Sunday 15 January 2023

The trip to Atlantis

This work started as an email to a friend who wanted to visit the South Aegean islands. I intended to encourage some reading on Plato's myth of Atlantis because I firmly believed that Atlantis was in the South Aegean islands, Crete and Santorin, in particular. I had in mind the book presenting the archaeological and geological evidence that matched so well the myth with the history, geology, and the archaeology of those two islands (Galanopoulos and Bacon 1969). Therefore, I began to search for a few good arguments to convince my friends that they could well imagine themselves contemplating Atlantis at the depths of the caldera of Santorini. Then, I realized how diverse the interpretations of a single myth were and that not a single convincing argument existed.

The story of Atlantis appears in two of Plato's dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, written in 360 BC. The second dialogue is interrupted abruptly, and the third dialogue of the trilogy, Hermocrates, does not exist. The three speakers are supposed to deliver a discourse each the next day at the festival of goddess Athena and are rehearsing their speech with Socrates to obtain his endorsement. Timaeus is an astronomer, and he will speak first about the universe, from the Genesis of Cosmos to the generation of humankind and the first civilizations. Critias will then take over and talk about the history of Athens, recalling and reciting a relevant poem by Solon, which he learned by heart when he was 10-years old.

Briefly, the poem tells the story of two enemies that came to war at some point in the remote past. One of the conflicting powers was ancient Athens; the other was Atlantis. Following an earthquake and a flood, the earth swallows the island of Atlantis, which vanishes under the sea. Critias – or Plato – tells the story as a historical event that would make a perfect example of a well-ordered society, as that Athens used to be, compared to its opponent; the once-great but then corrupted Atlantis, which is eventually punished by the gods. Plato's conviction of the veracity of the facts contrasts with his disbelief in Homer's and Hesiod's tales. He explicitly expressed this disbelief also in his Republic (see section Myth). He confirms it in Timaeus by his disdain for Homer, Hesiod, and other poets, put together, against the by-far superior poetry of Solon [1].

Solon is said to have written the poem telling the story of Atlantis after he visited Egypt, where he gathered the information from an Egyptian priest – whom Plutarch identified as a historical person named Sonchis of Sais [2] – who kept the historical records. Critias declares that Solon studied the barbarian names involved in the story and translated them into Greek to keep their original meaning. Therefore, if the story is historical, the names should point to historical objects [3].

Without giving adequate geographical coordinates, Solon – through Critias and Plato – refers to the Atlantic Ocean, which tautologically surrounds the island of Atlantis. 'Atlantic Ocean' means the sea of Atlantis, the sea around Atlantis. At the same time, Atlantis is an adjective of Atlas: daughter of Atlas, land of Atlas, the island of Atlas, Republic of Atlas, etc. They also refer to the Pillars of Heracles. These correspond to Southern Peloponnese, if geographically relevant at all, at the times of Solon and Plato.

The rest of Critias' discourse describes the island, its nature, towns, and culture in great detail. For example, Plato gave timing and geographical or topographical features in numbers. There is also an extensive reference to a bull cult, which evokes what is now called the Minoan civilization and matches archeological evidence from Bronze-Age Crete. Such detail would be unnecessary in a moral allegory; and, indeed, incompatible with a purely philosophical essay that Plato supposedly intended. Right from the beginning, Critias asks for help from Mnemosyne, Memory, rather than from the Muses, deities of inspiration, as poets and mythographers usually do. He also begs for the audience's indulgence because there will inevitably be inaccuracies in the descriptions due to the so long time past. Critias', Solon's (?), or Plato's (?) numbers seem aberrant to Plato's analysts and have caused much confusion and disbelief.

The prevailing scholarly view is that the myth of Atlantis has nothing historical in it, and it is pure fiction entirely elaborated by Plato from numerous mythological references and his political and philosophical ideas. The aberrant numbers and the practical difficulty in finding the sunken island account for this view. However, some scholars note that all figures given by Plato would make sense if divided by 10. Therefore, the inconsistency could be explained as an error of translation, a mistake in transcription or poor comprehension of the units used.

Dombrowski sums up the skeptical view:

Atlantis was only a powerful literary device invented by Plato, which was to act as a means of highlighting the fate of the ideal state created in Plato's mind's eye. The only place Atlantis can be found, in addition to the writings of Plato, is in the minds of those with an imagination as vivid as that of Plato' (Dombrowski 2011).

The translator, Benjamin Jowett (1817 – 1893), comments:

'No one knew better than Plato how to invent a noble lie… Plato here, as elsewhere, ingeniously gives the impression that he is telling the truth which mythology had corrupted' (Plato 2018).



Even ancient authors received the Atlantis story with skepticism when they mentioned it. The only later mention of Atlantis is by Strabo (64 BC - 25 AD), who, relaying the opinion of Posidonios (c. 135 - 51 BC), thinks 'that the tradition relating to this island may well not be pure fiction.' However, always according to Strabo, Aristotle (384 - 322 BC), the renowned disciple of Plato, denies any validity to the testimony given by his master. Eratosthenes (276 - 194 BC) also expresses doubt in the following century. Theopompus of Chios (378 - 323 BC) parodies Plato, and the Platonic story, with the imaginary island of Meropides. Herodotus (c. 484 - 425 BC) uses the term Atlantes to designate the inhabitants of the region of Mount Atlas - named after the titan Atlas - who take their name from this mountain [4] (Herodotus 1920). Pseudo-Apollodorus (2nd century BC), in his Bibliotheca, places Mount Atlas in the land of the Hyperboreans [5] (Apollodorus 1921), north of the Black Sea. Still, there is not necessarily a link between Mount Atlas and Atlantis. Thucydides (c. 460 - 400 BC) does not speak of Atlantis but, because in his History of the Peloponnesian War, he traces the history of Greece to the maritime dominance of Minos, some believe this to be an allusion to Atlantis. For Vidal-Naquet, Plato was inspired by the name of a Libyan tribe given by Herodotus – the last he can quote to the west – to name the fictional city he imagined (Vidal-Naquet 2007). 

However, the word Atlas and its derivatives are used by Solon, through Plato, and by Homer and Hesiod, suggesting cross-validation. The story itself and the narrative contain elements suggesting that there is at least some historical truth. Half of the story told in Timaeus and Critias is about the past of Athens. No one, to my knowledge, contests that half. Indeed, nobody can contest the veracity of reported elements of which Plato's contemporaries and their ancestors had direct experience. For example, Plato refers to a spring near the Acropolis and other falsifiable geographical and historical features of their old city: forests, shrines, laws, social classes, lifestyle, agricultural and town-planning details, economic activities, etc. He also refers to his progenitors and their friends, presumably prominent and famous members of Athenian society. He even invokes Solon, a historical person, statesman, and poet whom everybody must have known. Living members of his audience had the age of Critias. They were in the position to know, or to enquire, whether Solon ever wrote that poem about Atlantis. Plato could not have taken such a risk of spoiling his reputation as a philosopher seeking the truth by telling fiction and claiming it is history. If anybody was 'lying', that was Solon, not Plato.

Paradoxically, scholars appear to believe the story about Athens. They believe the surreal tales by Homer about the city of Troy near the banks of the river Scamander who was also a god. But have difficulty in accepting that the cataclysmic event which swallowed Atlantis, causing indelible collective trauma to society from Egypt right up to Athens, let alone Santorini and Crete, was the Minoan eruption; simply because neither Plato – a philosopher of the truth – nor the Egyptian experts who were keeping the records, had any radio-carbon measuring techniques to get the dating right. Yet, the disappearance of an inhabited island is not an everyday event. It happened only once in the Bronze Age. Santorini got sterilized. A large part of it flooded out of the map. The coastal settlements of Crete were also destroyed as a consequence of an explosion rated at force seven on the VEI [6] scale ("Volcanic Explosivity Index" n.d.; Matthews 2014), i.e., the most enormous explosion that humanity has ever experienced, occurring at a center of civilization in full blossom. If geologists had not discovered that event, one could claim that Plato imagined it. Instead, though vaguely, Plato may well have heard of this event through the Egyptian records that Solon had transcribed.

Besides, Plato's narrative and grammatical style are diametrically different in the typical allegory of the cave [7], compared to Atlantis. In the cave story, he declares that he is telling a parable he uses hypothetical grammar throughout. Could we take the story of the cave as having been inspired by actual events? Never! Plato does not play such games. Instead, in the Atlantis story, he goes out of his way to convince the audience, invoking elements of proof and cross-validation. Perhaps his most interesting statement is that Solon had transferred the meanings of the barbarian names from the Egyptian records into his poem. In other words, the names mentioned in the story contain historical significance. Nobody appears to have ever paid attention to this detail.

But before I begin my account, there is still a small point which I ought to explain, lest you should be surprised at frequently hearing Greek names given to barbarians. The reason of this you shall now learn. Since Solon was planning to make use of the story for his own poetry, he had found, on investigating the meaning of the names, that those Egyptians who had first written them down had translated them into their own tongue. So he himself in turn recovered the original sense of each name and, rendering it into our tongue, wrote it down so. And these very writings were in the possession of my grandfather and are actually now in mine, and when I was a child I learnt them all by heart [8] (Plato 1921).

References

Apollodorus. 1921. The Library. Translated by James George Frazer. London: William Heinemann Ltd.

Dombrowski, Daniel A. 2011. "Atlantis and Plato's Philosophy." Apeiron 15 (2): 117–28.

Galanopoulos, Angelos G, and Edward Bacon. 1969. Atlantis: The Truth Behindthe Legend. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co.

Herodotus. 1920. The Histories. Translated by Alfred D Godley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Matthews, John A. 2014. "Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)." In Encyclopedia of Environmental Change. SAGE Publications, Ltd.

Plato. 1921. "Critias." In Plato in Twelve Volumes, translated by Walter R M Lamb, 9:Plat. Criti. 113a-113b. London: William Heinemann Ltd.

———. 2018. "Critias, Introduction and Analysis." In The Complete Plato Collection, edited by Charles River, translated by Benjamin Jowett, 594. Charles River Editors.

Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. 2007. The Atlantis Story: A Short History of Plato's Myth. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press


[3] I use the word 'object 'in its most abstract sense, including humans as well as biological, social, technological, geological, and immaterial things.

[6] 'Volcanic Explosivity Index' in Wikipedia; accessed 15 January 2022.


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Location: Paris, France