Complete Works (273 page)

Every year there was a harvest of Zeus-sent rain. It was not lost, as it [d] is now, as it flows off the hard surface of the ground into the sea, but the deep soil absorbed the rain and it stored it away as it created a reservoir with a covering of clay soil above it; and, as it distributed the water it had absorbed from the high places into its hollows, it produced an abundant flow of water to feed springs and rivers throughout every region of the country. There are even today some sacred monuments at these ancient springs that are evidence of the truth of what we are now saying about our country.

This was the nature of the countryside. The land was cultivated with [e] great skill, as we can reasonably conjecture, by farmers who were farmers in the true sense of the word and who devoted themselves to this single occupation—but farmers who had an eye for beauty and were of a truly noble nature, and who in addition possessed a most fertile land and water in abundance, and above this land a climate and seasons that were most temperate.

As for the city itself, it was laid out at that time in a plan that I will now describe. First of all, the acropolis was very different then than it is
[112]
now. A single night of torrential rain stripped the acropolis of its soil and reduced it to bare limestone in a storm that was accompanied by earthquakes. Before the destructive flood of Deucalion, this was the third such cataclysmic storm. In the past, the acropolis extended to the Eridanus and Ilisus and held within its circuit the Pnyx and Mt. Lycabettus that faces the Pnyx. It was entirely covered by soil and, except for some small [b] outcroppings, level on top. Outside the acropolis and under its slopes there lived the class of artisans and those of the farmers who worked the neighboring land. But on the heights the class of warriors lived in isolation, as if they belonged to a single household, around the sanctuary of Athena and Hephaestos, which they had enclosed by a single garden wall. On the far northern edge of the acropolis they inhabited common dwellings and ate together in common messes in buildings they had constructed for their winter quarters. And they had a supply of all that was needed for their [c] communal institutions—both in buildings for themselves and for the priests. They made no use of gold or silver—possessions they never had any need of. But, in pursuing a mean between ostentation and servility, they built for themselves tasteful houses and they grew old in them in the company of their grandchildren; and for generation after generation they passed these dwellings down to descendants who were like themselves. As for the south of the acropolis, when they left their orchards, gymnasia, and common messes, as they would for the summer season, they converted it to these uses.

[d] There was a single spring in the location of the present acropolis, but it has been choked by the debris of the earthquakes [of that night], and its waters now flow only in a trickle about the circuit wall. But it provided the men of that age with an abundant supply of water, since it was situated in a location that made it neither too cold in the winter nor too hot in the summer.

This was the manner of their life: they were the guardians of their own citizens and the leaders of the rest of the Greek world, which followed them willingly. And they kept their population stable as far as they could—both of men and women—for generation after generation, maintaining the population of those who had reached military age or were still of military age at close to twenty thousand at most.

[e] Such, to conclude, was the character of this people and such was their life generation after generation as they directed the life of their city and of Greece with justice. Their fame for the beauty of their bodies and for the variety and range of their mental and spiritual qualities spread through all of Asia and all of Europe. And the consideration in which they were held and their renown was the greatest of all the nations of that age.

As for the state of those who went to war against them and the origins of that state, we will now openly reveal its history to you our friends, as the common property of friends, if we have not lost the memory of what
[113]
we heard when we were still boys. I must explain one small point before I enter into my history so that you will not be astonished as you hear Greek names frequently used for people who are not Greek. You will now learn the origins of these names. Solon, when he was contemplating his own poetic version of this legend and was inquiring into the meaning of these names, discovered that his Egyptian sources had been the first to record them, once they had translated their meaning into their own language. He, in his turn, recovered the meaning of each of these names and recorded it as he translated them into Greek. These very manuscripts were [b] in the possession of my grandfather and they now remain in my possession. When I was a boy, I studied them carefully. Consequently, do not be astonished if you hear names that sound like Greek names; you now know their explanation.

What follows, approximately, was the introduction to the long account I heard then. As I said before concerning the distribution of lands among the gods, in some regions they divided the entire earth into greater apportionments and in others into lesser apportionments, as they established [c] sanctuaries and sacrifices for themselves. So it was that Posidon received as one of his domains the island of Atlantis and he established dwelling places for the children he had fathered of a mortal woman in a certain place on the island that I shall describe.

Now seaward, but running along the middle of the entire island, was a plain which is said to have been the loveliest of all plains and quite fertile. Near this plain in the middle of the island and at about fifty stades’
⁹
distance was a uniformly low and flat hill. Now, there lived on this hill one of the people of this island who had originally sprung up from the earth. His name was Evenor and he dwelt there with his wife Leucippe. [d] They had an only child, a daughter by the name of Clito. When this girl grew to marriageable age, both her mother and father died. It was then that Posidon conceived a desire for her and slept with her. To make the hill on which she lived a strong enclosure he broke it to form a circle and he created alternating rings of sea and land around it. Some he made wider and some he made more narrow. He made two rings of land and three of sea as round as if he had laid them out with compass and lathe.

They were perfectly equidistant from one another. And so the hill became [e] inaccessible to humans. For at that time ships and the art of navigation had not yet come into existence.

And the god himself greatly beautified the island he had created in the middle to make it a dwelling suitable for a god. Because he was a god, he did this with little effort. He drew up two subterranean streams into springs. One gushed out in a warm fountain and the other in a cold fountain. And from the earth he produced all varieties of crops that were sufficient to his island. He sired five pairs of twin sons and he raised them to manhood. He divided the entire island of Atlantis into ten districts: to the first born of the first set of twins he gave as his portion the dwelling
[114]
of his mother and the circular island, since it was the largest and the best. And he made him king over the others. The other sons he made governors and to each of these he gave the rule over many men and a great extent of land.

And he gave each of his sons names. To the son who was oldest and king he gave the name from which the entire island and its surrounding sea derive their names, because he was the first of the kings of that time. His name was Atlas; the island is called Atlantis and the sea Atlantic after [b] him. To the twin born after him, who had received as his portion the cape of the island facing the pillars of Heracles opposite what is now called the territory of Gadira after this region, he gave the name that translates into Greek as Eumelos, but in the language of Atlantis, it is Gadirus. It would seem that he gave his name to the region of Cadiz. The two brothers of the second set of twins he called Ampheres and the Euaemon. To the third set he gave the name Mneseas to the first-born and Autochthon to the [c] second-born. Of the fourth set Elasippus was the first-born, Mestor the second. For the fifth set he gave the name Azaes to the first-born and the name Diaprepes to the second. Now all of these sons inhabited the island, as did their sons and descendants over many generations. They were the rulers of many other islands in the Atlantic and, as I have said,
¹⁰
they even extended their rule into the Mediterranean as near to us as Etruria and Egypt.

[d] The race of Atlas increased greatly and became greatly honored. And they maintained their kingdom through many generations, as the oldest king would hand his kingship on to his oldest son. They amassed more wealth than had ever been amassed before in the rule of any previous kings or could easily be amassed after them. And they provided for everything that was needed, both in the city and in the rest of the island. For [e] their empire brought them many imports from outside, and the island itself provided most of what was needed for their livelihood. First, there were the mines that produced both hard and fusible ore. And in many regions of the island they exploited that metal which is now only a name to us, but which was then more than a name—
oreichalkos.
¹¹
In that age it was valued only less than gold. And the island provided all trees to be hewn and worked by builders and this in great abundance. It also produced abundant animal life, both domestic and wild. In addition to these there was a great population of elephants. There was pasture land for the other animals who graze in marshlands and along lakes and rivers and on
[115]
mountainsides and plains, and there was plenty for them and for this the greatest of animals, which consumes the most fodder.

The island produced in addition all the aromatic plants the earth produces now—sweet smelling roots and greens, herbs, trees, and gums from flowers and fruits as well, and they flourished there. The island also produced the domesticated crop of grains on which we live and all the other crops on which we depend for our food. It also produced the kinds of crops we call “pulse” and the trees that give us our drink, food, and oils—and [b] the crop that sprung up for the sake of our entertainment and pleasure, is hard to preserve, and comes from tree tops; it produced the side dishes we offer the weary guest as a relief after he has eaten his fill and that refresh him after dinner. All of these did that sacred island once bear in that age under a fostering sun—products lovely, marvelous, and of abundant bounty. And they took all these products from the earth and from their proceeds they constructed their sanctuaries and their palaces, their harbors [c] and their ship-sheds, and they improved the rest of their land according to the plan I will now describe.

First, they constructed bridges joining the rings of sea, which surrounded the ancient metropolis, making a road out from the palace and in to the palace. Their first project was to build a palace in the dwelling of the god and of their ancestors. One king inherited the project from his predecessor, and, as he improved on the beauty of what had already been improved, [d] he would surpass to the extent of his resources what his predecessor had been able to achieve. They continued this progress until they had created for themselves a dwelling astonishing in its size and in its manifold beauty. And starting at the sea they excavated a canal three plethra in width, one hundred feet in depth, and fifty stades in length up to the outermost sea ring. They then made passage from the sea into the interior possible by opening a channel into the sea ring that was wide enough for the largest ships to sail into it as if it were a harbor. And, as for the land rings that separated the rings of sea, they pierced them at the point of the bridges, [e] and thus joined them by water. The resulting canal was wide enough for a single trireme to sail through as it passed into a ring of water. They constructed a roof over the channel to protect the passage of ships, for the walls of the canal through the land rings were high enough from the sea to the bridge above to allow ships to pass under. The largest of the water rings into which the passage from the sea had been excavated was three stades in width and the next land ring was equal to it. Of the next rings of water and land, the ring of water was two stades wide and, as in the first case, the land ring was equal to it as well. And, finally, the ring of water running around the island in the middle was a stade wide.

The island where the palace was located had a diameter of five stades.
[116]
They threw up an unbroken stone circuit wall around this island, and they also walled the land rings, and the bridge, which was a plethron wide. They built towers and gates at the point where the bridges crossed over the rings of water. They quarried stone from under the circular island that formed the center ring and from the inner and outer land rings as well. There were three colors of stone: white, black, and red. As they quarried this stone, they fashioned ship sheds for two ships in the rock roofed by the stone of the quarry itself.

[b] Some of their buildings they constructed of stones of uniform color. But to delight themselves they made of others a tapestry of stones of different colors, variegating the colors to bring out their natural charm. And they invested the entire circuit wall of the outermost land ring with bronze, as if the bronze revetment were a bright dye. The interior of the land wall they invested with tin. And the wall surrounding the acropolis itself they [c] invested with
oreichalkos,
which glittered like darting fire.

I will now describe the palace buildings erected within the acropolis. At its center was the shrine of Clito and Posidon. It was kept consecrated and no one was permitted to enter it. It was surrounded by a wall of gold. It was here that Posidon and Clito first begot and produced the race of the ten kings. It was to this shrine that each of the ten divisions came to offer their first fruits to each of these original kings in a yearly festival. The temple of Posidon was in this area. It was one stade long, three plethra [d] wide, and of a height that appeared to be proportional to its length and width, but it had something barbaric about its appearance. They invested the entire exterior of the temple with silver, except for the acroteria, which they gilded with gold. The interior presented a roof of solid ivory inlaid with gold, silver, and
oreichalkos;
and they plated all the other areas of the temple with this same metal—the cella walls, the interior columns, and the floors. They placed gold statues within the temple. There was a statue [e] of Posidon standing in a chariot with a team of six winged horses. This statue was so tall that his head touched the rafter of the temple roof; there were a hundred Nereids riding dolphins and arranged in a circle about him, for men of that age thought that the Nereids were a hundred in number; and there were many other statues inside which were the offerings of private individuals.