Plato, We Thank You

Our idea of Atlantis comes from the Athenian philosopher Plato, who wrote of it in two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias.

As Plato tells it, a Greek scholar named Solon traveled to Egypt circa 600 BC to study ancient history. When Solon tried to astound the Egyptians with tales of Greek's achievements, the Egyptian priests ended up amazing him.
They told Solon of a remarkable continent, larger than Asia and Libya combined, which lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules, dedicated to Poseidon, the sea god. A lavish temple at the center of the island was dedicated to the god, and many canals helped irrigate the land. Atlantis also had strange wonderful animals and a central bustling city.
The Atlanteans conquered many lands with fairness and ease, until they were halted by the Athenians. When their power was challenged, a cataclysmic disaster took the great island of Atlantis beneath the waves.


Atlantis, in the tradition of antiquity, a large island in the Western Ocean (the ocean to the west of the known world). The first recorded accounts of Atlantis claim Atlantis to have been engulfed by the ocean as the result of an earthquake, two dialogues by Greek philosopher Plato. According to the account in Timaeus, the island was described to Athenian statesman Solon by an Egyptian priest, who maintained that Atlantis was larger than Asia Minor and Libya combined. The priest further revealed that a flourishing civilization had reputedly centered on Atlantis about the 10th millennium bc, and that the nation had conquered all the Mediterranean peoples except the Athenians. In Critias, Plato records the history of Atlantis and depicts the nation as a utopian commonwealth. Although Plato’s descriptive material and history are probably fictional, the possibility exists that he had access to records that have not survived.
The tradition that a lost island such as Atlantis once flourished has always fascinated the popular imagination, and the tradition continues today. In the 20th century some oceanographers advanced the theory that Atlantis was once a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Some associate the legend of Atlantis with the Greek island Thíra (Thera), which, according to geologists, experienced a massive volcanic eruption about 1640 bc. Other theories have been based on archaeological discoveries. Scholars have variously identified the island with Crete (Kríti), the Canary Islands, the Scandinavian Peninsula, and the Americas.

Plato claimed that the story of Atlantis occured 9,000 years before he set it down, the exact year being 9360 BC (He wrote the story in 360 BC) But was it a morality tale of what happens when a civilization over-extends itself? Or was Plato recording what he believed to be the truth?