Plato's Timaeus

Below you will find a translation of the part of Plato's dialogue Timaeus that describes Ancient Athens and Atlantis.

Prologue

So I will tell you this old tale, which I heard from a man who was no longer young. Critias, as he said, was almost ninety years old at the time, but I was about ten. It was the boys' day of the Apaturia, and what usually happens at this festival also happened to the children this time: The fathers awarded us prizes for the best recitation of poems. So many poems were recited by many other poets. In particular, many of us children recited poems by Solon, as these were still something new at the time.

Then one of the comrades of our Phratrie, either because this was really his opinion at the time, or to say something pleasant to Critias, said that Solon seemed to him to be the wisest of men in all else, but in poetry also he was of all poets the noblest. The old man Critias was very pleased and in my presence he said with a smile:

"If only, Amynander, he had not pursued poetry merely as a secondary matter, but had devoted himself to it with all his zeal like others, and had completed the story he brought back from Egypt, and had not been forced to give it up by the troubles and all the other damages he found here on his return, I think that neither Homer nor Hesiod nor any other poet would ever have become more famous than he."

Amynander, the comrade of our phratry, then asked:

"But what was that story?"

Critias replied:

"Its subject was the greatest and most justly glorious deed that this city ever accomplished, but which has not been handed down because of the long lapse of time and the destruction of those who accomplished it."

The other asked him:

"Tell me from the beginning what Solon told and how, and who were the informants who vouch for the truth."

Solon in Egypt

There is in Egypt, said Critias, in the delta at the head of which the Nile divides, a region called the Saïtian region, and the largest city in this region is Saïs, from which king Amasis also came. The inhabitants consider the founder of their city to be a deity whose name is Neith in Egyptian, but Athene in Greek, as they claim. They therefore claim to be great friends of the Athenians and to some extent related to them.

So when Solon came there, he was, as he said, showered with honors by them, and when he inquired about the primeval times from the priests who knew the most about them, he found that neither he himself nor any other Greek, one might almost say, knew anything at all about these things.

To induce them to tell him about primeval times, he had begun to tell them the oldest stories of Greece, of Phoroneus, who is considered the first man, and of Niobe, and how after the Flood Deucalion and Pyrra remained, and to enumerate the genealogy of their descendants. He had also tried to date the times by giving the years that came to each of the individuals he spoke of.

The permanence of Egypt

But then one of the priests, a very old man, exclaimed: "O Solon, Solon, you Greeks always remain children. There is no such thing as an old Greek!"

When Solon heard this, he asked, "How so? What do you mean?"

The priest replied: You are all young in spirit, for you carry in your minds neither a view that comes from ancient tradition nor a knowledge that has grown gray with time. But the reason is this. Many and various disasters of men have already taken place and will still take place, most of them through fire and water, others, lesser ones, but through innumerable other causes. For what is also told among you, that once Phaethon, the son of Helios, mounted his father's chariot and, because he did not know how to drive in his father's way, burned everything on earth and was himself struck by lightning, sounds like a fable, but the truth of it is the changed movement of the heavenly bodies orbiting the earth and the destruction of everything on earth by fire, which occurs now and then after the lapse of great periods of time.

Those who live on the mountains and in the high and waterless regions will be more affected by this than those who live by the rivers and the sea, and so the Nile will deliver us from this, as from all other hardships. But when the gods flood the earth with water to cleanse it, those who live on the mountains, shepherds and herdsmen, will be spared. But those who live in your cities are washed into the sea by the rivers, while with us neither then nor otherwise does the water flow down from the sky onto the fields, but it is arranged so that it rises over them from below. For these reasons, everything remains with us and is therefore regarded as the oldest.

In all areas where it is not prevented by excessive cold or heat, there is always a sometimes more, sometimes less numerous human population. With us, however, everything that happens in your country or in our homeland or in other regions, of which we know from hearsay, if it is somehow something outstanding or great or has any other significance, is recorded in the temples from time immemorial and is thus preserved. You, on the other hand, and the other states, as far as writing and everything else that belongs to state life is concerned, have only just been established. You are young in spirit because always after the expiration of the usual time the flood of rain from heaven falls upon you like a disease and leaves only those who are ignorant of the scriptures and uneducated, so that you become young again and again, as it were. You remain in ignorance of the events with us and with you as far as they have taken place in ancient times.

At least your present genealogies, as you have just gone through them, differ little from children's tales. For, firstly, you remember only a single inundation of the earth, whereas before there were so many, and secondly, you do not know that in your country lived the most excellent and noblest human race, from which you and all the citizens of your present state are descended, since once a small tribe of them remained. But all this remained hidden from you because the remnant spent its entire life through many generations without the language of writing.

Ancient Athens

Once, my Solon, before the greatest destruction by water, the state now called Athens was the best in war and in every respect endowed with the most excellent constitution, for to it are ascribed the most glorious deeds and public institutions of all under the sun whose fame we have heard. When Solon heard this, he said that he was astonished and asked the priests to give him the entire history of the ancient citizens of his state in exact order.

The priest replied: I will withhold nothing from you, my Solon, but tell you everything, both to you and to your state. I do this above all for the sake of the goddess, who accepted your state and ours equally as her own and educated and formed both. She formed your state a thousand years earlier than ours from the seed she had received for it from Ge (the earth goddess) and Hephaestus. Later she formed our state in the same way. But the number of years since the foundation of our state is given in our sacred books as eight thousand. Of your fellow-citizens, who came into being nine thousand years ago, I will now briefly tell you what they were like and what was the most glorious deed they accomplished. But we will go through the details of all this at another time, at our leisure, by taking the books in hand.

Now get an idea of their constitution by comparing it with ours. For you will find in what is still the case with us many patterns of what was then the case with you: first a priestly caste separated from all others, then that of the craftsmen, each class of whom in turn works for itself and not together with the others, plus the shepherds, hunters and farmers. Finally, you will also have noticed that the warrior caste in this country is separate from all others and that nothing else is imposed on it by law except the care of warfare.

Her armament consists of spear and shield, with which we first equipped ourselves among the peoples of Asia, as the Goddess had taught us, just as she first taught you in your regions. As for the education of the mind, you can see how much attention she paid from the beginning to the cosmic order, discovering all the effects that the divine causes have on human life, from divination to the art of healing, selecting those that are suitable for the use of men, and thus appropriating all these sciences and all others connected with them.

After all this preparation, the goddess first founded your state by choosing the place of your state with regard to the fact that the happy mixture of seasons there was best suited to produce people with intelligence. Since the goddess loves both war and wisdom, she chose the place best suited to produce people most like herself and gave it its inhabitants first. Thus your state lived there in possession of such a constitution and many other excellent endowments, surpassing all other men in every virtue and prowess, as was to be expected of the offspring and disciples of the gods.

Atlantis

Many other great deeds of your state we now read in our writings with admiration, but of all of them one stands out for its greatness and boldness. For our books tell of the mighty war power that your state once broke when it boldly approached all of Europe and Asia at once from the Atlantic Sea. At that time the ocean there was navigable, for off the mouth, which in your language you call the Pillars of Heracles, there was an island larger than Asia and Libya put together. From it you could then cross over to the other islands, and from the islands to the entire mainland opposite, which surrounds that ocean. Everything within the aforementioned estuary (the Mediterranean) appears to be a mere bay with a narrow entrance, but that ocean can rightly be called an ocean and the land surrounding it can rightly be called the mainland.

This island of Atlantis was now ruled by a great and admirable kingdom that had not only the entire island, but also many other islands and parts of the mainland under its control. It also ruled over the lands within the bay, from Libya to Egypt and Europe to Tyrrhenia.

Ancient Athens' war with Atlantis

By uniting all this power in one army, it set out to subjugate our land and yours and all the territory in the estuary in one fell swoop.

At that time, my Solon, the power of your state was revealed in all its excellence and strength before all men. For he surpassed all others in courage and martial skill, and first led the Hellenes, but then, through the apostasy of the others, he was forced to rely on himself alone. When he thus found himself in the greatest danger, he defeated the invaders and set up signs of victory, thus preventing the subjugation of those not yet subdued and nobly restoring freedom to the rest of us who dwell within the Heraclean borders.

Later, however, violent earthquakes and floods occurred, and during one bad day and night your entire warlike people sank beneath the earth in droves, and the island of Atlantis also disappeared, sinking into the sea. That is why the sea there is now impassable and unnavigable, because the heaped-up mud that the island created by its sinking is in the way.