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What was the origin of Plato’s story, and how literally are we to take it?
What were the circumstances under which he wrote it and what was its purpose?
Only 100 years ago, the cities of Troy and Mycenae were considered as mythical as Atlantis. Scholars were convinced that the Iliad, Homer’s epic poem about the siege of Troy, was based purely on legend and imagination.
But the lonely quest of a self-taught German, Heinrich Schliemann (1822-90), was to upset all the official dogmas. Convinced that the Iliad was based on historical fact, Schliemann used it as his guide to the lost world of Troy. His great adventure has become a model for many champions of Atlantis.
In the words of Prince Michael of Greece: “The rehabilitation of Homer and the belated but definitive victory of those who believed him may give food for thought to those who doubt the existence of Atlantis.’
But can Plato be vindicated in the way Homer was?
The story of Atlantis differs from that of Troy in on important respect: it was not part of any ancient oral tradition. It was not a legend passed down, by word of mouth, from generation to generation, over the centuries. It was the work of one man, Plato.
The story appears in two of Plato’s celebrated Dialogues – Timaeus and Critias. These Dialogues were, in essence, transcriptions from the philosophical debates in which the intellectual citizens of Athens constantly engaged.
The driving force behind these question-and-answer discussions had been Plato’s master, Socrates. The subjects ranged from the Immortality of the South to the Ideal City.
Plato used to liven up the discussion of these dry, abstract ideas by presenting them in the form of allegories, parables and other literary devices. He invented a wealth of stories to make his logical arguments more palatable and more vivid.
Is it not possible, indeed likely, that the tale of Atlantis was just one of these fictions, dreamed up to illustrate a philosophical point?
In the Dialogues, the narrator of the Atlantis story is Critias, Plato’s cousin and, like Plato, a follower of Socrates. On three separate occasions Critias stresses that the story is true, and Socrates himself is quoted as having said it had ‘the very great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction’.
Critias also claims that he heard the story fro his great-grandfather Dropides and that Dropides in his turn had heard it from none other than Solon. If this is true, then here is a source to make even the most sceptical pause, for Solon was famous throughout Greece for his honesty.
The most celebrated law-giver of classical times, he was regarded as the wisest of the Seven Sages of Greece. He lived from about 640BC to 558 BC, two centuries before Plato wrote down the Atlantis story – not a particularly long period for such a tale to be kept alive by word of mouth.
Solon did not claim that the story was original. He himself heard it during a trip to Egypt in about 590 BC. In Sais, an ancient city in the Nile Delta, he met the priests of the goddess Neith. They were highly educated men and Solon, always eager to learn new things, questioned them about ancient times.
One old priest recounted the heroic deeds of his own Athenian ancestors 9,000 years before, and the tragic fate of the island of Atlantis. Solon was astonished by the story and translated it into Greek, intending to turn it into an epic poem, for he was a distinguished poet as well as a statesman. But he did not live long enough to achieve this ambition.
It seems to have been the Egyptians then, those meticulous historians obsessed with the past, with their tablets and sacred archives, who had preserved the story of Atlantis. Given that Atlantis really existed, this Egyptian connection is important: it means that the Egyptians had not only heard of Atlantis but also perhaps that they had extensive trade relations with the island power.
If this link with ancient Egypt is valid, it would appear that the issue has been clouded by Plato himself. The likelihood is that the great philosopher handed on the legend very much in the form that he himself had heard it, adapting and altering it according to purely literary demands, as he was perfectly entitled to do.
Read about how Plato intended his story of Atlantis to be taken »