For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. For the ocean there was at that time navigable for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, 'the pillars of Heracles,' there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. Plato introduced Atlantis in Timaeus, written in 360 BC:įor it is related in our records how once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. The dialogues claim to quote Solon, who visited Egypt between 590 and 580 BC they state that he translated Egyptian records of Atlantis. The only primary sources for Atlantis are Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias all other mentions of the island are based on them. Others have rejected this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato created an entirely fictional account, drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events such as the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC or the destruction of Helike in 373 BC. This led a number of scholars to investigate possible inspiration of Atlantis from Egyptian records of the Thera eruption, the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War. Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors from older traditions, as he did, for instance, with the story of Gyges.
While present-day philologists and classicists agree on the story's fictional character, there is still debate on what served as its inspiration.
As a consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films. Plato's vague indications of the time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time ) and the alleged location of Atlantis ("beyond the Pillars of Hercules") gave rise to much pseudoscientific speculation. Donnelly in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. On the other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato's narrative as historical tradition, most famously Ignatius L. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon's New Atlantis and Thomas More's Utopia. The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean.ĭespite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. In the story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the known world, supposedly bearing witness to the superiority of Plato's concept of a state.
Atlantis ( Ancient Greek: Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, Atlantis nesos, "island of Atlas") is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias, wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges "Ancient Athens", the pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato's ideal state in The Republic.
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