Atlantis: The Story Of Atlantis, A Real Place

We have all heard of Atlantis, the legendary island that in a single day and night sank into the sea. But who came up with it, was Atlantis a real place, and is there more to the story than this? We get the story of Atlantis from the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato. Specifically, from two of his dialogues, “Timaeus” and “Critias.” The books date to around 360 B.C. In them, Plato wrote that the wise sage, Solon, was given the story in Egypt by a priest there. Upon returning, Solon then shared the story with his relative Dropides, who in turn passed it down to his son Critias, who would one day tell his grandson, also named Critias, who finally shared it with the philosopher Socrates and the company present. I should point out that this list should not be taken as historical fact, but as a factual report on parts of Plato’s writings. Whether any of us chooses to believe in the legend is our own decision, but I think we can all agree that this might have been the first ever recorded game of telephone.

Many books and TV shows have been

While the story focuses on the island, most of us probably just assumed that Atlantis was bound to this island. But Plato tells us that Atlantis was actually an empire ruled from the island. “Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia.” Tyrrhenia is another name for Etruria, nowadays known as central Italy. This means that Atlantis would have conquered Europe as far as modern day Tuscany, and north Africa all the way to Egypt. I wish we knew how Athens beat such a big empire? Maybe Plato had no idea either, so he stopped writing the