Subject of the Kritias. Solon and the Egyptian priests. Citizens of Platonic Republic are identified with ancient Athenians.

The subject embraced by the Kritias is traced back to an unfinished epic poem of Solon, intended by that poet and lawgiver to celebrate a memorable exploit of Athenian antiquity, which he had heard from the Priests of the Goddess Neith or AthÊnÊ at Sais in Egypt. These priests (Plato tells us) treated the Greeks as children, compared with the venerable antiquity of their own ancestors; they despised the short backward reckoning of the heroic genealogies at Athens or Argos. There were in the temple of AthÊnÊ at Sais records of past time for 9000 years back: and among these records was one, of that date, commemorating a glorious exploit, of the Athenians as they then had been, unknown to Solon or any of his countrymen.148 The Athens, of 9000 years anterior to Solon, had been great, powerful, courageous, admirably governed, and distinguished for every kind of virtue.149 AthÊnÊ, the presiding Goddess both of Athens and of Sais, had bestowed upon the Athenians a salubrious climate, fertile soil, a healthy breed of citizens, and highly endowed intelligence. Under her auspices, they were excellent alike in war and in philosophy.150 The separation of professions was fully realised among them, according to the principle laid down in the Republic as the only foundation for a good commonwealth. The military class, composed of both sexes, was quartered in barrack on the akropolis; which was at that time more spacious than it had since become — and which possessed then, in common with the whole surface of Attica, a rich soil covering that rocky bottom to which it had been reduced in the Platonic age, through successive deluges.151 These soldiers, male and female, were maintained by contributions from the remaining community: they lived in perpetual drill, having neither separate property, nor separate families, nor gold nor silver: lastly, their procreation was strictly regulated, and their numbers kept from either increase or diminution.152 The husbandmen and the artizans were alike excellent in their respective professions, to which they were exclusively confined:153 HephÆstus being the partner of AthÊnÊ in joint tutelary presidency, and joint occupation of the central temple on the akropolis. Thus admirably administered, the Athenians were not only powerful at home, but also chiefs or leaders of all the cities comprised under the Hellenic name: chiefs by the voluntary choice and consent of the subordinates. But the old Attic race by whom these achievements had been performed, belonged to a former geological period: they had perished, nearly all, by violent catastrophe — leaving the actual Athenians as imperfect representatives.

Plato professes that what he is about to recount is matter of history, recorded by Egyptian priests.

Such was the enviable condition of Athens and Attica, at a period 9400 years before the Christian era. The Platonic Kritias takes pains to assure us that the statement was true, both as to facts and as to dates: that he had heard it himself when a boy of ten years old, from his grandfather Kritias, then ninety years old, whose father Dropides had been the intimate friend of Solon: and that Solon had heard it from the priests at Sais, who offered to show him the contemporary record of all its details in their temple archives.154 Kritias now proposes to repeat this narrative to Sokrates, as a fulfilment of the wish expressed by the latter to see the citizens of the Platonic Republic exhibited in full action and movement. For the Athenians of 9000 years before, having been organised on the principles of that Republic, may fairly be taken as representing its citizens. And it will be more satisfactory to Sokrates to hear a recital of real history than a series of imagined exploits.155

Description of the vast island of Atlantis and its powerful kings.

Accordingly, Kritias proceeds to describe, in some detail, the formidable invaders against whom these old Athenians had successfully contended: the inhabitants of the vast island Atlantis (larger than Libya and Asia united), which once occupied most of the space now filled by the great ocean westward of Gades and the pillars of HeraklÊs. This prodigious island was governed by ten kings of a common ancestry: descending respectively from ten sons (among whom Atlas was first-born and chief) of the God Poseidon by the indigenous Nymph Kleito.156 We read an imposing description of its large population and abundant produce of every kind: grain for man, pasture for animals, elephants being abundant among them:157 timber and metals of all varieties: besides which the central city, with its works for defence, and its artificial canals, bridges, and harbour, is depicted as a wonder to behold.158 The temple of Poseidon was magnificent and of vast dimensions, though in barbaric style.159 The harbour, surrounded by a dense and industrious population, was full of trading vessels arriving with merchandise from all quarters.160

Corruption and wickedness of the Atlantid people.

The Atlantid kings, besides this great power and prosperity at home, exercised dominion over all Libya as far as Egypt, and over all Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. The corrupting influence of such vast power was at first counteracted by their divine descent and the attributes attached to it: but the divine attributes became more and more adulterated at each successive generation, so that the breed was no longer qualified to contend against corruption. The kings came to be intoxicated with wealth, full of exorbitant ambition and rapacity, reckless of temperance or justice. The measure of their iniquity at length became full; and Zeus was constrained to take notice of it, for the purpose of inflicting the chastisement which the case required.161 He summoned a meeting of the Gods, at his own Panoptikon in the centre of the Kosmos and there addressed them.

Conjectures as to what the Platonic Kritias would have been — an ethical epic in prose.

At this critical moment the fragment called Kritias breaks off. We do not know what was the plan which Plato (in the true spirit of the ancient epic) was about to put into the mouth of Zeus, for the information of the divine agora. We learn only that Plato intended to recount an invasion of Attica, by an army of Atlantids almost irresistible: and the glorious repulse thereof by Athens and her allies, with very inferior forces. The tale would have borne much resemblance to the Persian invasion of Greece, as recounted by Herodotus: but Plato, while employing the same religious agencies which that historian puts in the foreground, would probably have invested them with a more ethical character, and would have arranged the narrative so as to illustrate the triumph of philosophical Reason and disciplined Energy, over gigantic, impetuous, and reckless Strength. He would have described in detail the heroic valour and endurance of the trained Athenian Soldiers, women as well as men: and he would have embodied the superior Reason of the philosophical Chiefs not merely in prudent orders given to subordinates, but also in wise discourses162 and deliberations such as we read in the CyropÆdia of Xenophon. We should have had an edifying epic in prose, if Plato had completed his project. Unfortunately we know only two small fractions of it: first the introductory prologue (which I have already noticed) — lastly, the concluding catastrophe. The conclusion was, that both the victors and the vanquished disappeared altogether, and became extinct. Terrific earthquakes, and not less terrific deluges, shook and overspread the earth. The whole military caste of Attica were, in one day and night, swallowed up into the bowels of the earth (the same release as Zeus granted to the just Amphiaraus)163 and no more heard of: while not only the population of Atlantis, but that entire island itself, was submerged beneath the ocean. The subsidence of this vast island has rendered navigation impossible; there is nothing in the Atlantic Ocean but shallow water and mud.164

Plato represents the epic Kritias as matter of recorded history.

The epic of Plato would thus have concluded with an appalling catastrophe of physical agencies or divine prodigies (such as that which we read at the close of the Æschylean Prometheus165), under which both the contending parties perished. These gigantic outbursts of kosmical forces, along with the other facts, Plato affirms to have been recorded in the archives of the Egyptian priests. He wishes us to believe that the whole transaction is historical. As to particular narratives, the line between truth and fiction was obscurely drawn in his mind.

Another remark here deserving of notice is, That in this epic of the Kritias, Plato introduces the violent and destructive kosmical agencies (earthquakes, deluges, and the like) as frequently occurring, and as one cause of the periodical destruction of many races or communities. It is in this way that the Egyptian priest is made to explain to Solon the reason why no long-continued past records were preserved in Attica, or anywhere else, except in Egypt.166 This last-mentioned country was exempt from such calamities: but in other countries, the thread of tradition was frequently broken, because the whole race (except a few) were periodically destroyed by deluges or conflagrations, leaving only a few survivors miserably poor, without arts or letters. The affirmation of these frequent destructions stands in marked contradiction with the chief thesis announced at the beginning of the TimÆus — viz., the beauty and perfection of the Kosmos.