Atlantis: Is Plato's Sunken Island Real or a Myth?

Atlantis comes from two Plato dialogues written around 360 BCE. No Greek source before Plato mentions it, and most classicists regard it as his invention, a parable about an arrogant naval empire.

Atlantis first appears in two dialogues by Plato, the Timaeus and the unfinished Critias, written around 360 BCE. The story is presented as one the Athenian lawmaker Solon heard from priests in Egypt. Nine thousand years before Solon, a great island power lay in the Atlantic beyond the Pillars of Heracles, larger than Libya and Asia together. It conquered much of the Mediterranean until ancient Athens defeated it. Afterward there were earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night the island sank into the sea.

The Critias adds the famous details. When the gods divided the earth by lot, Poseidon received Atlantis. He fathered five pairs of twins with a mortal woman, Cleito, and made them kings. Their capital was built in rings of land and water around a central hill, with harbors, bridges, hot and cold springs and walls covered in bronze, tin and the red-gold metal orichalcum.

The fall is moral. As long as the divine nature lasted in the kings they were wise. But "when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture," they grew greedy. Zeus called the gods together to punish them, and the dialogue breaks off mid-sentence.

Most classicists regard Atlantis as Plato's invention, a parable about an arrogant naval empire. Real events may have fed it, such as the Bronze Age eruption of Thera or the sinking of Helike in 373 BCE. Since Ignatius Donnelly's 1882 book, Atlantis has become the lost civilization behind countless theories. In this site's terms it is striking because it repeats the Watcher pattern: gods mating with mortals, a hybrid line that degrades, and a destruction by water.