ATLANTIS & the Atlantic Ocean

Plato's Invention?

First of all, it is highly doubtful that Plato would have had to invent Atlantis to expound his ideas of an ideal state system, - indeed, he had previously expounded them more than once in his other works, without any geographical hoaxes.

Secondly, in "Timaeus" itself there already exists - and is actively used by Plato - an object only too suitable for setting forth utopian concepts - the pre-historic Athens, so the supposition that Plato needed to invent specifically for the purpose a second, let alone such an exotic one as Atlantis, seems rather far-fetched.

Thirdly, it is not clear how the assumption that under the name of Atlantis Plato depicted an ideal state, correlates with the fact that in "Critias" none other than Plato himself had already exposed the "degeneration" and decline that preceded the vanishing of Atlantis.

And fourthly, the explanation of how the information of Atlantis came to Plato's notice, does not seem to contain logical contradictions, which in itself enhances its credibility. It also sounds convincing that events of such ancient history are narrated to Solon by none other than an Egyptian priest, and the way he explains why Greeks had lost their historical memory.

"You are all [Greeks] young in mind," came the reply: "you have no belief rooted in old tradition and no knowledge hoary with age. And the reason is this. There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greatest of them by fire and water, lesser ones by countless other means...

But in our temples we have preserved from earliest times a written record of any great or splendid achievement or notable event which has come to our ears whether it occurred in your part of the world or here or anywhere else; whereas with you and others, writing and the other necessities of civilization have only just been developed when the periodic scourge of the deluge descends, and spares none but the unlettered and uncultured, so that you have to begin again like children, in complete ignorance of what happened in our part of the world or in yours in early times...