196 Atlantis. 



your city (Athens) once overcame, when a mighty, warlike power, 

 rushing from the Atlantic sea, spread itself witli hostile fury over all 

 Europe and Asia. That sea, indeed, was navigable, and had an island 

 fronting that mouth which you, in your tongue, call the 'Pillars of 

 Hercules'; and this island was larger than Lybia (Africa) and Asia 

 (Minor) put together, and there was a passage for travelers of that 

 day to the rest of the islands, as well as from these islands to the whole 

 opposite continent" — (or, more literally, the continent beijond) — 

 " that surrounds the real sea. For as respects what is within the 

 mouth here mentioned" (i e; the Mediterranean)— " it appears to be 

 a bay with a kind of narrow entrance ; and that sea is indeed a true 

 sea, and the land that entirely surrounds it may truly and most 

 correctly be termed a continent. In this Atlantic island there was 

 formed a powerful league of kings, who subdued the entire island, 

 together with many others, and parts, also, of the continent ; besides 

 which, they subjected to their rule the inland parts of Lybia as far as 

 Egypt, and Europe as far as Tyrrhoenia (Italy). The whole of this 

 force then being collected together in one league, undertook to enslave 

 both your country and ours, and the land besides which lies within 

 the mouth. * * * Subsequently, however, through violent earth- 

 quakes and deluges, which brought desolation in a single day and 

 nisht, the whole of this warlike race was at once merged under the 

 earth ; and the Atlantic island was itself buried beneath the sea and 

 entirely disappeared ; whence now that sea is neither navigable nor to 

 be traced out, being blocked up by the great depth of mud which the 

 subsiding island produced." 



Plato evidently regarded this tradition as true, but his modern 

 translators, almost without exception, hold, with Mr. Davis, of King's 

 College, Oxford, that "the whole story of the Atlantic isles is so 

 improbable, and so at variance with the geographical knowledge of 

 the Greeks, even in Plato's time, that it can only be regarded as a 

 mere myth." Other objections have been urged against the truth of 

 this tradition, among which is the suggestion of M. Claparede that 

 the subsidence of so large an area as that of the supposed island would 

 have caused a considerable refrigeration in the cHmate of the northern 

 hemisphere, with a corresponding change of the fauna and flora of the 

 Mediterranean region, which would have permanently engraved itself 

 upon the memory of the Egyptians. 



Notwithstanding the weight which at first glance would seem justly 

 to attach to these objections, there are, it is claimed, many circum- 

 stances Avhich, from an archseological standpoint at least, are strikingly 

 consistent with the truth of the tradition, and which seem to indicate 



