was in accordance with this practice that people in those days began to display the goddess in armour. It was a token of the fact that all gregarious animals, female and male,
c have been equally equipped by their natures to practise the virtue peculiar to their species.*
‘In those days most of the inhabitants of this land—most classes of citizens—were occupied with the crafts and with agriculture, but the warrior class, which from the very beginning had been separated off by godlike men,* lived apart. They had everything that was appropriate for their sustenance and training, and although they owned no private property and regarded everything as held in common by them all, they
d did not expect the rest of their fellow citizens to provide them with anything more than an adequate supply of food. In fact, their way of life was in all respects the same as that described yesterday for our imaginary guardians.*
‘Then again, the old stories about our land are reliable and true: above all, in those days its border was formed by the Isthmus and, in relation to the rest of the mainland, our territory extended as far as the hills of Cithaeron and Parnes and went down to the coast with Oropus on the right and
e the Asopus forming the border on the left.* There was no soil to compare to ours anywhere in the world, which is why the territory was capable in those days of supporting a large number of soldiers who were exempt from working the land.* There is convincing proof of how good the soil was: the remnant of it that still exists is a match for any soil in its ability to produce a good yield of any crop and in the rich pasturage it provides for all sorts of animals. But in those days the soil
111a produced crops in vast quantities; they were not just of high quality.
‘Why should we trust this picture? Why are we right to call the soil of modern Attica a remnant of the soil of those days? Attica is nothing but a headland, so to speak, jutting far out into the sea from the rest of the mainland, and it is surrounded by a sea-bed which drops off close to shore to a considerable depth. So since there have been many devastating floods in the course of the 9,000-year interval between then and now,
b the soil washed down from the highlands in all these years and during these disasters does not form any considerable pile of sediment, as it does elsewhere, but is constantly rolled down into the depths, where it vanishes. Just as on the small islands,* what remains now is, compared with those days, like the skeleton of a body wasted by disease: the soil has rolled away — or at least as much of it as is rich and soft — and only the thin body of the land remains.
‘In those days, however, the land was intact and had high
c mounds instead of mountains, what we now call the Stony Plains were filled with rich soil, and the mountains were covered with dense forests (of which there are traces even now). Nowadays some of our mountains sustain only bees, but not long ago trees from there were cut as roof timbers for very substantial buildings, and the roofs are still sound. Cultivated trees grew tall and plentiful and the soil bore limitless fodder for our flocks and herds. Moreover, the ground benefited
d from the rain sent each year by Zeus and didn’t lose it, as it does nowadays with the water flowing off the bare ground and into the sea. Instead, because the ground had plenty of soil to absorb moisture, it stored the rain on a layer of impermeable clay, let the water flow down from the high ground into the low ground of every region, and so provided abundant springs to feed streams and rivers. Even now there are still shrines, left over from the old days, at the sites of former springs, as tokens of the truth of this account of the land.
e ‘So much for the characteristics of the land in general. It was ordered as well as you might expect, given that the farmers were true farmers (that is, they were specialists at their job, and were endowed with noble aims and natural ability) and given that they had outstandingly good soil to work with, plenty of water, and a perfectly tempered climate from the skies above. As for the state of the town in those days, in the first place the Acropolis was different from now, since by
112a now it has suffered from the effects of a single night of torrential rain, which washed away the soil and left the Acropolis bare, thanks not only to an appalling deluge — the third destruction by water before the one that took place in the time of Deucalion*—but to earthquakes too. Before then, the Acropolis extended from the Eridanus to the Ilissus, included the Pnyx, and had the Lycabettus as its border on the side opposite the Pnyx;* and the entire Acropolis was covered in soil and was almost all level. Outside the Acropolis, under its flanks, were the dwellings of the craftsmen and those farmers
b who worked the nearby land.
‘The top of the Acropolis had been settled by the warriors, who lived all by themselves around the temple of Athena and Hephaestus, and had also enclosed the heights within a single wall, like the garden of a single house. They lived in communal houses on the northern side of the Acropolis, they had constructed messes to be shared by all in cold weather, and they had provided themselves with everything that was in keeping with their communal institutions – everything in the way of
c buildings and temples, that is, not gold and silver, for which they never had any use. In pursuit of the mean between extravagance and dependence, they built moderate houses in which they and their descendants could grow old and which they could bequeath to others just like themselves. As for the southern side, when, as you would expect, they left their gardens, gymnasia, and messes in the summer, they used this side for these functions. There was a single spring in the area of the present Acropolis, but it has been clogged up by earthquakes, so that now there is only a trickle of water around the
d present hill; but in those days it supplied everyone with plenty of water and kept a constant temperature throughout the year.
‘This was the manner of their lives. As guardians of their own fellow citizens and of all other Greeks, who were their willing subjects,* they did their best to ensure that at any given time there were among them the same number of men and
e women – around twenty thousand – who were already or were still capable of fighting. This, then, was what the Athenians were like in those days, and their way of life was more or less as I have said. They equitably managed their own affairs and those of Greece, they were renowned throughout Europe and Asia for their physical beauty and for their many outstanding mental qualities, and their fame surpassed that of all their contemporaries.
‘Now let’s turn to their opponents in the war. Assuming I can remember it, I shall now reveal to you, because friends hold all things in common, what I was told in my childhood about what they were like and how their way of life evolved.
113a But first, there’s a small point I should explain before telling the tale, otherwise you might be surprised at constantly hearing Greek names applied to non-Greek people. I’ll tell you how this came about. Solon was planning to create a poetic version of the tale, and so he asked about the meanings of the names and found that the Egyptians who had first written the story down had translated them into their own language. So he did the same: he referred back to the sense of each
b name and adapted it to our language before committing it to writing. And it is his written version which once belonged to my grandfather and is now in my possession. I studied the manuscript carefully when I was young. So if you hear Greek-sounding names, don’t be surprised: you now know why.* Anyway, it’s a long story and it began somewhat as follows.
‘As I said earlier, the gods parcelled out the entire world among themselves, allocated themselves larger or smaller
c territories, and established their own shrines and sacrificial rituals. Poseidon gained the island of Atlantis as his province and he settled there the children borne for him by a mortal woman in a certain part of the island. To be specific, halfway along the coastline there was a plain which is said to have been unsurpassable in its beauty and adequately fertile too. Close to the plain and halfway along its extent, about fifty stades distant from the coast, there was a hill of no great prominence. There lived on this hill a man who was one of the original earth-born men of the land. He was called Evenor and he lived with his
d wife, Leucippe. They had just the one child, a daughter called Cleito. When the girl reached the age for marriage, both her mother and her father died, but Poseidon, who had come to desire her, made her his concubine. He gave the hill where she lived secure defences by breaking it off from the surrounding land and creating increasingly large concentric rings, alternately of land and water, around it. Two of the rings were of land, three of water, and he made them equidistant from the centre, as if he had taken the middle of the island as the pivot of a lathe. * And so the island became inaccessible to
e others, because in those days ships and sailing had not yet been invented.*
‘Poseidon, as a god, easily organized the central island. Once he had fetched up two underground springs—one warm, the other flowing cold from its source – and caused all kinds of food to grow in sufficient abundance from the soil, he fathered and reared five pairs of twin sons. Then he divided the entire island of Atlantis into ten parts. He gave the first-born of the eldest twins his mother’s home and the plot
114a of land around it, which was larger and more fertile than anywhere else, and made him king of all his brothers, while giving each of the others many subjects and plenty of land to rule over.
‘He named all his sons. To the eldest, the king, he gave the name from which the names of the whole island and the ocean are derived – that is, the ocean was called the Atlantic because the name of the first king was Atlas. To his twin, the one who
b was born next, who gained as his allotment the edge of the island which is closest to the Pillars of Heracles and faces the land which is now called the territory of Gadeira after him, he gave a name which in Greek would be Eumelus, though in the local language it was Gadeirus, and so this must be the origin of the name of Gadeira.* He called the next pair of twins Ampheres and Evaemon; he named the elder of the
c third pair Mneseus and the younger one Autochthon; of the fourth pair the eldest was called Elasippus and the younger one Mestor; in the case of the fifth pair, he called the first-born Azaes and the second-born Diaprepes. So all his sons and their descendants lived there for many generations, and in addition to ruling over numerous other islands in the ocean, they also, as I said before,* governed all the land this side of the Pillars up to Egypt and Etruria.
d ‘Atlas’ family flourished in numbers and prestige. In each generation the eldest was king and passed the kingship on to the eldest of his offspring. In this way the dynasty survived for many generations and they grew enormously rich, with more wealth than anyone from any earlier royal line and more than anyone later would easily gain either; and they were supplied with everything they needed for life in the city and throughout the rest of their territory too. Their empire brought them many goods from abroad, but the island by
e itself provided them with most of the necessities of life. In the first place, they had everything, solid or fusible,* that could be mined from the ground, and in fact in many parts of the island there was dug up from the ground something which is now no more than a name, although in those days it was more than just a name and was second in value only to gold–orichalc.* Second, woodland produced plenty of every kind of timber that builders might need for their labours and bore enough food for both wild and domesticated animals. In fact, there were even large numbers of elephants there, because there was ample grazing for all creatures – not just for those
115a whose habitats were marshes and lakes and rivers, or again for those that lived in mountains or on the plains, but equally for this creature too, the largest and most voracious in the world.
‘Third, everything aromatic the earth produces today in the way of roots or shoots or shrubs or gums exuded by flowers or fruits was produced and supported by the island then. Fourth, as for cultivated crops – both the dry sort (that is, our staple and all the others we use as foodstuffs, which we collectively call ‘pulses’) and the arboreal sort (not only the sources of our
b drink and food and oil, but also the produce of fruit-bearing trees which, though hard to store, exists for the sake of our amusement and our pleasure, and also all those things we offer a man who is full up as an enjoyable dessert to relieve his satiety*)– all these things were in those days produced in vast quantities and at a remarkably high level of excellence by that sacred, sun-drenched island.
‘Enriched by all these agricultural products, they set about building shrines, royal mansions, harbours, and shipyards, and
c organized the whole of their territory along the following lines. The first thing they did was build bridges across the rings of water surrounding the ancient mother-city, to create a road to and from the palace. The palace was the very first thing they had built in the place where Poseidon and their ancestors had lived, and it was passed down from generation to generation, with each new king embellishing what was already embellished and trying as best he could to outdo his predecessors, until
d they had created a building of astonishing size and beauty.
‘What they did first was dig a canal from the sea to the outermost ring. The canal was three plethra wide, a hundred feet deep, and fifty stades long,* and with a mouth wide enough for the largest ships it allowed vessels to sail from the sea to the outermost ring and to use it as a harbour. Moreover,
e at the points where they had built the bridges they opened up gaps in the intermediate rings of land wide enough to allow a single warship to sail through from one ring of water to another, and they roofed these canals over so as to create an underground sailing passage below,* for the banks of the rings of land were high enough above the level of the water to allow them to do this.
‘The largest ring of water—the one into which the sea had been channelled—was three stades wide, and the next ring of land was the same size. Of the second pair, the ring of water was two stades wide, and the ring of land was again the same size as the preceding ring of water. The ring of water which immediately surrounded the central island was a stade in
116a width, while the island (where the palace was) had a diameter of five stades.
‘They surrounded the central island and the rings of land and the bridges (which were one plethron wide) on both sides with a stone wall, and built towers and gates on the bridges at each side, at the points where there were the passages for the water. They quarried the stone (some white, some black, and
b some red) from underneath the perimeter of the central island and from under the outside and inside of the rings of land, so that at the same time they hollowed out internal, double-sided docks, roofed over by the actual rock. They made some of their buildings plain, but to avoid monotony they patterned others by combining stones, which gave the buildings a naturally pleasant appearance. They covered the entire circuit of the wall around the outermost ring with a paste, so to speak, of bronze; they smeared a layer of melted tin on the wall of the
c inner ring; and for the wall around the acropolis itself they used orichalc, which gleamed like fire.*
‘The palace inside the acropolis was fitted out as follows. In the very centre was a sacrosanct shrine dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, surrounded by a low wall of gold. This was the spot where they had originally conceived and fathered the ten kings. It was here too, in this shrine, that in an annual ritual each of the ten kings received first-fruits from all the ten regions. There was a temple of Poseidon there, which
d was a stade long and three plethra wide, and its height was aesthetically proportionate with these base measurements. There was something non-Greek about the appearance of the temple.* Outside, it was entirely covered with silver except for the acroteria,* which were gold. Inside, the entire surface of the ceiling was ivory decorated with gold, silver, and orichalc, and all the walls, pillars, and pavements were covered with orichalc. They set up a golden statue there of the god standing on a chariot with a team of six winged horses, tall enough to
e touch the roof with his head. He was surrounded by another hundred golden statues of Nereids on dolphins (in those days people thought there were this many Nereids*), and the temple also held many other statues, which had been dedicated by private individuals.
‘Outside, the temple was surrounded by golden statues of all the ten kings and their wives, and there were numerous other substantial dedications, given by both the kings and private individuals from the city itself and also from the foreign territories of their empire. The altar conformed to this structure in size and workmanship, and the palace was equally
117a in keeping not just with the size of the empire, but also with the beauty of the shrine.
‘They drew their water from the two springs (one of cold and the other of warm water), each of which was fantastically well suited to its function in respect of the taste and the quality of the water, which it produced in generous quantities. They surrounded the springs with buildings and with copses of suitable trees, and also with pools, some of which they left open to the air, while they protected with roofs those which
b were used in the winter as warm baths. There were separate sets of pools – some for the royal families, some for private citizens, others for women, and yet others for horses and other yoke-animals – and each pool was organized in the appropriate fashion. Any water which overflowed was channelled to the grove of Poseidon, where all the various species of trees grew to be beautiful and extraordinarily tall thanks to the fertility of the soil, and was then conducted to the rings beyond the island by pipes beside the bridges.
‘Numerous shrines, sacred to a large number of gods,
c had been built on these outer rings, and there were plenty of gardens and gymnasia there too. There were separate exercise-grounds for men and for horses on each of the two islands formed by the rings and, above all, in the middle of the larger of the island-rings they had an area reserved as a hippodrome. The hippodrome was a stade wide and ran all the way around the ring, as a space dedicated to equestrian contests. Most of the bodyguards* lived on either side of
d the hippodrome, but the more trusted ones were assigned barracks on the smaller ring, closer to the citadel, and those who were exceptionally trustworthy were allowed to live in close proximity to the kings themselves within the citadel. The shipyards were filled with warships and with all the equipment they required, and everything was in a state of readiness.
‘So much for the way the royal household was fitted out. Past the three external harbours a wall ran all around, starting
e at the sea, at a constant distance of fifty stades from the largest ring and its harbour, and completed its circuit at the point where it began, at the mouth of the canal by the sea. This whole area was crowded with a great many houses, and the canal and the largest harbour teemed with merchant ships and traders arriving from all over the world, in such large numbers that all day and all night long the place resounded with shouts and general uproar and noise.
‘I have now pretty well covered the original account of the town and the ancient palace, and I had better try to tell you
118a what the character and arrangement of the rest of the land was like. To begin with, the whole region was said to be very high, with sheer cliffs along the coastline, but near the city there was nothing but a plain, which surrounded the city and was itself surrounded by mountains which stretched down to the sea. The plain was uniformly flat and basically oblong: it extended in one direction for 3,000 stades and inland across its centre 2,000 stades from the sea. This part of the island as a
b whole faced south* and was sheltered from the north winds. The mountains that surrounded the plain were celebrated in those days for their number, size, and beauty; there are no mountains today which come close to them in these respects. There were in the mountains many wealthy villages with their rural populations; rivers, lakes, and meadows kept every species of tame and wild creature adequately supplied with food; and there was plenty of timber, of various types, which was more than sufficient for any kind of task and for every occasion.
‘As a result of its nature, and of many years of engineering
c by successive kings, the plain had taken on the following character. It was originally, as I said, largely rectangular, straight-sided, and oblong, but because it was not perfectly oblong they made it straight by surrounding it with a trench. The reported scale of this trench — its depth and width and length – was incredible: it is hard to believe that, on top of all their other engineering works, any work of human hands should be so huge. Still, I must tell you what I was told. It was excavated to a depth of a plethron, it was a stade wide all the way around, and its length, once the whole perimeter of
d the plain had been excavated, was 10,000 stades. Streams descending from the mountains drained into it, and it made a complete circuit of the plain, so that it reached the city from both sides, and then the water was allowed to discharge into the sea. Inland from the city straight canals with a width of about 100 feet had been cut across the plain and debouched into the trench on the coastal side; each canal was 100 stades away from its neighbours. They used them not only to bring timber down to the city from the mountains, but also for the
e ships with which they transported all the rest of their produce in its season. They also cut cross-channels at right angles to the canals, linking the canals to one another and to the city. They harvested their crops twice a year; in winter they relied on rain sent by Zeus, but in summer they diverted water from the canals to all their crops.
‘As for the number of plain-dwelling men who were to be available for military service, it had been decreed that each plot (there were 60,000 in all, each ten by ten stades in area) was to provide one officer. There were, apparently, enormous
119a numbers of men from the mountains and the rest of the land, and they were all assigned, region by region and village by village, to these plots and their officers. Each officer was instructed to supply for military use a sixth part of a war chariot (making a total of 10,000 chariots); two horses with
b riders; a pair of team horses without a chariot but with a light-armed soldier for dismounting, a charioteer for the pair of horses, and an on-board soldier to stand in front of the charioteer; two hoplites; two archers and the same number of slingers; three unarmed men to throw stones and the same number to throw javelins; and four sailors towards the total of 1,200 ships. This was how the royal city was organized militarily; the other nine cities did things differently, but it would take too long to explain their systems too.
c ‘I shall now tell you what the original arrangements were for the wielding of power and authority. In his own particular region and where his own city was concerned, each of the ten kings had authority over the citizens and was more powerful than most of the laws, in the sense that he could punish and kill at whim. But among themselves authority and interaction were governed by the regulations of Poseidon, as bequeathed to them by tradition and by a stele of orichalc inscribed by
d their first ancestors and set up in the middle of the island in the shrine of Poseidon, where they used to meet, at intervals alternately of four and five years, so as to privilege neither odd nor even numbers. When they met, they would not only discuss matters of general interest, but also test one another, to see if any of them had infringed the regulations, and try any offender.
‘When the time of trial arrived, the first thing they did was give assurances to one another, as follows. In the shrine of Poseidon there were consecrated bulls, and once the ten were alone they asked the god in their prayers to allow them to
e capture a sacrificial victim that would please him. They then took up sticks and nooses (not weapons of iron) and set about chasing the bulls, and once they had caught one they led it to the stele and cut its throat above the head of the stele, so that its blood flowed over the inscription. In addition to the regulations the stele was inscribed with an oath which called down terrible curses on anyone who disobeyed the regulations.
‘So when they had sacrificed the bull in their traditional manner and had burnt all its limbs, they prepared a mixing-bowl
120a of wine and threw in one clot of blood for each of them. The rest of the blood they poured into the fire, after thoroughly cleaning the stele. Next they used golden cups to scoop up some wine from the bowl, and while pouring a libation on to the fire they swore that they would adjudicate in conformity with the regulations inscribed on the stele, would punish any past infringements, would henceforth knowingly infringe none of the regulations, and would neither rule nor obey any ruler unless his injunctions accorded
b with their father’s regulations. Once he had committed himself and his descendants with this vow, each of the kings drank and then dedicated his cup to the god’s shrine, before occupying himself with the feast* and whatever else he had to do. When darkness fell and the sacrificial fire had cooled down, they all put on gorgeous robes of dark blue, sat down in the dark on the ground by the charred remains of the sacrificial victim, and once they had extinguished every flame in
c the shrine, they turned to the trial. They gave and received judgements for any infringement of the regulations and then, the following day, they inscribed their decisions on a golden tablet, which they dedicated in the shrine along with their robes as a memorial.
‘There were many other rules and customs pertaining only to the prerogatives of each of the kings, but the most important points were that they should never take up arms against one another; that they should all resist any attempt to overthrow the royal family in any city; that, as their predecessors had, they should collectively debate any decisions
d that were to be made about all matters such as warfare, while giving overall authority to the descendants of Atlas; and that no king should have the right to put any of his relatives to death, unless half of the ten agreed with his decision.
‘So much for a description of the mighty power that existed in Atlantis in those days. It was this force that the god* mustered and brought against these regions here, and the account gave the following reason for his doing so. For
e many generations, as long as Poseidon’s nature was vigorous enough in them, they obeyed the laws and respected the divine element in themselves. Because the principles they had were true and thoroughly high-minded, and because they reacted with self-possession and intelligence to the vicissitudes of life and to one another, they looked down on everything except virtue, counted their prosperity as trivial, and easily bore the 121a burden, so to speak, of the mass of their gold and other possessions. They were not made drunk by the luxury their wealth afforded them and so they remained in control of themselves and never stumbled. As sober men do, they saw clearly that even prosperity is increased by the combination of mutual friendship and virtue—and that wealth declines and friendship is destroyed by materialistic goals and ambitions.
‘As a result of this kind of reasoning and of the persistence of the divine nature within them, they thrived in all the ways I have described. But when the divine portion within them faded, as a result of constantly being diluted by large measures
b of mortality, and their mortal nature began to predominate, they became incapable of bearing their prosperity and grew corrupt. Anyone with the eyes to see could mark the vileness of their behaviour as they destroyed the finest of their valuable possessions; but those who were blind to the life that truly leads to happiness regarded them as having finally attained the most desirable and enviable life possible, now that they were infected with immoral greed and power.
‘Zeus, god of gods and legally ordained king, who did have the eyes to see such things, recognized the degenerate state
c of their line and wished to punish them, and so to make their lives more graceful. He summoned all the gods to a meeting in the most awesome of his dwellings, which is located in the centre of the entire universe and so sees everything that is subject to generation. And when the gods had assembled, he said:*