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 suggest 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. ĭespite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. Since Plato describes Athens as resembling his ideal state in the Republic, the Atlantis story is meant to bear witness to the superiority of his concept of a state. After an ill-fated attempt to conquer "Ancient Athens," Atlantis falls out of favor with the deities and submerges into the Atlantic Ocean. In the story, Atlantis is described as a naval empire that ruled all Western parts of the known world, making it the literary counter-image of the Achaemenid Empire. Atlantis ( Ancient Greek: Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, romanized: Atlantìs nêsos, lit.'island of Atlas') is a fictional island mentioned in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias as part of an allegory on the hubris of nations.
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