Hi Qoais,Because of their greatness??? many things were BROUGHT to them. Sounds to me like someone was kissing butt bringing many things. Not them going out and bringing themselves things. If they were bringing stuff to themselves I think the wording would have been different. The least way of expressing it would be to say because of their numerous ships, they brought many things from foreign countries. Brought - to me - means that others are doing the bringing. And to predicate the sentence with "because of their greatness" makes one to understand that these foreign countries did the bringing to keep on the good side.
The translation does seem to be pushing the idea that foreign countries were trying to gain favor with a very powerful Atlantis and such an interpretation is very possible, but I was attempting to allow for the fuller context of the passage which begins,
“And he named them all; the eldest, who was the first king, he named Atlas and after him the whole island and the ocean were called Atlantic. All these and their descendants for many generations were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea; they held sway in our direction over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia."
So it seems plausible that in describing the extent to which the people of Atlantis had spread to islands of the sea and the Mediterranean, this passage was originally explaining that Atlantis used these far-reaching agents to bring supplies from countries like those inside the Pillars of Hercules which lacked oceangoing vessels. This interpretation allows for the contextual contrast, "bringing many things from foreign countries" versus "the island itself provided most of what was required."
This seems to fall in line with Desmond Lee's translation:
"They and their descendants for many generations governed their own territories and many other islands in the ocean and, as has already been said, also controlled the populations this side of the straits as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. Atlas had a long and distinguished line of descendants, eldest son succeeding eldest son and maintaining the succession unbroken for many generations; their wealth was greater than that possessed by any previous dynasty of kings or likely to be accumulated by any later, and both in the city and countryside they were provided with everything they could require. Because of the extent of their power they received many imports, but for most of their needs the island itself provided."
However, as I've said in a couple of other threads, I'm thinking Plato is having a bit of a laugh up his sleeve so to speak, because those three walls covered in metal would be a super conductor of electricity, and with the water running along side, the whole place would be "live" in the first lightning storm. They would have had to ground those walls somehow. Perhaps the metal itself ran down the wall past the earth line.
Maybe you're onto something there; Plato was describing a supercollider.
Doubtless there is a bit of embellishment going on in Plato's account and the excessive wall plating seems to fall in that category. If Atlantis existed perhaps we should expect to find such plating around the gates of each wall at best.
-Doug
