Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/333

  moisture in the winter and by a system of aqueducts in the summer, its mineral wealth, its abundance in all species of useful animals; and the magnificent Works of art with which it was adorned, especially at the royal residences. We have also a full account of the people; their military order; their just and simple government, and the oaths by which they bound themselves to obey it; their laws, which enjoined abstinence from all attacks on one another, and submission to the supreme dynasty of the family of Atlas, with many other particulars. For many generations, then, as long as the divine nature of their founder retained its force among them, they continued in a state of unbounded prosperity, based on wisdom, virtue, temperance, and mutual regard; and, during this period, their power grew to the height previously related. But at length, the divine element in their nature was overpowered by continual admixture with the human, so that the human character prevailed in them over the divine; and thus becoming unfit to bear the prosperity they had reached, they sank into depravity: no longer understanding the true kind of life which gives happiness, they believed their glory and happiness to consist in cupidity and violence. Upon this, Jove, resolving to punish them, that they might be restored to order and moderation, summoned a council of the gods, and addressed them in words which are lost with the rest of this dialogue of Plato.

The truth or falsehood, the origin and meaning, of this legend, have exercised the critical and speculative faculties of ancient and modern writers. That it was entirely an invention of Plato's, is hardly credible; for, even if his derivation of the legend from Egypt through Solon, and his own assertion that the story is "strange but altogether true" (Tim. p. 20, d.) be set down to his dramatic spirit, we have still the following indications of its antiquity. First, if we are to believe a Scholiast on Plato (Repub. p. 327), the victory of the Athenians over the Atlantines was represented on one of the pepli which were dedicated at the Panathenaea. Diodorus also refers to this war (iii. 53). Then, the legend is found in other forms, which do not seem to be entirely copied from Plato.

Thus Aelian relates at length a very similar story, on the authority of Theopompus, who gave it as derived from a Phrygian source, in the form of a relation by the matyr Silenus to the Phrygian Midas; and Strabo just mentions, on the authority of Theopompus aad Apollodorus, the same legend, in which the island was called Meropis and the people Meropes (, the word used by Homer and Hesiod in the sense of endowed with the faculty of articulate speech: Aelian, V. H. iii. 18, comp. the Notes of Perizonius; Strab. vii. p. 399: comp. Tertull. de Pallio, 2.)

Diodorus, also, alter relating the legend of the island in a form very similar to Plato's story, adds that it was discovered by some Phoenician navigators who, while sailing along the W. coast of Africa, were driven by violent winds across the Ocean. They brought back such an account of the beauty and resources of the island, that the Tyrrhenians, having obtained the mastery of the sea, planned an expedition to colonise the new land, but were hindered by the opposition of the Carthaginians. (Diod. v. 19, 20) Diodorus does not mention the name of the island; and he differs from Plato by referring to it as still existing. Pausanias relates that a Carian Euphemus had told him of a voyage during which he had been carried by the force of the winds into the cuter sea, "into which men no longer sail; where he came to desert islands, inhabited by wild men with tails, whom the sailor, having previously visited the islands, called Satyrs, and the islands " (i. 23. § 5, 6); whom some take for monkeys; unless the whole narrative be an imposture on the grave traveller. Another account is quoted by Proclus (ad Plat. Tim. p. 5) from the Aethiopica of Marcellus, that there were seven islands in the Outer Sea, which were sacred to Persephone, and three more, sacred to Pluto, Amman, and Poseidon; and that the inhabitants of this last preserved from their ancestors the memory of the exceedingly large island of Atlantis, which for many ages had ruled over all the islands in the Atlantic Sea, and which had been itself sacred to Poseidon. Other passages might be quoted, but the above are the most important.

The chief variations of opinion, in ancient and modern times, respecting these traditions, are the following. As to their origin, some have ascribed them to the hypotheses, or purely fictitious inventions of the early poets and philosophers; while others have accepted them as containing at least an element of fact, and affording, as the ancients thought, evidence of the existence of unknown lands in the Western Ocean, and, as some modern writers suppose, indications that America was not altogether unknown to the peoples of antiquity. As to the significance of the legend, in the form which it received from the imagination of the poets and philosophers, some have supposed that it is only a form of the old tradition of the "golden age"; others, that it was a symbolical representation of the contest between the primeval powers of nature and the spirit of art and science, which plays so important a part in the old mythology; and others that it was merely intended by Plato as a form of exhibiting his ideal polity: the second of these views is ably supported by Proclus in his commentary on the Timaeus, and has a great deal to be said in its favour. As to the former question, how for the legend may contain an element of fact, it seems impossible to arrive at any certain conclusion. Those who regard it as pure fiction, but of an early origin, view it as arising out of the very ancient notion, found in Homer and Hesiod, that the abodes of departed heroes were in the extreme west, beyond the river Oceanus, a locality naturally assigned as beyond the boundaries of the inhabited earth. That the fabulous prosperity and happiness of the Atlantines was in some degree connected with those poetical representations, is very probable; just as, when islands were actually discovered off the coast of Africa, they were called the Islands of the Blest. [.] But still, important parts of the legend are thus left unaccounted for; its mythological character, its derivation from the Egyptian priests, or other Oriental sources; and, what is in Plato its most important part, the supposed conflict of the Atlantines with the people of the old world. A strong argument is derived also from the extreme improbability of any voyagers, at that early period, having found their way in safety across the Atlantic, and the double draft upon credulity involved in the supposition of their safe return; the return, however, being generally less difficult than the outward voyage. But this ailment, though strong, is not decisive against the possibility of such a voyage. The opinions of the ancients may be gathered up in a few 