ATLANTIC LEGEND 61 



told by Solon to his children and his children's children, canie 

 down through Critias to Plato, who was in the act of complet- 

 ing the transcription of the tale when he died. The Egyptian 

 priests, after lecturing Solon on the ephemeral and youthful 

 nature of the Greeks, proceed to tell him of Athenian history 

 in the year nine thousand b.c. They said: 'These histories [of 

 ours] tell of a mighty power which was aggressing wantonly 

 against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city 

 put an end. The power came from far out of the Atlantic 

 Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there 

 was an island situated in front of the straits which you call the 

 Columns of Hercules. The island was larger than Libya and 

 Asia [Asia Minor], and was the way to other islands, and from 

 these islands you might pass through the whole of the oppo- 

 site continent which surrounded the true ocean, for this sea 

 which is within the Straits of Hercules is only a harbor having 

 a narrow entrance, but the other is a real sea. Now, in the 

 island of Atlantis was a great and wonderful empire, which 

 had rule over the whole island and several others, as well as 

 over parts of the continent.'' 



Then the story of the battle wherein the early Athenians 

 conquered the attacking Atlantean army is recorded, followed 

 by the story of a great natural cataclysm: ''Afterward there 

 occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day 

 and night of rain all your warlike men in a body sank into the 

 earth, and the island of Atlantis in a like manner disappeared 

 and was sunk beneath the sea. And that is the reason the sea 

 in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there 

 is such a quantity of shallow mud in the way caused by the 

 subsidence of the island.'' 



Plato then describes the wealth and beauty of the city, its 

 great stone temples to Poseidon, and how canals reached from 

 the sea to an inner harbor well fortified against attack. The 

 harvests of the land were plentiful, with two seasons, one of 



