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Critias.
Then listen, Socrates, to a strange tale, which is,
however, certainly true, as Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages,
declared. He was a relative and great friend of my great-grandfather,
Dropidas, as he himself says in several of his poems; and Dropidas told
Critias, my grandfather, who remembered, and told us, that there were of old
great and marvellous actions of the Athenians, which have passed into
oblivion through time and the destruction of the human race- and one in
particular, which was the greatest of them all, the recital of which will be
a suitable testimony of our gratitude to you....
Socrates.
Very good; and what is this ancient famous action
of which Critias spoke, not as mere legend, but as a veritable action of the
Athenian state, which Solon recounted?
Critias.
I will tell an old-world story which I heard
from an aged man; for Critias was, as he said, at that time nearly ninety
years of age, and I was about ten years of age. Now the day was that day of
the Apaturia which is called the registration of youth; at which, according
to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations, and the poems of several
poets were recited by us boys, and many of us sung the poems of Solon, which
were new at the time. One of our tribe, either because this was his real
opinion, or because he thought that he would please Critias, said that, in
his judgement, Solon was not only the wisest of men but the noblest of poets.
The old man, I well remember, brightened up at this, and said, smiling:
"Yes, Amynander, if Solon had only, like other poets, made poetry the
business of his life, and had completed the tale which he brought with him
from Egypt, and had not been compelled, by reason of the factions and
troubles which he found stirring in this country when he came home, to
attend to other matters, in my opinion he would have been as famous as
Homer, or Hesiod, or any poet."
"And what was that poem about, Critias?" said the person who addressed him.
"About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and which ought
to have been most famous, but which, through the lapse of time and the
destruction of the actors, has not come down to us."
"Tell us, said the other, "the whole story, and how and from whom Solon
heard this veritable tradition."
He replied: "At the head of the Egyptian Delta, where the River Nile
divides, there is a certain district which is called the district of Sais,
and the great city of the district is also called Sais, and is the city from
which Amasis the king was sprung. And the citizens have a deity who is their
foundress: she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith, which is asserted by
them to be the same whom the Hellenes called Athene. Now, the citizens of
this city are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some
way related to them. Thither came Solon, who was received by them with great
honour; and he asked the priests, who were most skilful in such matters,
about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other
Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old. On one
occasion, when he was drawing them on to speak of antiquity, he began to
tell about the most ancient things in our part of the world - about
Phoroneus, who is called 'the first', and about Niobe; and, after the
Deluge, to tell of the lives of Deucalion and Pyrrha; and he traced the
genealogy of their descendants, and attempted to reckon how many years old
were the events of which he was speaking, and to give the dates.
Thereupon, one of the priests, who was of very great age, said, 'O Solon,
Solon, you Hellenes are but children, and there is never an old man who is
an Hellene.' Solon, hearing this, said, 'What do you mean?'. 'I mean to say,'
he replied, 'that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed
down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age.
And I will tell you the reason of this: there have been, and there will be
again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes. There is a
story which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Phaethon, the son
of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was
not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon
the Earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now, this has the
form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving
around the Earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things
upon the Earth recurring at long intervals of time: when this happens, those
who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to
destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore; and from this
calamity the Nile, who is our never-failing saviour, saves and delivers us.
When, on the other hand, the gods purge the Earth with a deluge of water,
among you herdsmen and shepherds on the mountains are the survivors, whereas
those of you who live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea; but
in this country neither at that time nor at any other does the water come
from above upon the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below,
for which reason the things preserved here are said to be the oldest. The
fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of summer sun does
not prevent, the human race is always increasing at times, and at other
times diminishing in numbers. And whatever happened either in your country
or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed - if any action
which is noble or great, or in any other way is remarkable has taken place,
all that has been written down of old, and is preserved in our temples;
whereas you and other nations are just being provided with letters and the
other things which states require; and then, at the usual period, the stream
from heaven descends like a pestilence, and leaves only those of you who are
destitute of letters and education; and thus you have to begin all over
again as children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times,
either among us or among yourselves. As for those genealogies which you have
recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children; for
in the first place you remember one deluge only, whereas there were many of
them; and, in the next place, you do not know that there dwelt in your land
the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, of whom you and your
whole city are but a seed or remnant. And this was unknown to you, because
for many generations the survivors of that destruction died and made no sign.
For there was a time, Solon, before that great deluge of all, when the city
which is now Athens was first in war, and was pre-eminent for the excellence
of her laws, and is said to have performed the noblest deeds, and to have
had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells, under the face
of heaven.'
Solon marvelled at this, and earnestly requested the priest to inform him
exactly and in order about those former citizens. 'You are welcome to hear
about them, Solon,' said the priest, 'both for your own sake and that of the
city; and, above all, for the sake of the goddess who is the common patron
and protector and educator of both our cities. She founded your city a
thousand years before ours, receiving from the Earth and Hephaestus the seed
of your race, and then she founded ours, the constitution of which is set
down in our sacred registers as 8000 years old. As touching the citizens of
9000 years ago, I will briefly inform you of their laws and of the noblest
of their actions; and the exact particulars of the whole we will hereafter
go through at our leisure in the sacred registers themselves. If you compare
these very laws with your own, you will find that many of ours are the
counterpart of yours, as they were in the olden time. In the first place,
there is the caste of priests, which is separated from all the others; next
there are the artificers, who exercise their several crafts by themselves,
and without admixture of any other; and also there is the class of shepherds
and that of hunters, as well as that of husbandmen; and you will observe,
too, that the warriors in Egypt are separated from all the other classes,
and are commanded by the law only to engage in war; moreover, the weapons
with which they are eqipped are shields and spears, and this the goddess
taught first among you, and then in Asiatic countries, and we among the
Asiatics first adopted.
"'Then, as to wisdom, do you observe what care the law took from the very
first, searching out and comprehending the whole order of things down to
prophecy and medicine (the latter with a view to health); and out of these
divine elements drawing what was needful for human life, and adding every
sort of knowledge which was connected with them. All this order and
arrangement the goddess first imparted to you when establishing your city;
and she chose the spot of Earth in which you were born, because she saw that
the happy temperament of the seasons would produce the wisest of men.
Wherefore the goddess, who was a lover both of war and of wisdom, selected,
and first of all settled that spot which was the most likely to produce men
likest herself. And there you dwelt, having such laws as these and still
better ones, and excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became the children
and disciples of the gods. Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of
your State in our histories; but one of them exceeds all the rest in
greatness and valour; for these histories tell of a mighty power which was
aggressing wantonly against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your
city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in
those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in
front of the straits which you call the Columns of Heracles: the island was
larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands,
and from the islands you might pass through the whole of the opposite
continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the
Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that
other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a
continent.
"Now, in the island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire,
which had rule over the whole island and several others, as well as over
parts of the continent; and besides these, they subjected the parts of Libya
within the Columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as
Tyrrhenia. The vast power thus gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at
one blow our country and yours, and the whole of the land which was within
the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of
her virtue and strength, among all mankind; for she was the first in courage
and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest
fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone
the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders,
and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjected, and freely
liberated all the others who dwelt within the limits of Heracles. But
afterward there occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day
and night of rain all you warlike men in a body sunk into the earth, and the
island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared, and was sunk beneath the sea.
And that is the reason why the sea in those parts is impassable and
impenetrable, because there is such a quantity of shallow mud in the way;
and this was cause by the subsidence of the island.'...
"But in addition to the gods whom you have mentioned, I would specially
invoke Mnemosyne; for all the important part of what I have to tell is
dependent on her favour, and if I can recollect and recite enough of what
was said by the priests, and brought hither by Solon, I doubt not that I
shall satisfy the requirements of this theatre. To that task, then, I will
at once address myself.
"Let me begin by observing, first of all, that nine thousand was the sum
of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken place
between all those who dwelt outside the Pillars of Heracles and those who
dwelt within them: this war I am now to describe. Of the combatants on the
one side the city of Athens was reported to have been the ruler, and to have
directed the contest; the combatants on the other side were led by the kings
of the islands of Atlantis, which, as I was saying, once had an extent
greater than that of Libya and Asia; and, when afterward sunk by an
earthquake, became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from
hence to the ocean. The progress of the history will unfold the various
tribes of barbarians and Hellenes which then existed, as they successively
appear on the scene; but I must begin by describing, first of all, the
Athenians as they were in that day, and their enemies who fought with them;
and I shall have to tell of the power and form of government of both of
them. Let us give the precedence to Athens....
"Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years, for
that is the number of years which have elapsed since the time of which I am
speaking; and in all the ages and changes of things there has never been any
settlement of the earth flowing down from the mountains, as in other places,
which is worth speaking of; it has always been carried round in a circle, and
disappeared in the depths below. The consequence is that, in comparison of
what then was, there are remaining in small islets only the bones of the
wasted body, as they may be called, all the richer and softer parts of the
soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the country being left....
"And next, if I have not forgotten what I heard when I was a child, I
will impart to you the character and origin of their adversaries; for
friends should not keep their stories to themselves, but have them in
common. Yet, before proceeding farther in the narrative, I ought to warn you
that you must not be surprised if you should hear Hellenic names given to
foreigners. I will tell you the reason of this: Solon, who was intending to
use the tale for his poem, made an investigation into the meaning of the
names, and found that the early Egyptians, in writing them down, had
translated them into their own language, and he recovered the meaning of the
several names and retranslated them, and copied them out again in our own
language. My great-grandfather, Dropidas, had the original writing, which is
still in my possession, and was carefully studied by me when I was a child.
Therefore, if you hear names such as are used in this country, you must not
be surprised, for I have told you the reason of them.
"The tale, which was of great length, began as follows: I have before
remarked, in speaking of the allotments of the gods, that they distributed
the whole Earth into portions differing in extent, and made themselves
temples and sacrifices. And Poseidon, receiving for his lot the island of
Atlantis, begat children by a mortal woman, and settled them in a part of
the island which I will proceed to describe. On the side toward the sea, and
in the centre of the whole island, there was a plain which is said to have
been the fairest of all plains, and very fertile. Near the plain again, and
also in the centre of the island, at a distance of about fifty stadia, there
was a mountain, not very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one
of the earth-born primeval men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and
he had a wife named Leucippe, and they had an only daughter, who was named
Cleito. The maiden was growing up to womanhood when her father and mother
died; Poseidon fell in love with her, and had intercourse with her; and,
breaking the ground, enclosed the hill in which she dwelt all round, making
alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling one another;
there were two of land and three of water, which he turned as with a lathe
out of the centre of the island, equidistant every way, so that no man could
get to the island, for ships and voyages were not yet heard of. He himself,
as he was a god, found no difficulty in making special arrangements for the
centre island, bringing two streams of water under the earth, which he
caused to ascend as springs, one of warm water and the other of cold, and
making every variety of food to spring up abundantly in the earth. He also
begat and brought up five pairs of male children, dividing the island of
Atlantis into ten portions: he gave to the first-born of the eldest pair his
mother's dwelling and the surrounding allotment, which was the largest and
best, and made him king over the rest; the others he made princes, and gave
them rule over many men and a large territory. And he named them all: the
eldest, who was king, he named Atlas, and from him the whole island and the
ocean received the name of Atlantic. To his twin brother, who was born after
him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island toward the Pillars
of Heracles, as far as the country which is still called the region of Gades
in that part of the world, he gave the name which in the Hellenic language
is Eumelus, in the language of the country which is named after him,
Gadeirus. Of the second pair of twims, he called one Ampheres and the other
Evaemon. To the third pair of twins he gave the name Mneseus to the elder,
and Autochthon to the one who followed him. Of the fourth pair of twins he
called the elder Elasippus and the younger Mestor. And of the fifth pair he
gave to the elder the name of Azaes, and to the younger Diaprepes. All these
and there descendants were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in
the open sea; and also, as has been already said, they held sway in the
other direction over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and
Tyrrhenia.
"Now Atlas had a numerous and honourable family, and his eldest branch
always retained the kingdom, which the eldest son handed on to his eldest
for many generations; and they had such an amount of wealth as was never
before possessed by kings and potentates, and is not likely ever to be
again, and they were furnished with everything which they could have, both
in city and country. For, because of the greatness of their empire, many
things were brought to them from foreign countries, and the island itself
provided much of what was required by them for the purposes of life. In the
first place, they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found there,
mineral as well as metal, and that which is now only a name, and was then
something more than a name - orichalcum - was dug out of the earth in many
parts of the island, and, with the exception of gold, was esteemed the most
precious of metals among the men of those days. There was an abundance of
wood for carpenters' work, and sufficient maintenance for tame and wild
animals. Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island, and
there was provision for animals of every kind, both for those which live in
lakes and marshes and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and
on plains, and therefore for for the animal which is the largest and most
voracious of them. Also, whatever fragrant things there are in the earth,
whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or distilling drops of flowers or
fruits, grew and thrived in that land; and again, the cultivated fruit of
the earth, both the dry edible fruit and other species of food, which we
call by the general name of legumes, and the fruits having a hard rind,
affording drinks, and meats, and ointments, and good store of chestnuts and
the like, which may be used to play with, and are the fruits which spoil
with keeping - and the pleasant kinds of dessert which console us after
dinner, when we are full and tired of eating - all these that sacred island
lying beneath the sun brought forth fair and wondrous in infinite abundance." |