Plato (428/427 BC - 348/347 BC) is the first philosopher whose writings have come down to us not in short passages quoted by others, but in full. He is one of the most famous ancient philosophers, a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle.
In his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, Plato initiated a huge series of Atlantis-themed fantasies.
The Timaeus treatise in the form of a dialogue, devoted to cosmology, physics and biology, was written by Plato around 360 BC. e. This dialogue also provides a summary of Atlantis. Dialogue participants: Socrates, Timaeus, Critias, Hermocrates. It has been suggested that the Timaeus dialogue was influenced by Philolaus's book about Pythagoras.
Dialogue "Timaeus" begins with the reasoning of Socrates and the Pythagorean Timaeus about the best state structure. Briefly describing the ideal state, Socrates complains about the abstractness and schematic nature of the picture obtained and expresses a desire to “listen to a description of how this state behaves in the struggle with other states, how it enters the war in a worthy manner, how during the war its citizens do what what befits them, in accordance with their training and upbringing, whether on the battlefield or in negotiations with each of the other states."
Responding to the wishes of Socrates, the third participant in the dialogue, the Athenian politician Critias, sets out a story about the war of Athens with Atlantis, allegedly from the words of his grandfather Cretius the Elder, who, in turn, retold him the story of Solon, heard by the latter from the priests in Egypt. The meaning of the story is this: once, 9 thousand years ago (from the period of the life of Cretius and Solon, that is, from the 6th-5th centuries BC), Athens was the most glorious, powerful and virtuous state. Their main rival was the aforementioned Atlantis.
"This island was larger than Libya and Asia combined." On it arose "an amazing in size and power kingdom", which ruled all of Libya to Egypt and Europe to Tyrrenia (western Italy). All the forces of this kingdom were thrown into the enslavement of Athens. The Athenians defended their freedom at the head of the Hellenes; and although all their allies betrayed them, they alone, thanks to their valor and virtue, repulsed the invasion, crushed the Atlanteans and liberated the peoples enslaved by them. Following this, however, a tremendous natural disaster occurred, as a result of which the entire army of the Athenians died in one day, and Atlantis sank to the bottom of the sea.
Also, the dialogue deals with the nature of the physical world, the purpose and properties of the universe, the creation of the world soul and the elements that made up the physical universe. An extensive concluding section of the dialogue examines the creation of humans, including souls, anatomy, perception, and soul transmigration.
Time Plato calls "eternal image" and reflects on it in Timaeus. Here he expounds the version of Greek theogony as from Uranus the Ocean was born, and from the Ocean Kronos, and already from Kronos Zeus. Plato views ether as "a transparent kind of air."
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Statue of Plato at Delphi
"Critias" is a continuation of the "Timaeus" dialogue, and has come down to our times incomplete. This is one of Plato's later dialogues, containing the story of the powerful island state of Atlantis and his attempt to conquer the ancient Athenian state. The participants in the dialogue are the same as in Timaeus: Socrates, Timaeus, Critias, Hermocrates.
Plato assumed a trilogy of dialogues, which should include "Timaeus" and "Critias", after "Critias" should be followed by the dialogue "Hermocrates". But the latter, as is commonly believed, was never written.
In "Critias" Plato reports about the war that took place 9 thousand years between Atlantis (a large island on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules) and "our kingdom", i.e. Greece.
When the gods divided the surface of the Earth by lot, Greece went to the goddess Athena, and Atlantis to Poseidon.
Athens then (before the earthquake and flood) was the center of a large and extraordinarily fertile country; they were inhabited by a virtuous people who enjoyed an ideal (from Plato's point of view) state structure. Namely, rulers and warriors, who lived separately from the main agricultural and handicraft masses on the Acropolis as a communist community, controlled everything.
The humble and virtuous Athens is opposed to the arrogant and powerful Atlantis.
Critias reports that Atlantis was larger than Asia and Libya. Poseidon and his beloved, a mortal girl named Kleito (daughter of Evenor and Leucippa), gave birth to a pair of male twins five times. Poseidon raised them, and assigned each of them a part of the island, dividing the entire island of Atlantis into ten parts. The eldest of the sons - the one who was born first in the very first pair of twins - Poseidon appointed the best and largest share, giving him the mother's house and surrounding estates; and made this eldest son king over the rest of the sons. He appointed the rest of his sons archons.
The name of the eldest son, who was placed by the king over the other sons, and, accordingly, over the entire island, was Atlas, and "both the island and the sea, which is called the Atlantic", were named after his name. From Atlanta came "a particularly numerous and revered clan, in which the eldest has always been a king and passed the royal dignity to the eldest of his sons, retaining power in the clan from generation to generation." The power of the Atlanteans extended eastward to Tyrrhenia and Egypt.
The central plain of the island stretched 3 thousand stades (540 km) in length and 2 thousand stades (360 km) in width, the center of the island was a hill located 50 stades (8-9 kilometers) from the sea. Poseidon enclosed it with three water and two land rings for protection; The Atlanteans threw bridges over these rings and dug canals, so that ships could sail along them to the city itself, or, more precisely, to the central island, which had 5 stades (slightly less than a kilometer) in diameter. The Atlantean army consisted of 10 thousand chariots and 1200 ships.
The island housed the Temple of Poseidon, 1 stage long, 3 pletra (90 m) wide and high. Inside the Temple was placed a statue of a god on a chariot drawn by 6 winged horses, as well as 100 nereids on dolphins.
Plato devotes a lot of space to describing the unheard-of wealth and fertility of the island, its dense population, rich natural world, where even elephants lived and the mineral orichalcum was mined.
Thanks to the abundance of the natural resources of the island, and the wise rule of the descendants of Poseidon - the sovereign and the archons - the state of Atlantis was strengthened and prospered. But over time, "nature inherited from God" was depleted, "repeatedly dissolving in a mortal admixture, and the human disposition prevailed." And then the Atlanteans "were unable to endure their wealth and lost decency", and mired in luxury, greed and pride.
The last part of the dialogue that has come down to us describes the fact that the supreme god Zeus decided to impose punishment on the Atlantean people, who "fell into such pitiful depravity." For this, he summoned all the gods, "and addressed those gathered with these words …", and at this point the dialogue ends at an unfinished phrase.
Researchers believe that the "Critias" dialogue has come down to us unfinished. There are several hypotheses about this. The main ones are:
- Plato actually finished the dialogue, but the ending was lost and therefore did not reach us.
- Plato for some reason could not finish the dialogue, although he was going to do it. Presumably, Plato could have thought about the ending and not write it right away; then he was forced to do other things and postpone the writing of the ending of "Kritias", to which he could not return, since after a short time his death followed.
- Plato deliberately left the dialogue unfinished.
Plato's original purpose is believed to have been to denounce the Atlanteans by portraying them as an entirely negative example of the greed and pride generated by wealth and the pursuit of power - a kind of anti-utopia opposed to the utopian Athens; but, starting to describe Atlantis, Plato got carried away and, for purely artistic reasons, created an attractive image of a magnificent and powerful state, so that Atlantis, as a utopia, completely overshadowed the pale outline of the poor and virtuous Athens. It is possible that it was precisely this discrepancy between the design and the result that was the reason that the dialogue was not completed.