Atlantis: Plato's myth, the original Greek texts, the hypotheses and what might be true

I'll admit it straight away: on Atlantis I am open-minded. I don't believe in a sunken continent with spaceships and crystals, but nor can I dismiss Plato's story as a mere fable. Too many details, too much insistence on the truth of the story, too many real disasters in the ancient Mediterranean.

That is exactly why I wanted to do what, in my work, always comes before any hypothesis: go back to the source. For Atlantis there is only one source, Plato. Everything else, from ancient philosophers to television documentaries, comes later and depends on him.

In this article I give the key passages in the original Greek, with my own translation, as literal as possible. Then I analyse them as I would a testimony: who is speaking, who they heard the facts from, how much time has passed, what can be verified.

A note on method: the Greek text is that of John Burnet's edition (Oxford, 1902), as published by the Perseus project. The translations are my own and favour fidelity to the text over elegance. In square brackets I give the Stephanus numbering, the system all scholars use to cite Plato.

The source: two dialogues by Plato

Atlantis appears in two late dialogues by Plato, written around the middle of the fourth century BC:

The narrator is Critias, an Athenian aristocrat related to Plato. Also present are Socrates, the Pythagorean Timaeus of Locri and Hermocrates of Syracuse. The scene is set during the Panathenaea, the great festival in honour of Athena.

One important detail: the day before, within the fiction of the dialogue, Socrates had described the ideal city, the one we know from the Republic. Critias proposes to show that ideal city "in action", by telling of a war that was actually fought. And this is where Atlantis comes in.

The chain of witnesses

Before even reading what the story says, it is worth asking how it supposedly reached Plato. Critias explains it precisely:

Critias insists on how well he remembers the story:

ὥστε οἷον ἐγκαύματα ἀνεκπλύτου γραφῆς ἔμμονά μοι γέγονεν

"...so that they have stayed with me like the burnt-in marks of an indelible painting." [Timaeus 26c]

And he adds a surprising detail: Solon's notes still exist.

καὶ ταῦτά γε δὴ τὰ γράμματα παρὰ τῷ πάππῳ τʼ ἦν καὶ ἔτʼ ἐστὶν παρʼ ἐμοὶ νῦν, διαμεμελέτηταί τε ὑπʼ ἐμοῦ παιδὸς ὄντος.

"And these writings were in my grandfather's possession and are still in mine now, and I studied them thoroughly as a boy." [Critias 113b]

The investigator's lesson. A testimony that passes through five people and nearly two centuries, heard by a ten-year-old child and retold from memory, is what my profession calls hearsay, and multiple-level hearsay at that. And the document that would confirm it, Solon's notes, is mentioned but never produced. This does not prove the story false. It proves that, as it stands, it cannot be verified. That is the honest starting point for any discussion of Atlantis.

The story in the Timaeus, step by step

"A strange story, but entirely true"

Critias introduces the story with a phrase the open-minded often quote:

ἄκουε δή, ὦ Σώκρατες, λόγου μάλα μὲν ἀτόπου, παντάπασί γε μὴν ἀληθοῦς, ὡς ὁ τῶν ἑπτὰ σοφώτατος Σόλων ποτʼ ἔφη.

"Listen then, Socrates, to a story that is very strange indeed, but entirely true, as Solon, the wisest of the Seven, once said." [Timaeus 20d-e]

Solon at Sais

Solon travels to Sais, in the Nile Delta, a city whose patron deity, Plato says, is called Neith in Egyptian and Athena in Greek. This detail is correct: Neith really was the goddess of Sais, and the Greeks identified her with Athena.

Solon tries to impress the priests with the oldest Greek genealogies and the flood of Deucalion and Pyrrha. A very old priest interrupts him with a line that became famous:

ὦ Σόλων, Σόλων, Ἕλληνες ἀεὶ παῖδές ἐστε, γέρων δὲ Ἕλλην οὐκ ἔστιν.

"O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children: there is no such thing as an old Greek." [Timaeus 22b]

And he explains:

νέοι ἐστέ, εἰπεῖν, τὰς ψυχὰς πάντες· οὐδεμίαν γὰρ ἐν αὐταῖς ἔχετε διʼ ἀρχαίαν ἀκοὴν παλαιὰν δόξαν οὐδὲ μάθημα χρόνῳ πολιὸν οὐδέν.

"You are young in soul, every one of you: you hold in it no ancient belief handed down by an old tradition, nor any knowledge grown grey with time." [Timaeus 22b]

Recurring catastrophes

The reason for this "youth", the priest says, is the periodic destruction that wipes out peoples' memory:

πολλαὶ κατὰ πολλὰ φθοραὶ γεγόνασιν ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἔσονται, πυρὶ μὲν καὶ ὕδατι μέγισται, μυρίοις δὲ ἄλλοις ἕτεραι βραχύτεραι.

"There have been, and there will be, many destructions of mankind in many ways: the greatest by fire and water, and other lesser ones by countless other means." [Timaeus 22c]

It is one of the most interesting passages in the dialogue. The priest even interprets the myth of Phaethon as the distorted memory of a real astronomical event, a "deviation of the bodies that move in the heavens around the earth". Egypt, protected by the Nile, would have preserved its written records; other peoples, after each disaster, start again from scratch, reduced to a few illiterate survivors.

Nine thousand years earlier

Then come the figures:

τῆς δὲ ἐνθάδε διακοσμήσεως παρʼ ἡμῖν ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς γράμμασιν ὀκτακισχιλίων ἐτῶν ἀριθμὸς γέγραπται. περὶ δὴ τῶν ἐνακισχίλια γεγονότων ἔτη πολιτῶν σοι δηλώσω διὰ βραχέων νόμους...

"In our sacred writings the figure of eight thousand years is recorded since the founding of this city. Of your fellow citizens who lived nine thousand years ago I will briefly set out the laws..." [Timaeus 23e]

If Solon visited Egypt in the early sixth century BC, "nine thousand years earlier" takes us to around 9600 BC.

The island beyond the Pillars of Heracles

And here is the central passage, where Atlantis appears for the first time in world literature:

λέγει γὰρ τὰ γεγραμμένα ὅσην ἡ πόλις ὑμῶν ἔπαυσέν ποτε δύναμιν ὕβρει πορευομένην ἅμα ἐπὶ πᾶσαν Εὐρώπην καὶ Ἀσίαν, ἔξωθεν ὁρμηθεῖσαν ἐκ τοῦ Ἀτλαντικοῦ πελάγους. τότε γὰρ πορεύσιμον ἦν τὸ ἐκεῖ πέλαγος· νῆσον γὰρ πρὸ τοῦ στόματος εἶχεν ὃ καλεῖτε, ὥς φατε, ὑμεῖς Ἡρακλέους στήλας, ἡ δὲ νῆσος ἅμα Λιβύης ἦν καὶ Ἀσίας μείζων, ἐξ ἧς ἐπιβατὸν ἐπὶ τὰς ἄλλας νήσους τοῖς τότε ἐγίγνετο πορευομένοις, ἐκ δὲ τῶν νήσων ἐπὶ τὴν καταντικρὺ πᾶσαν ἤπειρον τὴν περὶ τὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκεῖνον πόντον.

"For the writings tell how great a power your city once stopped, as it advanced with insolence against the whole of Europe and Asia at once, setting out from outside, from the Atlantic sea. For at that time that sea could be crossed: in front of the mouth which you, as you say, call the Pillars of Heracles, there was an island. And the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together; from it travellers of that time could cross to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole continent opposite, which surrounds that sea which is truly a sea." [Timaeus 24e-25a]

Two remarks. The key word is ὕβρις, hubris, insolent excess: from the very beginning Atlantis is a power that oversteps the limit. And the Greeks' "Libya" and "Asia" are not today's continents: Libya was known North Africa, Asia mainly Asia Minor and the Near East.

The passage about the "continent surrounding the true ocean" has made many modern readers dream, seeing in it an allusion to the Americas. It is an evocative reading, but the text says no more than that.

An empire from North Africa to Tuscany

ἐν δὲ δὴ τῇ Ἀτλαντίδι νήσῳ ταύτῃ μεγάλη συνέστη καὶ θαυμαστὴ δύναμις βασιλέων, κρατοῦσα μὲν ἁπάσης τῆς νήσου, πολλῶν δὲ ἄλλων νήσων καὶ μερῶν τῆς ἠπείρου· πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἔτι τῶν ἐντὸς τῇδε Λιβύης μὲν ἦρχον μέχρι πρὸς Αἴγυπτον, τῆς δὲ Εὐρώπης μέχρι Τυρρηνίας.

"On this island of Atlantis there arose a great and marvellous power of kings, ruling over the whole island, over many other islands and over parts of the continent; and besides, on this side of the strait, they ruled Libya as far as Egypt and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia." [Timaeus 25a-b]

Tyrrhenia is Etruria, today's central Italy. Atlantis would thus have dominated half the western Mediterranean. Athens, leading the Greeks and then left alone, defeated the invader and freed the peoples living "within the Pillars of Heracles".

One terrible day and night

Then the catastrophe, in a few lines that are perhaps the most famous of the whole story:

ὑστέρῳ δὲ χρόνῳ σεισμῶν ἐξαισίων καὶ κατακλυσμῶν γενομένων, μιᾶς ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς χαλεπῆς ἐπελθούσης, τό τε παρʼ ὑμῖν μάχιμον πᾶν ἁθρόον ἔδυ κατὰ γῆς, ἥ τε Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος ὡσαύτως κατὰ τῆς θαλάττης δῦσα ἠφανίσθη· διὸ καὶ νῦν ἄπορον καὶ ἀδιερεύνητον γέγονεν τοὐκεῖ πέλαγος, πηλοῦ κάρτα βραχέος ἐμποδὼν ὄντος, ὃν ἡ νῆσος ἱζομένη παρέσχετο.

"At a later time, when extraordinary earthquakes and floods had occurred, in the course of one terrible day and night your whole army sank all together beneath the earth, and the island of Atlantis likewise sank into the sea and vanished. That is why even now the sea there cannot be crossed or explored, because of the very shallow mud in the way, which the island left as it settled." [Timaeus 25c-d]

One often-forgotten detail: in the catastrophe it is not only Atlantis that disappears. The Athenian army is also swallowed by the earth. The story is symmetrical: both powers are wiped out.

From myth to truth

Immediately afterwards Critias says something sceptics consider decisive:

τοὺς δὲ πολίτας καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἣν χθὲς ἡμῖν ὡς ἐν μύθῳ διῄεισθα σύ, νῦν μετενεγκόντες ἐπὶ τἀληθὲς δεῦρο θήσομεν ὡς ἐκείνην τήνδε οὖσαν...

"And the citizens and the city you described to us yesterday as in a myth, we shall now transfer here into reality, as though that city were this one..." [Timaeus 26c-d]

And Socrates replies enthusiastically that the story's greatest advantage is precisely this:

τό τε μὴ πλασθέντα μῦθον ἀλλʼ ἀληθινὸν λόγον εἶναι πάμμεγά που.

"...and the fact that it is not an invented myth but a true account is, I think, a very great thing." [Timaeus 26e]

The same passage lends itself to two opposite readings. For the open-minded, Plato says yet again that the story is true. For sceptics, Critias is admitting the literary device: taking the ideal city of the Republic and "dressing it up" as ancient history.

The story in the Critias: describing Atlantis

Names translated by Solon

Before describing the island, Critias solves a problem an attentive reader would have noticed: why do "barbarian" kings have Greek names?

Σόλων, ἅτʼ ἐπινοῶν εἰς τὴν αὑτοῦ ποίησιν καταχρήσασθαι τῷ λόγῳ, διαπυνθανόμενος τὴν τῶν ὀνομάτων δύναμιν, ηὗρεν τούς τε Αἰγυπτίους τοὺς πρώτους ἐκείνους αὐτὰ γραψαμένους εἰς τὴν αὑτῶν φωνὴν μετενηνοχότας, αὐτός τε αὖ πάλιν ἑκάστου τὴν διάνοιαν ὀνόματος ἀναλαμβάνων εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν ἄγων φωνὴν ἀπεγράφετο.

"Solon, intending to use the story for his own poetry, enquired into the meaning of the names and found that the Egyptians, who first wrote them down, had translated them into their own language; and he in turn, recovering the sense of each name, wrote it down rendered into our language." [Critias 113a]

Poseidon, Cleito and the rings

The island fell by lot to Poseidon. In the middle of a great plain near the sea stood a low hill, home to Evenor, one of the men born from the earth, and his wife Leucippe. Their only daughter, Cleito, was left an orphan; Poseidon fell in love with her and, to protect her, turned the hill into a fortress:

...θαλάττης γῆς τε ἐναλλὰξ ἐλάττους μείζους τε περὶ ἀλλήλους ποιῶν τροχούς, δύο μὲν γῆς, θαλάττης δὲ τρεῖς οἷον τορνεύων ἐκ μέσης τῆς νήσου, πάντῃ ἴσον ἀφεστῶτας, ὥστε ἄβατον ἀνθρώποις εἶναι· πλοῖα γὰρ καὶ τὸ πλεῖν οὔπω τότε ἦν.

"...making around it alternating rings of sea and land, smaller and larger, two of land and three of sea, as if turned on a lathe from the centre of the island, everywhere equally distant, so that it was inaccessible to men: for ships and sailing did not yet exist then." [Critias 113d-e]

At the centre the god made two springs gush forth, one hot and one cold.

Ten kings and the name of the ocean

Poseidon had five pairs of male twins with Cleito and divided the island into ten parts. The firstborn received the best part and the title of king:

...τῷ μὲν πρεσβυτάτῳ καὶ βασιλεῖ τοῦτο οὗ δὴ καὶ πᾶσα ἡ νῆσος τό τε πέλαγος ἔσχεν ἐπωνυμίαν, Ἀτλαντικὸν λεχθέν, ὅτι τοὔνομʼ ἦν τῷ πρώτῳ βασιλεύσαντι τότε Ἄτλας.

"...to the eldest, who was king, he gave the name from which both the whole island and the sea took theirs, the sea being called Atlantic, because the name of the first who reigned then was Atlas." [Critias 114a-b]

His twin received the end of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles, opposite the region that in Plato's day was called Gadeira, the area around Cádiz: in Greek he was named Eumelus, in the local language Gadeirus.

Orichalcum

Among the island's riches, Plato mentions a mysterious metal:

...καὶ τὸ νῦν ὀνομαζόμενον μόνον—τότε δὲ πλέον ὀνόματος ἦν τὸ γένος ἐκ γῆς ὀρυττόμενον ὀρειχάλκου κατὰ τόπους πολλοὺς τῆς νήσου, πλὴν χρυσοῦ τιμιώτατον ἐν τοῖς τότε ὄν...

"...and what today is only a name, but was then more than a name: the kind called orichalcum, dug from the earth in many places on the island, and, after gold, the most precious of the metals of that time..." [Critias 114e]

Walls of bronze, tin and orichalcum

The description of the city is meticulous. The central island was five stadia across, about nine hundred metres. The stone to build it was quarried on the spot:

...τὸν μὲν λευκόν, τὸν δὲ μέλανα, τὸν δὲ ἐρυθρὸν ὄντα...

"...some white, some black, some red..." [Critias 116a-b]

And the walls of the rings were coated with different metals:

καὶ τοῦ μὲν περὶ τὸν ἐξωτάτω τροχὸν τείχους χαλκῷ περιελάμβανον πάντα τὸν περίδρομον, οἷον ἀλοιφῇ προσχρώμενοι, τοῦ δʼ ἐντὸς καττιτέρῳ περιέτηκον, τὸν δὲ περὶ αὐτὴν τὴν ἀκρόπολιν ὀρειχάλκῳ μαρμαρυγὰς ἔχοντι πυρώδεις.

"And the wall round the outermost ring they covered with bronze along its whole circuit, using it like a plaster; the inner one they coated with molten tin; and the one round the acropolis itself with orichalcum, which flashed like fire." [Critias 116b-c]

The temple of Poseidon was one stadium long, coated with silver on the outside with gold acroteria; inside, an ivory ceiling decorated with gold, silver and orichalcum, and a gold statue of the god in a chariot drawn by six winged horses, so large that it touched the ceiling, surrounded by a hundred Nereids on dolphins [Critias 116d-e]. Plato adds an interesting adjective: the temple had a "barbaric" look, βαρβαρικόν, that is, not Greek.

A vast plain

Around the city stretched a rectangular plain:

...λεῖον καὶ ὁμαλές, πρόμηκες δὲ πᾶν, ἐπὶ μὲν θάτερα τρισχιλίων σταδίων, κατὰ δὲ μέσον ἀπὸ θαλάττης ἄνω δισχιλίων.

"...smooth and level, oblong in shape: three thousand stadia on one side, and at the centre, from the sea inland, two thousand." [Critias 118a]

With a stadium of about 180 metres, that is roughly 540 by 360 kilometres: a plain the size of half of Italy.

Decline and punishment

For many generations the kings of Atlantis lived virtuously, aware that wealth grows with friendship and shared virtue and is lost when pursued for its own sake. Then something changed:

ἐπεὶ δʼ ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ μὲν μοῖρα ἐξίτηλος ἐγίγνετο ἐν αὐτοῖς πολλῷ τῷ θνητῷ καὶ πολλάκις ἀνακεραννυμένη, τὸ δὲ ἀνθρώπινον ἦθος ἐπεκράτει, τότε ἤδη τὰ παρόντα φέρειν ἀδυνατοῦντες ἠσχημόνουν...

"But when the divine portion in them began to fade, diluted again and again with much that was mortal, and human nature prevailed, then, no longer able to bear their prosperity, they lost all decency..." [Critias 121a-b]

To those who could not see clearly they seemed happier than ever, "filled with unjust greed and power". Zeus then decides to punish them:

θεὸς δὲ ὁ θεῶν Ζεὺς ἐν νόμοις βασιλεύων, ἅτε δυνάμενος καθορᾶν τὰ τοιαῦτα, ἐννοήσας γένος ἐπιεικὲς ἀθλίως διατιθέμενον, δίκην αὐτοῖς ἐπιθεῖναι βουληθείς, ἵνα γένοιντο ἐμμελέστεροι σωφρονισθέντες, συνήγειρεν θεοὺς πάντας εἰς τὴν τιμιωτάτην αὐτῶν οἴκησιν [...] καὶ συναγείρας εἶπεν—

"And Zeus, god of gods, who reigns by law, being able to see such things, perceiving a noble race in a wretched state and wishing to punish them, so that they might be chastened and become more measured, gathered all the gods into their most honoured dwelling [...] and, having gathered them, he said..." [Critias 121b-c]

And here the Critias breaks off. In mid-sentence. We will never know what Zeus said.

The dates: why 9600 BC is the most delicate point

Here the open-minded suggest a few routes:

• A factor-of-ten error. In the 1960s the Greek seismologist Angelos Galanopoulos suggested that in transmission the "9,000 years" were really 900: the catastrophe would then fall in the Bronze Age, compatible with the eruption of Thera. It is an ingenious hypothesis, but it has no support in the text.
• The end of the Ice Age. The date 9600 BC coincides remarkably with the end of the Younger Dryas, an abrupt cold period, and with a phase of rapid sea-level rise. Since the last glacial maximum the sea has risen by about 120 metres, flooding vast coastal plains worldwide. Memories of lands lost beneath the sea might have survived in oral traditions.
• Göbekli Tepe. The monumental sanctuary discovered in Turkey, dated from the tenth millennium BC, has shown that people of that era were capable of imposing constructions. But they were hunter-gatherers: no metals, no fleets, no empires.

To be honest: none of these routes saves the story as it stands. At most, they make it plausible that a core memory of real disasters found its way into a much later story.

What the ancients said

Strabo's passage deserves to be read in the original, because it contains a phrase often loosely attributed to Aristotle:

πρὸς ὃ καὶ τὸ τοῦ Πλάτωνος εὖ παρατίθησιν, ὅτι ἐνδέχεται καὶ μὴ πλάσμα εἶναι τὸ περὶ τῆς νήσου τῆς Ἀτλαντίδος [...] καὶ τοῦτο οἴεται βέλτιον εἶναι λέγειν ἢ διότι ὁ πλάσας αὐτὴν ἠφάνισεν, ὡς ὁ ποιητὴς τὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν τεῖχος.

"In this connection [Posidonius] rightly cites Plato's passage too, observing that it is possible that the story of the island of Atlantis is not an invention [...]; and he thinks it better to say this than to say that the one who invented it made it disappear, as the poet did with the wall of the Achaeans." [Strabo, Geography 2.3.6]

The quip "the one who invented it made it disappear" is often quoted as Aristotle's verdict on Atlantis. In fact, in Strabo's text, the explicit attribution to Aristotle concerns the Achaean wall of the Iliad [Geography 13.1.36]. That Aristotle also said it of Atlantis is a modern conjecture, not a documented fact. A small example of how a quotation, repeated often enough, changes its subject.

The proposed locations

Over the last two centuries Atlantis has been placed almost everywhere. Here are the main hypotheses, with their strengths and weaknesses.

The sceptics' arguments

Most historians and philologists regard Atlantis as Plato's invention. The main arguments:

1. No independent source. The earlier sources are completely silent. The island does not appear in the fragments of Solon that have come down to us, and the same goes for Herodotus, who had actually been to Sais and talked at length with its priests.
2. The philosophical function. The story serves exactly the purpose Critias states: to show the ideal city of the Republic at war. Athens embodies virtue, Atlantis the hubris of a rich, arrogant sea power.
3. A mirror of current events. Many scholars, including Pierre Vidal-Naquet, have seen in Atlantis a portrait of imperialist Athens in the fifth century: an arrogant naval power that came to grief in the Syracusan venture of 415-413 BC. Others have recognised in it the Persia that had invaded Greece. An ancient, virtuous Athens defeating a maritime empire is a lesson aimed at the Athens of Plato's own day.
4. Impossible dates. In 9600 BC nothing like what Plato describes existed.
5. Geology. There is no trace in the Atlantic of an island-continent that sank in historical times.
6. Narrative devices. Greek names "translated by Solon", notes that supposedly exist but are never shown, a child's infallible memory: these are the classic tools an author uses to make fiction credible.
7. Plato and myths. Plato often uses myths of his own making, such as the myth of Er in the Republic or the allegory of the cave. Atlantis would be one of these.

The open-minded arguments

The arguments of those who, like me, do not rule out a core of truth:

1. The insistence on truth. Plato has his characters repeat several times that the story is true and, unlike his other myths, places it in a precise chain of transmission, with the names of real people.
2. "Unnecessary" details. The hot and cold springs, the white, black and red stone, the "barbaric" temple, the end of the island opposite Cádiz: details that serve no moral purpose and that an inventor would not have needed to add.
3. Accurate details. Sais and the goddess Neith are real; Egyptian traditions really were extremely old; Egyptian priests were renowned among the Greeks as keepers of the most distant memory.
4. The disasters are real. The eruption of Thera, the submersion of Helike in 373 BC, the coastal plains flooded at the end of the Ice Age: the ancient Mediterranean really did see cities and lands swallowed by the sea. The Sais priest's idea, that civilisations can be wiped out by natural disasters and forgotten, is perfectly reasonable.
5. Orichalcum existed. The word already appears in archaic Greek texts, and in 2015 off Gela, in Sicily, a cargo of 39 ingots of a copper-zinc alloy that archaeologists associated with the ancients' orichalcum was recovered from a sixth-century BC wreck, as reported by Archaeology magazine. This proves nothing about Atlantis, but shows that the "legendary" metal had a real basis.
6. Ancient history gets rewritten. Troy was considered a legend until it was excavated; Göbekli Tepe pushed monumental architecture back by millennia. Ruling things out in advance is as much a methodological error as believing everything.

Atlantis after Plato: from Bacon to the Nazis

It is a chapter that says a lot about us: every age has found in Atlantis what it was looking for. A utopia, a lost homeland, a noble origin, a prophecy. It is also a warning: the same pages of Plato have been used for purposes entirely foreign to them, and sometimes dangerous ones.

Myths and facts

My position

Having reread Plato line by line, my position remains where it started: I am open-minded, but by precise criteria.

I don't believe that an empire with orichalcum walls and fleets capable of attacking Athens existed in 9600 BC. The text, the dates and archaeology do not allow it.

I do think it possible, and in part probable, that Plato built his story on real material: the memory of disasters that really did wipe out cities and lands, reports about the seas and lands beyond Gibraltar gathered from merchants and sailors, Egyptian traditions about the age of the world, perhaps the very submersion of Helike, which happened when he was already an adult. Onto this base he grafted his philosophical lesson.

In other words: Atlantis as Plato describes it probably did not exist. But something of what inspired Atlantis almost certainly did. And until the seabed and the submerged coastlines have been fully explored, an honest margin of doubt remains.

It is the same approach I have used for other great legends, from Pope Joan to vampires: start from the sources, separate what is documented from what was added later, and leave open the questions the evidence does not close.

In short

Main sources: Plato, Timaeus (17a-27b) and Critias*, Greek text edited by J. Burnet (Oxford, 1902), digital edition of the Perseus project; Strabo,* Geography 2.3.6 and 13.1.36; Herodotus, Histories 1.202 and 4.184; Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus*; P. Vidal-Naquet,* L'Atlantide. Petite histoire d'un mythe platonicien (2005); S. Marinatos, "The Volcanic Destruction of Minoan Crete", Antiquity (1939); D. Katsonopoulou and S. Soter, Helike Project; Archaeology Magazine (2015), on the Gela ingots. Translations from the Greek by the author.