Short Essay: Plato and the Myth of Atlantis.
Ronnie Watt, 2014
Pseudo-history, pseudo-science, and pseudo-archaeology have delivered ‘proof’ of numerous sites
where Atlantis, the lost city of which Plato wrote, could have thrived and then suffered total destruction
in a cataclysmic event. For long it has been debated that Atlantis was not a factual civilisation but
either counts as one of the many known myths of a destructive deluge, or merely serves as a metaphor
for the Greek philosopher Plato to debate the consequences for a society that fails in its moral code of
conduct. The extinction of Atlantis was linked in the late 1930s to a volcanic disaster that befell the
island of Thera some 113 kilometres from Crete at a time when the Minoan civilisation flourished.
Archaeology has revealed many features of Minoan society on Crete and its outpost colony on Thera
that had distinct semblance to what Plato described in his Critias and Timaeus dialogues. There is also
some corroborating evidence for a lost sea empire as depicted on the ‘Building Texts’ inscribed on the
walls of the Temple of Edfu in Upper Egypt. Unlike Atlantis, Minoan Crete however did not
“disappear in the depths of the sea” as described in Timaeus but that civilisation went into demise when
it was hit by the after-effect earthquakes, tidal waves and of volcanic ash deposits of the volcanic
eruption of nearby Thera.
Plato’s Atlantis narrative is set out as a discussion on what constitutes the ideal government, between
his teacher Socrates, the philosopher Timaeus from Italian Locri, Critias of Athens who as one of the
Thirty Tyrants helped overthrow Athenian democracy, and the Syracusan statesman Hermocrates. The
foundation on which the narrative is built, is a story told by an Egyptian priest to the Athenian
statesman Solon, who in turn passed it down in the family of Plato. In essence, the Egyptian priest told
how Poseidon created Atlantis for the protection of his lover Cleito who bore him ten sons. The city
was a citadel surrounded by concentric rings of land separated by water. The descendants of the
original sons of Poseidon strived to conquer new territories and in their quest engaged in a war with
Egypt and Athens. The Greeks liberated the Atlantean territories but a natural catastrophe then
occurred which destroyed ancient Athens and sunk Atlantis into the sea.
There are many features of Atlantean society in Plato’s narrative that relate strongly to the
archaeological evidence produced by the archaeologist Arthur Evans and his successors, about the
Minoan civilisation on Crete and Thera. Atlantis, like Minoan Crete, had an advanced social structure,
built its flourishing economy by means of maritime trading, practiced religious rites and ceremonies in
temples that included bull sacrifices, and if not actually ruled by priests then the affairs of these two
societies were guided by their priestly leaders. (Tschoegl, 1972:1,17; Hurd, 2012:23; Mifsud et al,
2012:14,52,54; Scott, 2012:http://saleonard.people.ysu.edu). If Thera is Atlantis, as the archaeological
evidence supports, then there are discrepancies with Plato’s Atlantis. Thera is not located near the
Straight of Gibraltar as in the case of Plato’s Atlantis, the Minoans traded in the eastern Mediterranean
and Near East unlike Atlantis’ trading in the west, and the Minoans did did not wage war against
Egypt. Modern geology has also disproved that a large landmass that could have been the site of
Atlantis, ever existed where Plato situated it. (Scott, 2012:http://saleonard.people.ysu.edu)
What Atlantis as per Plato’s narrative and Thera as per geological and archaeological evidence, have in
common, is that both suffered an exceptionally severe natural disaster. It is now known for certain that
the Thera volcano erupted in about 1450 BC at a time when the Minoan civilisation was at its height.
The volcano smothered Thera in a thick layer of volcanic ash and triggered earthquakes and tidal waves
that destroyed palaces and cities on nearby Crete, and to a lesser extent brought disaster on mainland
Greece and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. One critical problem in equating Atlantis with Thera, is the
dating of the disaster. According to the Plato, the original source of the narrative placed it at 9000 years
before the time of Solon. Nicholas Tschoegl (1972:20) of the California Institute of Technology argues
that in the transmission of the narrative to Plato, the numeral for 1000 became confused with that for
100. If the 9000 years are translated as 900 to which the 300 year period preceding Solon are added, the
tally of time puts the extinction of Atlantis at about 1200 BC which is not far off the 1450 BC date
which modern-day science has determined. It must also be kept in mind that though Thera was severely
affected, the eruption did not decimate the Minoan civilisation which lingered on for another 250 years
until about 1200 BC.
Plato’s Critias and Timaeus dialogues are not lessons in geography and history, but the vehicle of
philosophy and debate about piety, politics, and human nature (Scott,
2012:http://saleonard.people.ysu.edu). He might indeed have been familiar with a myth about a lost
island civilisation, but used the myth as metaphor. Catalin Parternie (2014:http://plato.stanford.edu) of
the Department of Philosophy at the University of Quebec, reminds us that Plato made use of existing
myths, that he adapted and merged myths, or even invented myths, to serve his philosophical
discourses. Scott (2012:http://saleonard.people.ysu.edu) speaks of Plato’s use of “serviceable lies” and
“likely stories” through which his audience could relate to his philosophies.
The Critias and Timaeus dialogues are positioned in a time of Athenian political turmoil and just before
Athens launched her imperialistic Sicilian Expedition. In his The Republic, Plato had already named
timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny as forms of unjust government and proposed that the rule
by a philosopher-king would be the best hope for a harmonious and just city. (Hurd, 2012:16) It is
against this background that Atlantis becomes the vehicle for Plato’s thinking about an orderly and just
universe, rather than using Atlantis as a historical example of how greed and hubris will invoke the
wrath of the gods. Atlantis is Plato’s metaphor for virtues, values and beliefs. (Scott,
2012:http://saleonard.people.ysu.edu)
Plato’s Atlantis is for the most part the invention of a myth or an adaptation of a myth. His Atlantis
does ring true in the sense that it presents a scenario in which a violent, natural disaster erased a
Mediterranean civilisation such as that which indeed befell the Minoans on Theros and Crete.
However, as has been shown, Plato could also have drawn on other narratives of deluge and destruction
to construct his Atlantis. Whether by accident or by calling on feint memories of such an actual disaster
in earlier Greek history, Plato’s Atlantis happened to become like the Minoan civilisation on Theros
rather than to be the Minoan civilisation on Theros.
Bibliography
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