Atlantis Allegory

Plato’s Atlantis: An Allegory or a Lost Continent? The lost civilization of Atlantis is a mystery that has captivated people for centuries. More recently, it has become an increasingly popular subject for books and movies, showing that despite how long ago it is said to have existed, its allure has not diminished. It appears that people are very intrigued by the possibility of the existence of this, ancient, highly advanced society that is said to have disappeared, quite literally, overnight. It seems, however, that Atlantis never existed at all, except in the mind of Greek philosopher Plato, who wrote the first and only account of the civilization in his political dialogues Timaeus and Critias. The city of Atlantis was an allegory invented …show more content…
He wrote many dialogues, and each containing underlying messages that he implicitly displayed in the conversations between interlocutors. He first addressed the concept of Atlantis in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, which he wrote between the years 359 and 351 BC (Castledon, 1998). In the dialogues, the story of Atlantis is presented as having been passed down over a great “lapse of time,” beginning with Egyptian priests who told the story to Solon, who passed it down to Critias, who then told it to his grandson, also named Critias (Plato, 21d; Ryan, 1999). Solon was going to compile the information he heard from the Egyptian priests into a poem, but it is unknown whether or not he accomplished this (Plato, 21c). According to the story, Atlantis as an island “larger than Libya and Asia combined” that can be found in the Atlantic ocean, past the “Pillar of Heracles,” the end of the known world at the time (Plato, 24e). Critias later describes the composition of the island in greater detail: a hill in the center of the island was “enclos[ed]… with concentric rings, alternately of sea and land, and of varying sizes” (Plato, 113d). He then describes the organization of the Atlantean civilization, touching on its military, its political authorities, and its many temples and buildings. , Finally, the story ends with the complete destruction of Atlantis while it was at war with Athens. In “a single dreadful day and night,” the island of Atlantis, along with many Athenian soldiers, was “swallowed up into the sea and vanished” (Plato, 25d). This catastrophe is said to have occurred around 9600 BC, long before the time when Solon hears the story from the Egyptian priests (Castleden, 1998). Thus is Plato’s account of Atlantis, which has become the jumping off point for many modern researchers, who try to hypothesize if and where Atlantis may have actually