Do the Timaeus and Critias contradict each another?

[Wind]

I was asked to begin this discussion and to share some of the Contradictions that I have found between the Timaeus and the Critias, contradictions that “could” in fact prove one of both of these texts to be unreliable reference sources for Atlantis. Notice that I said could, I have said this because there is always a possibility that I could be wrong, and If I am proven wrong then I will admit to it! I am not above that.

First of all I’m going to provide you with what I believe is a contradiction and then we’ll go from there.

The Following was taken from the Critias:

“My great-grandfather, Dropides, had the original writing, which is still in my possession, and was carefully studied by me when I was a child.”

Here it says that he still had the original writings of Solon, and he studied them very carefully, but in the Timaeus we find something a little different.

The following was taken from the Timaeus:

“I have told you briefly, Socrates, what the aged Critias (heard) from Solon and related to us. And when you were speaking yesterday about your city and citizens, the tale which I have just been repeating to you came into my mind.”

Here we have the story being passed down orally and there is no mention of it being written down anywhere, in fact in the next paragraph he goes even further to solidify this.

“And therefore, as Hermocrates has told you, on my way home yesterday I at once communicated the tale to my companions as I remembered it; and after I left them, during the night by thinking I recovered nearly the whole it. Truly, as is often said, the lessons of our childhood make wonderful impression on our memories; for I am not sure that I could remember all the discourse of yesterday, but I should be much surprised if I forgot any of these things which I have heard very long ago. I listened at the time with childlike interest to the old man's narrative; he was very ready to teach me, and I asked him again and again to repeat his words, so that like an indelible picture they were branded into my mind.”

If he had a written copy then why did he have to spend an entire night remembering it.
Of course in the Critias it’s Critias himself who had the written copy, but to get those kinds of details one would assume that Plato must have had access to the writings, either that or one incredible memory. Or there is the possibility that he made the whole thing up. 
(But why would he do anything like that!  )

Alright now I’m going to open it up to all of you, what are your thoughts and opinions on this topic?

Wind

[Wind]

I just discovered another contradiction within the last contradiction, (This is getting interesting!  )
 We’ll start with the Critias again:

“My great-grandfather, Dropides, had the original writing”

Here we have Critias saying that he received the story from his Great grandfather, yet this again is different than what is stated in the Timaeus.

“Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of my great-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of his poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, who remembered and repeated it to us.”

Here we have it being told orally again but that’s not the point, you see this time Plato says that this is Critias speaking yet we have him referring to himself as his grandfather. So naturally I thought that maybe his fathers name was Critias also, but according to Wikipedia this isn’t the case.
We also have another contradiction here, in the Critias he receives the story from his Great grandfather Dropides yet in the Timaeus he hears the story directly from Solon.   Here is the passage that speaks of this.

From the Timaeus:
“I have told you briefly, Socrates, what the aged Critias heard from Solon and related to us”

Interesting I think.   Tell me what you think.

Wind

[Wind]

This is the Article from Wikipedia.

Critias
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For the work by Plato, see Critias (dialogue).
Critias (Greek Κριτίας, 460-403 BC), born in Athens, son of Callaeschrus, was an uncle of Plato, and a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and one of the most violent. He was an associate of Socrates, a fact that did not endear Socrates to the Athenian public. He was noted in his day for his tragedies, elegies and prose works. Some, like Sextus Empiricus, believe that Critias authored the Sisyphus fragment; others, however, attribute it to Euripides.
Critias appears as a character in Plato's dialogues Charmides and Protagoras, and according to Diogenes Laërtius, he was Plato's great-uncle (Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, III:1). The Critias character in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias is often identified as the son of Callaeschrus - but not by Plato; and given the old age of the Critias in these two dialogues, he may be the grandfather of the son of Callaeschrus.
Critias was a very dark person in Athenian history. After the fall of Athens to the Spartans, he blacklisted many of its citizens as a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants. Most of his prisoners were executed and their wealth was confiscated. He proved to be a tormented personality, displaying many complexes and much hatred (in contrast to the Platonic figure described as the student of Socrates).
Critias asserted that "religion was a deliberate imposture devised by some cunning man for political ends."[1]

[Horus]

Very interesting, Wind.  My take on it has always been that "the original writing" simply refers to a list of names (also mentioned somewhere in the Critias),and not to a full, written account of the story.

I'm short on time at the moment, but it might be useful to look at how others translated those sentences.  Jowett's version is the most common, but Bury's is also available here at the board -click here. -and I've heard that it is a little closer to the original Greek than Jowett's which added 'flair' in the way that he phrased his translation.

Also, if possible (and this is just a suggestion) when analyzing quotes from the Dialogues, it's useful to researchers to cite the number and letter of each passage or paragraph so it can be checked!  [e.g. "in Timaeus 24b" etc.]

[Wind]

Also, if possible (and this is just a suggestion) when analyzing quotes from the Dialogues, it's useful to researchers to cite the number and letter of each passage or paragraph so it can be checked!   [e.g. "in Timaeus 24b" etc.]

Sorry about that Horus I was using  Benjamin Jowett’s translation and either he doesn’t use markers or my copy doesn’t have them.

Here’s the same passages from Bury’s Translation.

First from the Critias

[113a] But before I begin my account, there is still a small point which I ought to explain, lest you should be surprised at frequently hearing Greek names given to barbarians. The reason of this you shall now learn. Since Solon was planning to make use of the story for his own poetry, he had found, on investigating the meaning of the names, that those Egyptians who had first written them down had translated them into their own tongue. So he himself in turn recovered the original sense of each name and, rendering it into our tongue, [113b] wrote it down so. And these very writings were in the possession of my grandfather and are actually now in mine, and when I was a child I learnt them all by heart. Therefore if the names you hear are just like our local names, do not be at all astonished; for now you know the reason for them. The story then told was a long one, and it began something like this.


You may be right about the names Horus, but it also said that Solon had been planning to make use of the story in his poetry, it doesn’t say if he ever actually did this or not.   
I still say though, that if Plato wasn’t making the whole thing up then he either had an exceptional memory or he had writings to go by.   The story is just too detailed for it to be any other way.
One more thought just entered my mind.  It said that Critias studied the writings carefully, so he studied a list of names carefully? (Or as he says in this translation learned them by heart)  This doesn’t make sense, why would anybody study and memorize a list of names?

Here’s the passages again from the Timaeus.

Listen then, Socrates, to a tale which, though passing strange, is yet wholly true, as Solon, [20e] the wisest of the Seven, once upon a time declared. Now Solon--as indeed he often says himself in his poems--was a relative and very dear friend of our great-grandfather Dropides; and Dropides told our grandfather Critias as the old man himself, in turn, related to us--that the exploits of this city in olden days, the record of which had perished through time and the destruction of its inhabitants, were great and marvellous, the greatest of all being one which it would be proper

And also

[25d] and one grievous day and night befell them, when the whole body of your warriors was swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner was swallowed up by the sea and vanished; wherefore also the ocean at that spot has now become impassable and unsearchable, being blocked up by the shoal mud which the island created as it settled down.”
You have now heard, Socrates, in brief outline, the account given by the elder Critias of what he heard from Solon;

[26a] to speak on the instant; for owing to lapse of time my recollection of his account was not sufficiently clear. So I decided that I ought not to relate it until I had first gone over it all carefully in my own mind. Consequently, I readily consented to the theme you proposed yesterday, since I thought that we should be reasonably well provided for the task of furnishing a satisfactory discourse--which in all such cases is the greatest task. So it was that, as Hermocrates has said, the moment I left your place yesterday I began to relate to them the story as I recollected it, [26b] and after I parted from them I pondered it over during the night and recovered, as I may say, the whole story. Marvellous, indeed, is the way in which the lessons of one's childhood


I agree that Bury’s translation is more colorful, but it also changes the message, so I have to ask the question, which of these two translations are more accurate?   If I can’t get a translation that I know to be accurate then this is nothing more than an exercise in futility .


I guess the question now is, do these changes affect my argument? And the answer to that is no.
In the Critias he still receives the story from Dropides and in the Timaeus he hears it directly from Solon. It does however leave whether or not the story was written down debate up in the air .

I would be interested to know which translation everyone feels is more accurate though, it would be helpful for future research and to this discussion if I knew what translation was preferred .

Thanks
Wind

[Mario Dantas]

Dear Wind,

Very nice! Just to state about other translations... i don't think they will change much the very fabric of the two tales, otherwise it wouldn't be a translation at all.

regards,
Mario Dantas

[Wind]

After looking into it a little further, I have come to the conclusion that you can only compare the origins of the Timaeus and the Critias, and how they were passed down .   Beyond this you can’t make a comparison, they’re completely different stories, one is a story about the war between Atlantis and Athens (which of course is just a retelling of the war between the Gods of Olympus and the Titans!) and the other story is a history and layout of Atlantis, which was founded by and lead by who?   The Titans. 
Sounds to me like Plato was just trying to make the old mythologies a little more interesting.    There is however, a possibility that Plato’s Timaeus and Critias were the products of historical fiction, they could have been based on actual events and dressed up to be more appealing.   It’s these actual events that my research will next be focusing on.   I'm going to start another thread on this, because in doesn't really fit here.   I'm going to call it the Ancient war of the Gods, so watch for it

Wind.

[Wind]

  Now that I think about it I'm not sure where to start this new thread at, do any of you have any suggestions?   This ancient war does tie in with Atlantis, and might even shed some light on it's actual location, so I was thinking that I'd put it under Atlantis theories and speculations  , what do you all think?

Sincerely
Wind

[Tom Hebert]

Hi Wind,

I would like to see a thread on that subject.  I know little about the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, but they were so much a part of Plato's world that we cannot ignore them.

I never thought of Timaeus and Critias as two different stories, but I'm willing to take a look at that idea.  A good parallel might be the two creation stories in Genesis.  Do they have separate origins, or is the second story an expansion of the first?

[Qoais]

Regarding memory and why a person would remember ANYthing.  My husbands aunt was 93 when we visited her.  She had not seen my husband in over 40 years, and of 6 kids, 5 of them being boys, they all looked a lot alike.  We walked up to aunt Emmie and mom asked her if she knew who was with her.  She said of course she knew, it was Arthur.  Then we asked her when he was born and she told us, much to our surprise, my husband had to get a new birth certificate because she was right and his mom was wrong!.  Then, after talking about a myriad of subjects of the good old days, I asked her how she remembered so much.  She said it was because when she went to school she HAD to remember everything because they didn't have note books.  Only slate boards, with the lessons written in chalk.  When the lesson was learned, it was erased so she couldn't go back and refresh her memory.  When a thing is repeated often enough, one remembers it.  To this day, my husband doesn't read much.  But - when he was young a teacher made him learn the poem The Ships of Yule, and he can quote it to this day, word for word. 

[BlueHue]

Dear...........Mr....WIND,

I am a slow reader with Alzheimer's disease( phase-1.)and I don't like Hairsplitting.

Yet about contradictions in Plato's Atlantis I want to give a little out of the way comment:

WHY is everybody so keen on Atlantis as an ISLE in the Atlantic ?

Have I suddenly changed Plato's Text or am I Fibbing ?
if so, you can make me stand corrected:
 
I forgot the Line Number and the Author
But maybe you could locate the right Passage-line.?
I can only recite what I remember( not much thus.)

" The Isle/Promontory of Atlantis-Capital Poseidonis-polis
was CONNECTED to the MAINLAND by a " -Man made- " ISTHMUS.
How can that be the Island connected to a " Mainland " in Mid-Ocean  

this can only apply to a smaller Isle that regards a larger Isle as a" Mainland "  Isle
or to an ATOL where an inner Isle is surrounded by a large ring of Land

Anyway a Man-Made ISTHMUS would be called a MILLO in hebrew or Latin.
a MILLO is a rubble Dam, consisting of two paralell claydikes filled-up with Sand.
\but in modern maritime GEOLOGY such a waterwork  is called a TOMBOLO.

CONCLUSION:

Only by this one sentence we can only conclude that this Atlantis capital was NOT
in MID- Ocean( I allready explained Why,  but my EXPLANATION, was largely ignored.


We think that NESOS always means ISLE
but that is wrong originally it does NOT mean Maritime- ISLE but a RIVER- Isle !

( like ' GEORGEOS ' in AR allready explained to QOAIS( Trice In vain.)
I am no expert on Greek language myself, but my guess is that it means just: " Raised terrain."

So whenever Plato mentioned NESOS of Atlantis
he may aswell have said the HIGH- TABLE-Mountain- land of Atlantis
or the RAISED River BANKS of Atlantis-(" -Nesos ").

The other day " TITEA" was so convinced of this errror
that she concentrated on the ISLE of MEROE for the " Real Atlantis "
(Not realising that MEROE is built on an extinct Volcano in a River Bend.

( in Topography RIVER Bends are largely  RAISED BANKS, raised by CurrentFlows.)
and thus got the appearance of an island" Sticking-out "head-long   in the river

Sadly 'Therese' was played down at an "all Geology Conference in Athens.in Nov 2008
So to save her lecture she presented CINNABER as the possible " Mountain Copper called " Oricalchum "
But in Volcanic regions Yellow mud is abundant(= Mud with Pyrite called" Golden Sand.)

Sincerely: " BlueHue " dd 10 March 2009

Now that I think about it I'm not sure where to start this new thread at, do any of you have any suggestions?   This ancient war does tie in with Atlantis, and might even shed some light on it's actual location, so I was thinking that I'd put it under Atlantis theories and speculations  , what do you all think?

[Mysterio]

WHY is everybody so keen on Atlantis as an ISLE in the Atlantic ?

If I am changing Plato's Text or Fibbing you can make me stand corrected:

Because it called an island.  Even in the ancient Greek texts, NESOS always means ISLE.

[BlueHue]

Dear ....................MISTERIO, ( No profile info !)

First you tell that " others had a good Point "
and subsequently you fail to recite my point why they did not have them !

YOU have NOT been following the oldest Argument of THIS Forum,
" Was Atlantis an ISLE because Plato used the word NESOS " ?

I just finished explaining to You that the meaning of NESOS tends to vary in Different context.
But You as probably a non or a bad ancient greek reader bluntly assumes that Plato's NESOS means ISLE !

I will tell you why NESOS is NOT ( -always-)an ISLE
but I doubt whether you will " understand " what I just explained to you

QOAIS the other day
asked the same Question to ' GEORGEOS 'Diaz-montexano,  in AR- Forum
and he had to tell her the Facts, TRICE because she was either not listening or

Disillusioned to hear that NESOS also can mean: " PROMONTORY "
and thus NOT ' Always an Island "!

Originally in GREEK Plato mentioned that Atlantis was
a Coastal Region bordering a Sea-Arm of the Ocean called the Sea of Atlas.

Latin compilers made Plato's Atlantis  into an ISLAND - REALM in MID- Atlantic

PLATO's
ATLANTIKOUM - PELAGOUS became " ATLANTIS - archi- PELAGUS
on the face of it these words mean the same but the translation is different !

CONCLUSION:

Atlantis as an Ocean Isle never existed because of a wrong latin translation.
The Grand Public has been fooled into believing that Atlantis was off the Spanish Coast

for the past 500 years by political propaganda of King Ferdinand in 1500 ad
and General Himilcar & Hadrubal since  250 bc

Have you allready been aquainted with my" BlueHue's"
" THREE RULES of THUMB " to locate the " original " Atlantis "

These are ignored by all Atlantologists
Who happily keep continuing " to bark up a wrong tree "

Sincerely " BlueHue " dd 13 March - 2009

PS
 
For, an excerpt of my " BlueHue-Theory " see the Subscript ( at the Bottom of THIS Posting !)

[Wind]

WHY is everybody so keen on Atlantis as an ISLE in the Atlantic ?

Let me put this it terms that you would understand Blue

Atlantis=Atlantic

In ancient times it was called the Atlantis ocean,why do you think this was? Maybe they just liked the sound of it, or maybe it was because Atlantis was in the Atlantis ocean! Who knows!

There has been plenty of  research shared on this forum that proves that the ancient Greeks knew exactly where the pillars of Hercules were and are, as well as the geography outside them, The only reason that people are arguing over the translation of Plato’s works is because they are desperately trying to prove their own theories.   When I started this thread I viewed things totally different than I do now.

Yes Plato may have been influenced in is story telling but I have come to believe that there is truth in all legends, we just have to dig for it.   Dig for it yes, not twist it to fit un- provable theories.

The search for the real Atlantis is still ongoing, until definite proof is found lets not let closed mindedness shut the book on genuine research.   Theories are fine but until you have real proof they are still nothing but theories.

Wind

[atalante]

The Nile Delta was called an island by ancient Egyptians. because it was surrounded by branches of the Nile River. 

Likewize, the main metropolis of Atlantis was surrounded by two huge ditches; and thus the metropolis of Atlantis qualifies as an island, according to ancent Egyptian vocabulary.