222 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



they are soon stopped by such a profusion of rocks and debris from 

 the engulfed lands that fear seizes them, and they flee these accursed 

 regions, over which seems to hang the anathema of a god. 



In another dialogue, which is entitled " Critias," or " Concerning 

 Atlantis," and which, like the foregoing, is from the "Tima^us," 

 Plato indulges in a description of the famous island. It is again 

 Critias who is speaking. Tima3us, Socrates, and Hermocrates are 

 listening to him. Critias says: 



According to the Egyptian tradition a common war arose 9,000 j^ears ago 

 between tlie nations on this side of the Pillars of Hercules and the nations 

 coming from beyond. On one side it was Athens; on the other the Kings of 

 Atlantis. We have already said that this island was larger than Asia and 

 Africa, but that it became submerged following an earthquake and that its 

 place is no longer met with except as a sand bar which stops navigators and 

 renders the sea impassable. 



And Critias develops for us the Egyptian tradition of the fabu- 

 lous origin of Atlantis, fallen to the share of Neptune and in which 

 this god has placed the 10 children that he had by a mortal. Then 

 he describes the cradle of the Atlantic race; a plain located near the 

 sea and opening in the central part of the island, and the most 

 fertile of plains; about it a circle of mountains stretching to the 

 sea, a circle open at the center and protecting the plain from the 

 icy blasts of the north; in these superb mountains, numerous 

 villages, rich and populous; in the plain, a magnificent city, the 

 palaces and temples of which are constructed from stones of three 

 colors — white, black, and red — drawn from the very bosom of the 

 island; here and there mines yielding all the metals useful to man; 

 finally the shores of the island cut perpendicularly and command- 

 ing from above the tumultuous sea.^ We may smile in reading the 

 story of Neptune and his fruitful amours, but the geographic de- 

 scription of the island is not of the sort which one jokes about and 

 forgets. This description tallies well with what we would imagine 

 to-day of a great land submerged in the region of the Azores and 

 enjoying the eternal springtime, which is the endowment of these 

 islands; a land formed from a basement of ancient rocks bearing, 

 with some fragments of Avhitish calcareous terranes, extinct vol- 

 canic mountains and lava flows, black or red, long since grown cold. 



Such is the Atlantis of Plato, and such, according to the great 

 philosopher, is the history of this island, a history fabulous in its 

 origins, like the majority of histories, yet extremely exact and 

 highly probable in its details and tragic termination. This is, fur- 

 thermore, all that antiquity teaches us, for the accounts of Theo- 

 pompus and Marcellus, much vaguer than that of Plato, are inter- 



1 Works of Plato, translated [into French] by V. Cousin, vol. 12, p. 247. Paris, pub. 

 Rey and Gravier. 



