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125-467: Atlantis ( Ancient Greek : Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος , romanized :  Atlantìs nêsos , lit.   'island of Atlas ') is a fictional island mentioned in Plato 's works Timaeus and Critias as part of an allegory on the hubris of nations. In the story, Atlantis is described as a naval empire that ruled all Western parts of the known world , making it the literary counter-image of

250-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

375-741: A "Nordic-Atlantean" or "Aryan-Nordic" master race that spread from Atlantis over the Northern Hemisphere and beyond. The Hyperboreans were contrasted with the Jewish people. Party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg (in The Myth of the Twentieth Century , 1930) and SS-leader Heinrich Himmler made it part of the official doctrine. The idea was followed up by the adherents of Esoteric Nazism such as Julius Evola (1934) and, more recently, Miguel Serrano (1978). The idea of Atlantis as

500-614: A 2nd-century CE Roman senator and rhetorician, attempted a revival of Critias’ works in the 2nd century CE. Among his extensive comments on Herodes, Philostratus inserted this: For while he devoted himself to the study of all the older writers, from Critias he was inseparable, and he made the Greeks better acquainted with him, since he had hitherto been neglected and overlooked. Our judgment today would not be much different than that of Philostratus, since Critias' extant works have diminished still further. What fragments survive were collected by

625-426: A bad omen. Even though the fleet sailed on schedule, the search for the perpetrators went on relentlessly afterwards. Among those arrested was Critias. While many of the accused were summarily executed or left town to escape prosecution, Critias was eventually exonerated when the testimony of his accuser was discredited by Andocides and then withdrawn. As a member of Athens’ elite and in view of his later actions, it

750-532: A clause which made it illegal "to teach the art of words." It was a calculated insult to Socrates, whom he saw no means of attacking except by imputing to him the practice constantly attributed to philosophers, and so making him unpopular. When Critias and Charicles confronted Socrates with the new law, the latter did what he had done so many times before and began to probe its actual meaning. Who could he talk to, or not talk to, and about what? After several minutes of this, Socrates summarized: "Then must I keep off

875-436: A considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon 's New Atlantis and Thomas More 's Utopia . On the other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato's narrative as historical tradition, most famously Ignatius L. Donnelly in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World . Plato's vague indications of

1000-524: A democracy in Thessaly and was arming the serfs against their overlords". Also, he "consorted with men subject to lawlessness rather than to a sense of justice". Countering this, Philostratus said, "he rendered their oligarchies the more grievous by conversing with those in power there and by attacking all democracy. He slandered the Athenians, claiming that they, of all mankind, erred the most". After

1125-522: A fleet in the eastern Aegean, he temporarily handed over some of his ships to a subordinate, who proceeded to instigate and then lose an encounter with the Spartan fleet in the area. Alcibiades was held responsible and banished once again. As his advocate, Critias was subsequently banished as well, and he spent the next few years in Thessaly . While there, he was reported by Xenophon to be "setting up

1250-581: A good man toward the end of his life, inasmuch as he employed tyranny as his winding-sheet [burial shroud]. But let it be declared on my part that none among men died well in behalf of a poor choice. And it seems to me that for this reason the man's wisdom and his thoughts were taken less seriously by the Greeks. Unless speech corresponds to character, we shall appear to be discoursing in an alien language, as though we were playing flutes. Xenophon lumped Critias in with his friend Alcibiades in his criticism: Critias and Alcibiades became disciples of Socrates and did

1375-399: A herdsman who lets his cattle decrease and go to the bad should not admit that he is a poor cowherd; but stranger still that a statesman, when he causes the citizens to decrease and go to the bad, should feel no shame nor think himself a poor statesman. At another point, his critique became more personal. Xenophon related that Socrates took his old friend to task for being overly enamored with

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1500-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

1625-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

1750-529: A number of parallels between the physical organisation and fortifications of Syracuse and Plato's description of Atlantis. Gunnar Rudberg was the first who elaborated upon the idea that Plato's attempt to realize his political ideas in the city of Syracuse could have heavily inspired the Atlantis account. Some ancient writers viewed Atlantis as fictional or metaphorical myth; others believed it to be real. Aristotle believed that Plato, his teacher, had invented

1875-427: A poet and essayist, his works survived for several centuries, as the above citations attest, but his repute as a writer eventually faded. Philostratus, writing in the 3rd century CE, said of Critias: He wrote tragedies, elegies, and prose works, of which not enough has survived for any sure estimate to be made of his talent. He was greatly admired by the later sophists, especially by Herodes Atticus. Herodes Atticus ,

2000-583: A possible connection with Plato's island. John V. Luce notes that when Plato writes about the genealogy of Atlantis's kings, he writes in the same style as Hellanicus, suggesting a similarity between a fragment of Hellanicus's work and an account in the Critias . Rodney Castleden suggests that Plato may have borrowed his title from Hellanicus, who may have based his work on an earlier work about Atlantis. Castleden has pointed out that Plato wrote of Atlantis in 359 BC, when he returned to Athens from Sicily. He notes

2125-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

2250-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

2375-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

2500-474: A story which exemplifies such a society. Critias mentions a tale he considered to be historical, that would make the perfect example, and he then follows by describing Atlantis as is recorded in the Critias . In his account, ancient Athens seems to represent the "perfect society" and Atlantis its opponent, representing the very antithesis of the "perfect" traits described in the Republic . According to Critias,

2625-624: A technologically sophisticated, more advanced culture . Donnelly drew parallels between creation stories in the Old and New Worlds, attributing the connections to Atlantis, where he believed the Biblical Garden of Eden existed. As implied by the title of his book, he also believed that Atlantis was destroyed by the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible. Donnelly is credited as the "father of

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2750-656: A theme that Bacon discussed in The New Atlantis ( c.  1623 ). A character in the narrative gives a history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato's and places Atlantis in America. People had begun believing that the Mayan and Aztec ruins could possibly be the remnants of Atlantis. Much speculation began as to the origins of the Maya , which led to a variety of narratives and publications that tried to rationalize

2875-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

3000-659: A word it is evident that all of them borrow from Moses, and publish his statements as their own. Aside from Plato's original account, modern interpretations regarding Atlantis are an amalgamation of diverse, speculative movements that began in the sixteenth century, when scholars began to identify Atlantis with the New World . Francisco Lopez de Gomara was the first to state that Plato was referring to America, as did Francis Bacon and Alexander von Humboldt ; Janus Joannes Bircherod said in 1663 orbe novo non-novo ("the New World

3125-407: A young man. Critias seems to have the feelings of a pig: he can no more keep away from Euthydemus than pigs can help rubbing themselves against stones. Socrates' reputation and general popularity protected him from the punishment meted out to Theramenes. Nonetheless: Now Critias bore a grudge against Socrates for this; and when he was … drafting laws with Charicles, he bore it in mind. He inserted

3250-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

3375-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

3500-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

3625-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

3750-413: Is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island. The logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos wrote an earlier work entitled Atlantis , of which only a few fragments survive. Hellanicus' work appears to have been a genealogical one concerning the daughters of Atlas (Ἀτλαντὶς in Greek means "of Atlas"), but some authors have suggested

3875-525: Is not clear whether he was involved or not, but he was freed nonetheless. The failure of the Sicilian expedition in 413, in which tens of thousands of Athenian soldiers were killed or captured, rocked the city's political and social stability. In 411, as Athenian prosecution of the Peloponnesian War limped along, a junta of oligarchic sympathizers contrived to take over the government and end

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4000-856: Is not new"). Athanasius Kircher accepted Plato's account as literally true, describing Atlantis as a small continent in the Atlantic Ocean. Contemporary perceptions of Atlantis share roots with Mayanism , which can be traced to the beginning of the Modern Age , when European imaginations were fueled by their initial encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. From this era sprang apocalyptic and utopian visions that would inspire many subsequent generations of theorists. Most of these interpretations are considered pseudohistory , pseudoscience , or pseudoarchaeology , as they have presented their works as academic or scientific , but lack

4125-495: Is related in our records how once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, 'the pillars of Heracles ,' there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it

4250-493: Is that in the days following their deposition he was recorded as proposing two decrees before the reconstituted Assembly: one to hold a post-mortem trial of one of the perpetrators of the coup, one Phrynichus, the other to repatriate his friend Alcibiades, who had been exiled at the start of the Sicilian expedition for mocking the Eleusinian Mysteries , the most sacred religious cult at Athens. The playboy-general

4375-409: Is the most reliable and his discussion covers all the unknowns and suppositions.  Without detailing the uncertainties here, as best we know, his ancestors were: The progenitor of the family was Dropides, who lived in the 7th century BCE. He had two sons: Critias I and Dropides II. The latter was a "relative and a dear friend" of Solon , the lawgiver of Athens.  Both men were in their prime at

4500-460: Is was provided by Cicero , who names him as an orator, along with Lysias and Theramenes . Hard upon them (the orators Pericles , Alcibiades , and Thucydides [not the historian]) came Critias, Theramenes, and Lysias. Much was written down by Lysias, some things by Critias; we hear of Theramenes. In terms of style, he was described as "lofty of sentiment, also pride", "stately, much like Antiphon, and sublime, verging on majesty, and says much in

4625-535: The gerousia . Critias had returned from Thessaly as part of the recall of the exiles and now became one of the leaders of the " Thirty ". One source said that they also appointed five men to supervise this group, called ephors after the similar body at Sparta. Critias was one of the five. A third body was designated: the Three Thousand – those of the cavalry ( hippeis ) and infantry ( hoplite ) classes, who were allowed to keep their armor and weapons after

4750-647: The Achaemenid Empire . After an ill-fated attempt to conquer "Ancient Athens," Atlantis falls out of favor with the deities and submerges into the Atlantic Ocean . Since Plato describes Athens as resembling his ideal state in the Republic , the Atlantis story is meant to bear witness to the superiority of his concept of a state. Despite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had

4875-582: The Greek and Mayan languages , which produced a narrative of the destruction of Atlantis. The 1882 publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Ignatius L. Donnelly stimulated much popular interest in Atlantis. He was greatly inspired by early works in Mayanism , and like them, attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from Atlantis, which he saw as

5000-708: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

5125-576: The Hellenic deities of old divided the land so that each deity might have their own lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, but it was later sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean. Plato asserted that the Egyptians described Atlantis as an island consisting mostly of mountains in

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5250-577: The Maya peoples had descended from the Toltecs , people he believed were the surviving population of the racially superior civilization of Atlantis. His work combined with the skillful, romantic illustrations of Jean Frederic Waldeck , which visually alluded to Egypt and other aspects of the Old World , created an authoritative fantasy that excited much interest in the connections between worlds. Inspired by Brasseur de Bourbourg's diffusion theories,

5375-570: The Nazis with a mythological precedent and a pretext for their ideological platform and their subsequent genocide . However, Blavatsky's writings mention that the Atlantean were in fact olive-skinned peoples with Mongoloid traits who were the ancestors of modern Native Americans , Mongolians , and Malayans . The idea that the Atlanteans were Hyperborean , Nordic supermen who originated in

5500-465: The Socratic method in order to discuss contrary positions within the context of a supposition. The Timaeus begins with an introduction, followed by an account of the creations and structure of the universe and ancient civilizations. In the introduction, Socrates muses about the perfect society, described in Plato's Republic ( c.  380 BC ), and wonders if he and his guests might recollect

5625-507: The Timaeus gives a description of the geography of Atlantis: That an island of such nature and size once existed is evident from what is said by certain authors who investigated the things around the outer sea. For according to them, there were seven islands in that sea in their time, sacred to Persephone , and also three others of enormous size, one of which was sacred to Hades, another to Ammon , and another one between them to Poseidon,

5750-610: The ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

5875-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

6000-496: The " Akashic Records " (a term borrowed from Theosophy ), Cayce declared that he was able to give detailed descriptions of the lost continent. He also asserted that Atlantis would "rise" again in the 1960s (sparking much popularity of the myth in that decade) and that there is a " Hall of Records " beneath the Egyptian Sphinx which holds the historical texts of Atlantis. As continental drift became widely accepted during

6125-401: The 1960s, and the increased understanding of plate tectonics demonstrated the impossibility of a lost continent in the geologically recent past, most "Lost Continent" theories of Atlantis began to wane in popularity. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and

6250-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

6375-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

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6500-570: The Athenian elite, and also to the family of the orator Andocides . Little is known of Critias' early years. Athenaeus reported that he was a trained aulos player.  He was best attested as a poet, with a variety of forms to his credit: hexameters, elegies, and dramas. Among the plays tentatively assigned to him are Tennis , Rhadamanthys , Pirithus , and the satyr play Sisyphus . All of these, however, have been contested by both ancient and modern scholars, with Euripides proposed as

6625-471: The Athenians, that it is neither a mere myth nor unadorned history, although some take it as history and others as myth", he is treating "Crantor's view as mere personal opinion, nothing more; in fact he first quotes and then dismisses it as representing one of the two unacceptable extremes". Cameron also points out that whether he refers to Plato or to Crantor, the statement does not support conclusions such as Otto Muck's "Crantor came to Sais and saw there in

6750-458: The Athenians, while that island itself was submerged by God under the sea. Both Plato and Aristotle praise this philosopher, and Proclus has written a commentary on him. He himself expresses views similar to our own with some modifications, transferring the scene of the events from the east to the west. Moreover he mentions those ten generations as well as that earth which lies beyond the Ocean. And in

6875-403: The Atlantean empire, and as the alliance disintegrated, prevailed alone against the empire, liberating the occupied lands. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts

7000-777: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Critias Critias was the scion of one of the premier families in Athens. The evidence for his lineage comes from several sources and there are numerous gaps in what they have to say. The reconstruction in Davies' Athenian Propertied Families

7125-422: The Egyptians this story about the Athenians and Atlanteans, so as to make them say that the Athenians really once lived according to that system. The next sentence is often translated "Crantor adds, that this is testified by the prophets of the Egyptians, who assert that these particulars [which are narrated by Plato] are written on pillars which are still preserved." But in the original, the sentence starts not with

7250-543: The Mediterranean, lending credence to many details in Plato's discussion. The fourth-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus , relying on a lost work by Timagenes , a historian writing in the first century BC, writes that the Druids of Gaul said that part of the inhabitants of Gaul had migrated there from distant islands. Some have understood Ammianus's testimony as a claim that at the time of Atlantis's sinking into

7375-491: The Nature of Desires or of Virtues , and Proems (Prologues) for Public Speaking . He believed religion could play an important role in achieving obedience to the state. According to pseudo-Plutarch , he was among those who criticized the logographer Antiphon , though there is little evidence that he (or Antiphon) participated in Athenian politics during the years that the latter was active (430s and 420s). What little there

7500-656: The Northern Atlantic or even in the far North, was popular in the German ariosophic movement around 1900, propagated by Guido von List and others. It gave its name to the Thule Gesellschaft , an antisemite Münich lodge, which preceded the German Nazi Party (see Thule ). The scholars Karl Georg Zschaetzsch  [ de ] (1920) and Herman Wirth (1928) were the first to speak of

7625-585: The Sophists , had much to say about him. His most damning comments were: In cruelty and in bloodthirstiness he outdid the Thirty. He also collaborated with the Spartans in absurd resolution in order that Attica, emptied of its flock of men, might become a grazing-ground for sheep. Hence it seems to me that he is the worst of all the men who have gained a reputation for wickedness… It appears to some that he became

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7750-509: The State by leading it out of an unjust way of life into a just way, and consequently I gave my mind to them very diligently, to see what they would do. And indeed I saw how these men within a short time caused men to look back on the former government as a golden age; and above all how they treated my aged friend Socrates, whom I would hardly scruple to call the most just of men then living, when they tried to send him, along with others, after one of

7875-409: The Thirty brought their forces to Piraeus to root them out, the two armies fought in the streets. During this confrontation Critias was killed, which left the oligarchs without their strongest leader. This spelled doom for their reign, and they were soon deposed and democracy reestablished. Critias was in ancient times castigated for his activities under the Thirty. Philostratus , in his Lives of

8000-399: The Thirty. Yet, the philosopher was loath to join the oligarchy because of its violent means. In his seventh letter, he said: In the days of my youth my experience was the same as that of many others. I thought that as soon as I should become my own master I would immediately enter into public life. But it so happened, I found, that the following changes occurred in the political situation. In

8125-492: The Three Thousand to begin arresting metics so they could be stripped of their property and executed – this so the citizens would become complicit in the slaughter. With blood on their hands, they would be less likely to attempt an overthrow of the oligarchy. When Socrates was ordered to go with three others to arrest one Leon of Salamis, he ignored the order and simply "went home". He was later recorded as offering this not-so-oblique criticism of Critias: It seems enough to me that

8250-461: The activities that tarnished Critias’ reputation in his later years. In the spring of 415, the Athenians decided to send an armada to Sicily to counter a perceived threat from the city of Syracuse. Just before it was to sail, one of the social clubs in Athens staged a city-wide raid where they mutilated statues of the god Hermes that stood outside homes and in various locations around Athens. The citizens were outraged and saw this event as

8375-578: The ancient culture of Atlantis. The book was published in 1940. Blavatsky was also inspired by the work of the 18th-century astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly , who had "Orientalized" the Atlantis myth in his mythical continent of Hyperborea , a reference to Greek myths featuring a Northern European region of the same name, home to a giant, godlike race. Dan Edelstein claims that her reshaping of this theory in The Secret Doctrine provided

8500-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

8625-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

8750-496: The battle of Aigospotami in 405, in which the Athenian fleet was destroyed, the city was besieged by the Spartans and eventually capitulated. The Spartans demanded that the city take down its walls, recall its exiles (oligarchic sympathizers all), and restore the ancient government – i.e., dismantle its democracy . At their "suggestion", a ruling body of thirty governors was selected, mimicking Sparta's own ruling board of thirty,

8875-415: The beginning of the 6th century BCE and Dropides served as archon eponymous shortly after Solon held that position in 594/3.  Solon died in the late 560s; presumably Dropides did as well. Dropides II was the father of Critias II, who lived into the late 6th century. The son of Critias II was Leaides, who is known only from an ostracon dating to the 480s, which named "Critias [III] son of Leaides" as

9000-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

9125-408: The central island itself was five stades in diameter [about 0.92 km; 0.57 mi]. In Plato's metaphorical tale, Poseidon fell in love with Cleito, the daughter of Evenor and Leucippe, who bore him five pairs of male twins. The eldest of these, Atlas , was made rightful king of the entire island and the ocean (called the Atlantic Ocean in his honor), and was given the mountain of his birth and

9250-404: The citizens, to fetch him by force that he might be put to death—their object being that Socrates, whether he wished or no, might be made to share in their political actions; he, however, refused to obey and risked the uttermost penalties rather than be a partaker in their unholy deeds. So when I beheld all these actions and others of a similar grave kind, I was indignant, and I withdrew myself from

9375-406: The city much harm. For, in the oligarchy, Critias turned into the most thievish and violent and murderous of all, while Alcibiades, in the democracy, was of all men the most uncontrolled and wanton and violent. If the two of them did the city harm, I shall not offer a defense. Plato, on the other hand, said nothing disparaging about Critias directly – either about his exile in Thessaly or his time in

9500-409: The civilization of Atlantis reached its peak between 1,000,000 and 900,000 years ago, but destroyed itself through internal warfare brought about by the dangerous use of psychic and supernatural powers of the inhabitants. Rudolf Steiner , the founder of anthroposophy and Waldorf Schools , along with other well known Theosophists, such as Annie Besant , also wrote of cultural evolution in much

9625-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

9750-643: The discoveries within the context of the Bible and that had undertones of racism in their connections between the Old and New World. The Europeans believed the indigenous people to be inferior and incapable of building that which was now in ruins and by sharing a common history, they insinuated that another race must have been responsible. In the middle and late nineteenth century, several renowned Mesoamerican scholars, starting with Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg , and including Edward Herbert Thompson and Augustus Le Plongeon , formally proposed that Atlantis

9875-451: The evil practices then going on. For all the condemnation he received from his contemporaries, Critias was soon forgotten by most people. By the late 4th century, Aristotle could write: The many do not demand a statement of the case if you wish to extol Achilles, for all know his deeds; yet it is necessary to make use of them. Also, if you wish to extol Critias, it is necessary. For not many know his deeds. As for Critias' efforts as

10000-734: The existence of Atlantis were Strabo and Posidonius . Some have theorized that, before the sixth century BC, the "Pillars of Hercules" may have applied to mountains on either side of the Gulf of Laconia , and also may have been part of the pillar cult of the Aegean. The mountains stood at either side of the southernmost gulf in Greece, the largest in the Peloponnese, and it opens onto the Mediterranean Sea. This would have placed Atlantis in

10125-504: The extent of which was a thousand stadia [200 km; 124 mi]; and the inhabitants of it—they add—preserved the remembrance from their ancestors of the immeasurably large island of Atlantis which had really existed there and which for many ages had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea and which itself had like-wise been sacred to Poseidon. Now these things Marcellus has written in his Aethiopica . Marcellus remains unidentified. Other ancient historians and philosophers who believed in

10250-443: The failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC or the destruction of Helike in 373 BC. The only primary sources for Atlantis are Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias ; all other mentions of the island are based on them. The dialogues claim to quote Solon , who visited Egypt between 590 and 580 BC; they state that he translated Egyptian records of Atlantis. Plato introduced Atlantis in Timaeus , written in 360 BC: For it

10375-486: The fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent. The four people appearing in those two dialogues are the politicians Critias and Hermocrates as well as the philosophers Socrates and Timaeus of Locri , although only Critias speaks of Atlantis. In his works Plato makes extensive use of

10500-747: The government then existing, reviled as it was by many, a revolution took place; and the revolution was headed by fifty-one leaders, of whom eleven were in the City and ten in the Piraeus (each of these sections dealing with the market and with all municipal matters requiring management) and Thirty were established as irresponsible rulers of all. Now of these some were actually connections and acquaintances of mine; and indeed they invited me at once to join their administration, thinking it would be congenial . The feelings I then experienced, owing to my youth, were in no way surprising: for I imagined that they would administer

10625-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

10750-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

10875-712: The homeland of the Caucasian race would contradict the beliefs of older Esoteric and Theosophic groups, which taught that the Atlanteans were non-Caucasian brown-skinned peoples. Modern Esoteric groups, including the Theosophic Society, do not consider Atlantean society to have been superior or Utopian—they rather consider it a lower stage of evolution. The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce spoke frequently of Atlantis. During his "life readings", he claimed that many of his subjects were reincarnations of people who had lived there. By tapping into their collective consciousness ,

11000-604: The island of Atalantes [translator's spelling; original: " Ἀτλαντίς "] which was greater than Africa and Asia, as Plato says in the Timaeus, in one day and night was overwhelmed beneath the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies. The theologian Joseph Barber Lightfoot ( Apostolic Fathers , 1885, II, p. 84) noted on this passage: "Clement may possibly be referring to some known, but hardly accessible land, lying without

11125-471: The island of Atlantis on the authority of Solon is not a figment." The term " utopia " (from "no place") was coined by Sir Thomas More in his sixteenth-century work of fiction Utopia . Inspired by Plato 's Atlantis and travelers' accounts of the Americas , More described an imaginary land set in the New World . His idealistic vision established a connection between the Americas and utopian societies,

11250-485: The island to teach philosophy. The philosopher Crantor , a student of Plato's student Xenocrates , is cited often as an example of a writer who thought the story to be historical fact. His work, a commentary on Timaeus , is lost, but Proclus , a Neoplatonist of the fifth century AD, reports on it. The passage in question has been represented in the modern literature either as claiming that Crantor visited Egypt, had conversations with priests, and saw hieroglyphs confirming

11375-460: The miscreant deserving of exile. It was discovered in a well near a road southwest of the Athenian agora in 1936. Critias III in turn had Callaeschus, the father of Critias IV, the tyrant. The family clearly had a long and illustrious (if at times contentious) history in Athenian politics. In addition to the Solon connection, they were related to Plato 's family, equally well established among

11500-682: The moats, and were covered with brass , tin , and the precious metal orichalcum , respectively. According to Critias, 9,000 years before his lifetime a war took place between those outside the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar and those who dwelt within them. The Atlanteans had conquered the parts of Libya within the Pillars of Hercules, as far as Egypt, and the European continent as far as Tyrrhenia , and had subjected its people to slavery. The Athenians led an alliance of resistors against

11625-445: The most likely alternate author. (The " Sisyphus fragment " presumably comes from the satyr play – again, attributed to either Critias or Euripides.) Critias also wrote prose. Among his most important works were a series of "Commonwealths" or treatises on the governments of various city-states. Athens, Lacedaemonia (Sparta), and Thessaly are specific mentions made in ancient sources.  Other works include Aphorisms , Lectures , On

11750-442: The mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain; they carved docks from the rock walls of the moats. Every passage to the city was guarded by gates and towers, and a wall surrounded each ring of the city. The walls were constructed of red, white, and black rock, quarried from

11875-423: The name Crantor but with the ambiguous He ; whether this referred to Crantor or to Plato is the subject of considerable debate. Proponents of both Atlantis as a metaphorical myth and Atlantis as history have argued that the pronoun refers to Crantor. Alan Cameron argues that the pronoun should be interpreted as referring to Plato, and that, when Proclus writes that "we must bear in mind concerning this whole feat of

12000-465: The negative, yet is rather pure in style". In general he appears to have stayed in the background, or perhaps on the periphery of Athenian politics – dabbling rather than plunging headlong. All this began to change in 415. The philosopher Socrates was well known for attracting the young men of Athens' elite. He questioned democracy, conventional morality and challenged the certainty with which many intellectuals propounded their thoughts endeared him to

12125-550: The nineteenth century Atlantis revival" and is the reason the myth endures today. He unintentionally promoted an alternative method of inquiry to history and science, and the idea that myths contain hidden information that opens them to "ingenious" interpretation by people who believe they have new or special insight. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , the founder of the Theosophists , took up Donnelly 's interpretations when she wrote The Secret Doctrine (1888), which she claimed

12250-422: The northern portions and along the shore and encompassing a great plain in an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi]." Fifty stadia [9 km; 6 mi] from the coast was a mountain that was low on all sides ... broke it off all round about ...

12375-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

12500-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

12625-466: The philosopher Timaeus also describes this Earth as surrounded by the Ocean, and the Ocean as surrounded by the more remote earth. For he supposes that there is to westward an island, Atlantis, lying out in the Ocean, in the direction of Gadeira (Cadiz), of an enormous magnitude, and relates that the ten kings having procured mercenaries from the nations in this island came from the earth far away, and conquered Europe and Asia, but were afterwards conquered by

12750-423: The pillars of Hercules. But more probably he contemplated some unknown land in the far west beyond the ocean, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato ..." Other early Christian writers wrote about Atlantis, although they had mixed views on whether it once existed or was an untrustworthy myth of pagan origin. Tertullian believed Atlantis was once real and wrote that in the Atlantic Ocean once existed "[the isle] that

12875-531: The pseudoarchaeologist Augustus Le Plongeon traveled to Mesoamerica and performed some of the first excavations of many famous Mayan ruins. Le Plongeon invented narratives, such as the kingdom of Mu saga, which romantically drew connections to him, his wife Alice, and Egyptian deities Osiris and Isis , as well as to Heinrich Schliemann , who had just discovered the ancient city of Troy from Homer 's epic poetry (that had been described as merely mythical). He also believed that he had found connections between

13000-446: The rebellious adolescent minds of the younger generation. Critias was among those who gravitated to him, and the two formed a friendship that was to last many years, though eventually they drifted apart. Plato, who cast Socrates as the protagonist of most of his dialogues, included Critias as an interlocutor in two of them. Though these were written many years after both Socrates and Critias were dead, Plato made no mention in them of

13125-467: The rest of the citizens had been forcibly disarmed. This body would constitute the "citizenry" of the new Athens. Socrates and Xenophon (our source for much of this history) were among this group. During the next few months, as the Thirty consolidated their hold on the institutions of government, they arrested, confiscated the property of, and summarily executed a wider and wider swath of Athenian citizens and resident aliens ( metics ). At every step, Critias

13250-425: The same vein. Other occultists followed the same lead, at least to the point of tracing the lineage of occult practices back to Atlantis. Among the most famous is Dion Fortune in her Esoteric Orders and Their Work . Drawing on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and Hanns Hörbiger , Egon Friedell started his book Kulturgeschichte des Altertums  [ de ] , and thus his historical analysis of antiquity, with

13375-571: The sea, its inhabitants fled to western Europe; but Ammianus, in fact, says that "the Drasidae (Druids) recall that a part of the population is indigenous but others also migrated in from islands and lands beyond the Rhine " ( Res Gestae 15.9), an indication that the immigrants came to Gaul from the north (Britain, the Netherlands, or Germany), not from a theorized location in the Atlantic Ocean to

13500-645: The south-west. Instead, the Celts who dwelled along the ocean were reported to venerate twin gods, ( Dioscori ), who appeared to them coming from that ocean. During the early first century, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo wrote about the destruction of Atlantis in his On the Eternity of the World , xxvi. 141, in a longer passage allegedly citing Aristotle's successor Theophrastus : ... And

13625-421: The standards or criteria. The Flemish cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius is believed to have been the first person to imagine that the continents were joined before drifting to their present positions. In the 1596 edition of his Thesaurus Geographicus he wrote: "Unless it be a fable, the island of Gadir or Gades [ Cadiz ] will be the remaining part of the island of Atlantis or America, which

13750-742: The story's fictional nature, there is still debate on what served as its inspiration. Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors from older traditions, as he did with the story of Gyges . This led a number of scholars to suggest possible inspiration of Atlantis from Egyptian records of the Thera eruption , the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War . Others have rejected this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato created an entirely fictional account, drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events such as

13875-462: The story, or, as claiming that he learned about them from other visitors to Egypt. Proclus wrote: As for the whole of this account of the Atlanteans, some say that it is unadorned history, such as Crantor, the first commentator on Plato. Crantor also says that Plato's contemporaries used to criticize him jokingly for not being the inventor of his Republic but copying the institutions of the Egyptians. Plato took these critics seriously enough to assign to

14000-475: The subjects of which these supply illustrations: Justice, Holiness, and so forth?" "Indeed yes," said Charicles, "and cowherds too: else you may find the cattle decrease." Many Athenians had left the city when the attacks of the Thirty began. In the spring of 403, they returned under the leadership of Thrasyboulus and eventually commandeered the fortress called Munichia in Peiraieus , Athens' port city. When

14125-659: The surrounding area as his fiefdom . Atlas's twin Gadeirus, or Eumelus in Greek, was given the extremity of the island toward the pillars of Hercules. The other four pairs of twins—Ampheres and Evaemon, Mneseus and Autochthon, Elasippus and Mestor, and Azaes and Diaprepes—were also given "rule over many men, and a large territory." Poseidon carved the mountain where his love dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circular moats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from

14250-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

14375-418: The temple of Neith the column, completely covered with hieroglyphs, on which the history of Atlantis was recorded. Scholars translated it for him, and he testified that their account fully agreed with Plato's account of Atlantis" or J. V. Luce's suggestion that Crantor sent "a special enquiry to Egypt" and that he may simply be referring to Plato's own claims. Another passage from the commentary by Proclus on

14500-490: The time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time) and the alleged location of Atlantis ("beyond the Pillars of Hercules ") gave rise to much pseudoscientific speculation. As a consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films. While present-day philologists and classicists agree on

14625-595: The war. They succeeded in convincing the Athenian Assembly that governmental change was necessary and instituted in place of it the council of the Four Hundred . The coup was put down a few months later and democracy gradually restored. Critias has been suspected by some modern scholars as being a member of the Four Hundred, but there is little evidence of this. Arguing against that possibility

14750-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

14875-413: Was at that time assisting the Athenian fleet at Samos and attempting to ingratiate himself with those who had banished him a few years earlier. These two actions, while not clearly exonerating Critias, show that he was politically adept enough to shed the stigma of participating in the takeover, if he indeed had. Alcibiades' rapprochement with his fellow citizens was not to last. In 407, while commanding

15000-423: Was equal in size to Libya or Asia" referring to Plato's geographical description of Atlantis. The early Christian apologist writer Arnobius also believed Atlantis once existed, but blamed its destruction on pagans. Cosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth century wrote of Atlantis in his Christian Topography in an attempt to prove his theory that the world was flat and surrounded by water: ... In like manner

15125-494: Was not sunk (as Plato reports in the Timaeus ) so much as torn away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and flood... The traces of the ruptures are shown by the projections of Europe and Africa and the indentations of America in the parts of the coasts of these three said lands that face each other to anyone who, using a map of the world, carefully considered them. So that anyone may say with Strabo in Book 2, that what Plato says of

15250-460: Was originally dictated in Atlantis. She maintained that the Atlanteans were cultural heroes (contrary to Plato , who describes them mainly as a military threat). She believed in a form of racial evolution (as opposed to primate evolution). In her process of evolution the Atlanteans were the fourth " root race ", which were succeeded by the fifth, the " Aryan race ", which she identified with the modern human race. In her book, Blavatsky reported that

15375-399: Was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in

15500-414: Was somehow related to Mayan and Aztec culture. The French scholar Brasseur de Bourbourg traveled extensively through Mesoamerica in the mid-1800s, and was renowned for his translations of Mayan texts, most notably the sacred book Popol Vuh , as well as a comprehensive history of the region. Soon after these publications, however, Brasseur de Bourbourg lost his academic credibility, due to his claim that

15625-408: Was the leading advocate for more extreme levels of violence, to the point where he was getting resistance even from within the Thirty. The leading "moderate" was Theramenes , and his continued cautioning against the continuing destruction ultimately got him arrested and executed at Critias' direction. Critias' relationship with Socrates withered during these months. At one point, the Thirty compelled

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