Ancient text
Timaeus
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Where Plato first describes how the world was built, and where the Atlantis story begins. Atlantis is told here as a tale an Egyptian priest passed to Solon. Read the setup before the sequel.
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Where this comes from
This is a public-domain copy. The line below says where the file comes from and why we may host it.
Why we can share it: Project Gutenberg record: 'Copyright Status: Public domain in the USA.' Translator Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893) died 1893; translation published in the 19th century.
Read the story behind it
PlaceAtlantisPlato says a great island empire sank in a single day and night, and then his unfinished dialogue stops mid-sentence just as Zeus starts to speak. No Greek writer before him mentions Atlantis. So was it a warning parable, a memory of a real disaster, or something else? The sources point several ways.EventSolon and the priests of SaisAn aged Egyptian priest told the Athenian lawmaker Solon that Greeks are children with no old men among them. He said the world has been wrecked by fire and flood many times, and Egypt kept the records. Plato is the only source for this meeting. What did the priest say really happened to Phaethon?
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