Atlantis Pyramids Floods (9 page)

Such was the natural state of the
country, which was cultivated, as we may well believe, by true
husbandmen, who made husbandry their business, and were lovers of
honor, and of a noble nature, and had a soil the best in the world,
and abundance of water, and in the heaven above an excellently
tempered climate. Now the city in those days was arranged on this
wise. In the first place the Acropolis was not as now. For the fact
is that a single night of excessive rain washed away the earth and
laid bare the rock; at the same time there were earthquakes, and
then occurred the extraordinary inundation, which was the third
before the great destruction of Deucalion.

Note
: Could
the above passage be referring to the Carolina Event?

But in primitive times the hill of the
Acropolis extended to the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the
Pnyx on one side, and the Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite
side to the Pnyx, and was all well covered with soil, and level at
the top, except in one or two places.

Outside the Acropolis and under the
sides of the hill there dwelt artisans, and such of the husbandmen
as were tilling the ground near; the warrior class dwelt by
themselves around the temples of Athene and Hephaestus at the
summit, which moreover they had enclosed with a single fence like
the garden of a single house.

On the north side they had dwellings
in common and had erected halls for dining in winter, and had all
the buildings which they needed for their common life, besides
temples, but there was no adorning of them with gold and silver,
for they made no use of these for any purpose; they took a middle
course between meanness and ostentation, and built modest houses in
which they and their children’s children grew old, and they handed
them down to others who were like themselves, always the
same.

But, in summertime they left their
gardens and gymnasia and dining halls, and then the southern side
of the hill was made use of by them for the same
purpose.

Where the Acropolis now is there was a
fountain, which was choked by the earthquake, and has left only the
few small streams, which still exist in the vicinity, but in those
days the fountain gave an abundant supply of water for all and of
suitable temperature in summer and in winter.

This is how they dwelt, being the
guardians of their own citizens and the leaders of the Hellenes,
who were their willing followers. And they took care to preserve
the same number of men and women through all time, being so many as
were required for warlike purposes, then as now—that is to say,
about twenty thousand.

Such were the ancient Athenians, and
after this manner they righteously administered their own land and
the rest of Hellas; they were renowned all over Europe and Asia for
the beauty of their persons and for the many virtues of their
souls, and of all men who lived in those days they were the most
illustrious. And next, if I have not forgotten what I heard when I
was a child, I will impart to you the character and origin of their
adversaries. For friends should not keep their stories to
themselves, but have them in common.

Yet, before proceeding further in the
narrative, I ought to warn you, that you must not be surprised if
you should perhaps hear Hellenic names given to foreigners. I will
tell you the reason of this: Solon, who was intending to use the
tale for his poem, enquired into the meaning of the names, and
found that the early Egyptians in writing them down had translated
them into their own language, and he recovered the meaning of the
several names and when copying them out again translated them into
our language.

Note
: This is
how some names were changed.

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. Therefore if you hear
names such as are used in this country, you must not be surprised,
for I have told how they came to be introduced.

The Story of Atlantis

Critias continues:

The tale, which was of great length,
began as follows: I have before remarked in speaking of the
allotments of the gods, that they distributed the whole earth into
portions differing in extent, and made for themselves temples and
instituted sacrifices. And Poseidon, receiving for his lot the
island of Atlantis, begat children by a mortal woman, and settled
them in a part of the island, which I will describe.

Looking towards the sea, but in the
centre of the whole island, there was a plain which is said to have
been the fairest of all plains and very fertile. Near the plain
again, and also in the centre of the island at a distance of about
fifty stadia, there was a mountain not very high on any side. On
this mountain there dwelt one of the earth born primeval men of
that country, whose name was Evenor, and he had a wife named
Leucippe, and they had an only daughter who was called
Cleito.

The maiden had already
reached womanhood, when her father and mother died; Poseidon fell
in love with her and had intercourse with her, and breaking the
ground, enclosed the hill in which she dwelt all round, making
alternate zones of sea and land larger and smaller, encircling one
another; there were two of land and three of water, which he turned
as with a lathe, each having its circumference equidistant every
way
from the centre, so that no man could
get to the island, for ships and voyages were not as
yet.

He himself, being a god, found no
difficulty in making special arrangements for the centre island,
bringing up two springs of water from beneath the earth, one of
warm water and the other of cold, and making every variety of food
to spring up abundantly from the soil. He also begat and brought up
five pairs of twin male children; and dividing the island of
Atlantis into ten portions, he gave to the first-born of the eldest
pair his mother’s dwelling and the surrounding allotment, which was
the largest and best, and made him king over the rest; the others
he made princes, and gave them rule over many men, and a large
territory.

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. To his twin brother, who was
born after him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island
towards the Pillars of Heracles, facing the country which is now
called the region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the
name which in the Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of
the country which is named after him, Gadeirus.

Of the second pair of twins he called
one Ampheres, and the other Evaemon. To the elder of the third pair
of twins he gave the name Mneseus, and Autochthon to the one who
followed him. Of the fourth pair of twins, he called the elder
Elasippus, and the younger Mestor. And of the fifth pair, he gave
to the elder the name of Azaes, and to the younger that of
Diaprepes.

All these and their descendants for
many generations were the inhabitants and rulers of diverse islands
in the open sea; and also, as has been already said, they held sway
in our direction over the country within the Pillars as far as
Egypt and Tyrrhenia.

Now, Atlas had a numerous and
honorable family, and they retained the kingdom, the eldest son
handing it on to his eldest for many generations; and they had such
an amount of wealth as was never before possessed by kings and
potentates, and is not likely ever to be again, and they were
furnished with everything which they needed, both in the city and
country. For because of the greatness of their empire many things
were brought to them from foreign countries, and the island itself
provided most of what was required by them for the uses of life. In
the first place, they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found
there, solid as well as fusile, and that which is now only a name
and was then something more than a name, orichalcum, was dug out of
the earth in many parts of the island, being more precious in those
days than anything except gold.

There was an abundance of wood for
carpenter’s work, and sufficient maintenance for tame and wild
animals.

Moreover, there were a great number of
elephants in the island; for as there was provision for all other
sorts of animals, both for those which live in lakes and marshes
and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on
plains, so there was for the animal which is the largest and most
voracious of all.

Also whatever fragrant things there
now are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or
essences which distil from fruit and flower, grew and thrived in
that land; also the fruit which admits of cultivation, both the dry
sort, which is given us for nourishment and any other which we use
for food—we call them all by the common name pulse, and the fruits
having a hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments, and
good store of chestnuts and the like, which furnish pleasure and
amusement, and are fruits which spoil with keeping, and the
pleasant kinds of dessert, with which we console ourselves after
dinner, when we are tired of eating—all these that sacred island
which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth fair and
wondrous and in infinite abundance.

With such blessings the earth freely
furnished them; meanwhile they went on constructing their temples
and palaces and harbors and docks. And they arranged the whole
country in the following manner:

First of all, they bridged over the
zones of sea which surrounded the ancient metropolis, making a road
to and from the royal palace. And, at the very beginning they built
the palace in the habitation of the god and of their ancestors,
which they continued to ornament in successive generations, every
king surpassing the one who went before him to the utmost of his
power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size and
for beauty.

And beginning from the sea, they bored
a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in
depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the
outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which
became a harbor, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the
largest vessels to find ingress.

Moreover, they divided at the bridges
the zones of land, which parted the zones of sea, leaving room for
a single trireme to pass out of one zone into another, and they
covered over the channels so as to leave a way underneath for the
ships; for the banks were raised considerably above the
water.

Note
: Here
Plato describes the banks of the canals as being considerably above
water. As you read on, you will find that this is the first of a
series of clues that will help us calculate the height of the water
level at the Florida Plain during the time of Atlantis.

Now, the largest of the zones into
which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth,
and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next
two zones, the one of water, the other of land, were two stadia,
and the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only
in width. The island in which the palace was situated had a
diameter of five stadia.

All this including the zones and the
bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they
surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates
on the bridges where the sea passed in.

The stone which was used in the work
they quarried from underneath the centre island, and from
underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side. One
kind was white, another black, and a third red, and as they
quarried, they at the same time hollowed out double docks, having
roofs formed out of the native rock.

Some of their buildings were simple,
but in others, they put together different stones, varying the
color to please the eye, and to be a natural source of
delight.

The entire circuit of the wall, which
went round the outermost zone, they covered with a coating of
brass, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and
the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red
light of orichalcum.

The palaces in the interior of the
citadel were constructed on this wise: In the centre was a holy
temple dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained
inaccessible, and was surrounded by an enclosure of gold; this was
the spot where the family of the ten princes first saw the light,
and thither the people annually brought the fruits of the earth in
their season from all the ten portions, to be an offering to each
of the ten.

Here was Poseidon’s own temple, which
was a stadium in length, and half a stadium in width, and of a
proportionate height, having a strange barbaric appearance. All the
outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they
covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior
of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere
with gold and silver and orichalcum; and all the other parts, the
walls and pillars and floor, they coated with
orichalcum.

In the temple, they placed statues of
gold: There was the god himself standing in a chariot—the
charioteer of six winged horses—and of such a size that he touched
the roof of the building with his head. Around him there were a
hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the
number of them by the men of those days. There were also in the
interior of the temple other images, which had been dedicated by
private persons.