Message #160321

[Autolocus]

SUMMARY

For the genesis of Atlantis we have then, first, the great idealist
philosopher Plato minded to compose an instructive pseudo-
historical romance of statesmanship and war and actually making
a beginning of the task; and, secondly, the fragmentary cues and
suggestive data which came to him out of tradition and mariners'
tales, perhaps in part through Solon and intervening transmit-
ters, in part more directly to himself. Of this material we may
name foremost the vague knowledge of vast impeded regions in
the Atlantic believed to be shallow and requiring a physical ex-
planation; then rumors of cataclysms and sunken lands in the
same ocean; then legends of ancient hostilities between dwellers

82 Reprint of Hydrographic Information: Questions and Answers, No. 2, June
2, 1910, Hydrographic Office, Washington, D. C., p. 17.



SUMMARY 33

beyond the Pillars of Hercules and the peoples about the Mediter-
ranean; and finally the reflection of the Persian war on the shad-
owy ancient past of Athens Athens the defender and victor,
Athens the Queen of the Sea.

Every solution of the Atlantis problem must be conjectural.
The above is offered simply as the best conjecture to which I can
see my way