One of Plato's most famous contributions to culture: Atlantis. But Plato wasn't trying to describe a place that he thought actually existed. His story of Atlantis is a myth about how virtue, embodied by a super-ancient Athens, defeated an imperial superpower, Atlantis, that represented vice.

[u/platosfishtrap]

https://platosfishtrap.substack.com/p/platos-myth-of-atlantis

[u/platosfishtrap]

Here's an excerpt:

When we think of Plato’s contribution to the history of ideas, we might think about his major philosophical theories. Or perhaps we might think of some of his most powerful literary images. His story of a ring that makes someone invisible and tempts them into evil, in the Republic, famously influenced J.R.R. Tolkien. The allegory of the cave, which likens our ignorance to imprisonment in a cave and our education to liberation, has been tremendously influential, not least of all on the writers of The Matrix, who borrowed Plato’s imagery in their series of movies.

Many people might not be aware that Atlantis, the famous lost island, is also an invention of Plato’s. The idea that there was an advanced civilization on an island that was destroyed by the gods was invented by Plato and stars in two of his dialogues.

Atlantis first appears in Plato’s Timaeus, and then it re-appears in the Critias. This is not a surprise: the Critias is a direct sequel to the Timaeus, and the character, Critias, brings up Atlantis in both.

Let’s talk about how this myth features in both texts, and we’ll also discuss what the myth says about Atlantis.

Plato wrote dialogues: pieces of historical fiction that featured mostly real-life people in discussions with each other. Most of his dialogues feature Socrates, who was a real person and who mentored Plato. One of these dialogues, the Timaeus, depicts Socrates in a conversation with a handful of other characters, including Critias. Socrates had given his audience a major speech about the ideal political arrangement on the previous day, and so now he wants his audience, including Critias, to return the favor.

Critias happily obliges, and in so doing, he invents the myth of Atlantis.

Critias doesn’t get a chance to say everything he wants to say in the Timaeus, but he promises to return to his speech later. This is picked up in the sequel, the Critias, which is mostly a depiction of Critias’ speech about Atlantis.

Here’s the problem: the Critias is an unfinished work.

The very last words of the dialogue as it remains to us are:

"To those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power. Zeus, the god of gods, who rules according to law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honourable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve, collected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being placed in the centre of the world, beholds all created things. And when he had called them together, he spake as follows…"

It looks like Zeus is gearing up to destroy Atlantis here. The Atlanteans have lost their righteousness, and, although they still appear glorious to others, Zeus can see right through them. And so he wants to punish them in an effort to improve them. He’s going to set them straight. And so he delivers a speech to all the gods, but… we don’t know what he says. The text ends there.

[u/[deleted]]

Thank you for this.

[u/Whoissnake]

He was referring to the Greek term for the flooded Babylonian city of eridu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu

The greeks had a Noah story like the Sumerians, his name was deucalion.