{"schema_version":1,"access":"public","rights":"Public-domain or compatibly licensed source editions; provenance is retained per record.","work":{"slug":"critias","title":"Critias","author":"Plato","tradition":"greek","language":"grc","genre":"philosophical dialogue","period":"c. 360 BCE","source_url":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/master/data/tlg0059/tlg032/tlg0059.tlg032.perseus-grc2.xml","original":{"text":"### Stephanus 106\n\n[106a] ΤΙ. ὡς ἅσμενος, ὦ Σώκρατες, οἷον ἐκ μακρᾶς ἀναπεπαυμένος ὁδοῦ, νῦν οὕτως ἐκ τῆς τοῦ λόγου διαπορείας ἀγαπητῶς ἀπήλλαγμαι. τῷ δὲ πρὶν μὲν πάλαι ποτʼ ἔργῳ, νῦν δὲ λόγοις ἄρτι θεῷ γεγονότι προσεύχομαι, τῶν ῥηθέντων ὅσα μὲν ἐρρήθη μετρίως, σωτηρίαν ἡμῖν αὐτὸν αὐτῶν [106b] διδόναι, παρὰ μέλος δὲ εἴ τι περὶ αὐτῶν ἄκοντες εἴπομεν, δίκην τὴν πρέπουσαν ἐπιτιθέναι. δίκη δὲ ὀρθὴ τὸν πλημμελοῦντα ἐμμελῆ ποιεῖν· ἵνʼ οὖν τὸ λοιπὸν τοὺς περὶ θεῶν γενέσεως ὀρθῶς λέγωμεν λόγους, φάρμακον ἡμῖν αὐτὸν τελεώτατον καὶ ἄριστον φαρμάκων ἐπιστήμην εὐχόμεθα διδόναι, προσευξάμενοι δὲ παραδίδομεν κατὰ τὰς ὁμολογίας Κριτίᾳ τὸν ἑξῆς λόγον.\n\nΚΡΙ. ἀλλʼ, ὦ Τίμαιε, δέχομαι μέν, ᾧ δὲ καὶ σὺ κατʼ [106c] ἀρχὰς ἐχρήσω, συγγνώμην αἰτούμενος ὡς περὶ μεγάλων μέλλων λέγειν, ταὐτὸν καὶ νῦν ἐγὼ τοῦτο παραιτοῦμαι,\n\n### Stephanus 107\n\n[107a] μειζόνως δὲ αὐτοῦ τυχεῖν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἀξιῶ περὶ τῶν μελλόντων ῥηθήσεσθαι.\n\nΚΡΙ. καίτοι σχεδὸν μὲν οἶδα παραίτησιν εὖ μάλα φιλότιμον καὶ τοῦ δέοντος ἀγροικοτέραν μέλλων παραιτεῖσθαι, ῥητέον δὲ ὅμως. ὡς μὲν γὰρ οὐκ εὖ τὰ παρὰ σοῦ λεχθέντα εἴρηται, τίς ἂν ἐπιχειρήσειεν ἔμφρων λέγειν; ὅτι δὲ τὰ ῥηθησόμενα πλείονος συγγνώμης δεῖται χαλεπώτερα ὄντα, τοῦτο πειρατέον πῃ διδάξαι. περὶ θεῶν γάρ, ὦ Τίμαιε, λέγοντά τι πρὸς ἀνθρώπους δοκεῖν ἱκανῶς [107b] λέγειν ῥᾷον ἢ περὶ θνητῶν πρὸς ἡμᾶς. ἡ γὰρ ἀπειρία καὶ σφόδρα ἄγνοια τῶν ἀκουόντων περὶ ὧν ἂν οὕτως ἔχωσιν πολλὴν εὐπορίαν παρέχεσθον τῷ μέλλοντι λέγειν τι περὶ αὐτῶν· περὶ δὲ δὴ θεῶν ἴσμεν ὡς ἔχομεν. ἵνα δὲ σαφέστερον ὃ λέγω δηλώσω, τῇδέ μοι συνεπίσπεσθε. μίμησιν μὲν γὰρ δὴ καὶ ἀπεικασίαν τὰ παρὰ πάντων ἡμῶν ῥηθέντα χρεών που γενέσθαι· τὴν δὲ τῶν γραφέων εἰδωλοποιίαν περὶ τὰ θεῖά τε καὶ τὰ ἀνθρώπινα σώματα γιγνομένην [107c] ἴδωμεν ῥᾳστώνης τε πέρι καὶ χαλεπότητος πρὸς τὸ τοῖς ὁρῶσιν δοκεῖν ἀποχρώντως μεμιμῆσθαι, καὶ κατοψόμεθα ὅτι γῆν μὲν καὶ ὄρη καὶ ποταμοὺς καὶ ὕλην οὐρανόν τε σύμπαντα καὶ τὰ περὶ αὐτὸν ὄντα καὶ ἰόντα πρῶτον μὲν ἀγαπῶμεν ἄν τίς τι καὶ βραχὺ πρὸς ὁμοιότητα αὐτῶν ἀπομιμεῖσθαι δυνατὸς ᾖ, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις, ἅτε οὐδὲν εἰδότες ἀκριβὲς περὶ τῶν τοιούτων, οὔτε ἐξετάζομεν οὔτε ἐλέγχομεν τὰ γεγραμμένα, [107d] σκιαγραφίᾳ δὲ ἀσαφεῖ καὶ ἀπατηλῷ χρώμεθα περὶ αὐτά· τὰ δὲ ἡμέτερα ὁπόταν τις ἐπιχειρῇ σώματα ἀπεικάζειν, ὀξέως αἰσθανόμενοι τὸ παραλειπόμενον διὰ τὴν ἀεὶ σύνοικον κατανόησιν χαλεποὶ κριταὶ γιγνόμεθα τῷ μὴ πάσας πάντως τὰς ὁμοιότητας ἀποδιδόντι. ταὐτὸν δὴ καὶ κατὰ τοὺς λόγους ἰδεῖν δεῖ γιγνόμενον, ὅτι τὰ μὲν οὐράνια καὶ θεῖα ἀγαπῶμεν καὶ σμικρῶς εἰκότα λεγόμενα, τὰ δὲ θνητὰ καὶ ἀνθρώπινα ἀκριβῶς ἐξετάζομεν. ἐκ δὴ τοῦ παραχρῆμα [107e] νῦν λεγόμενα, τὸ πρέπον ἂν μὴ δυνώμεθα πάντως ἀποδιδόναι, συγγιγνώσκειν χρεών· οὐ γὰρ ὡς ῥᾴδια τὰ θνητὰ ἀλλʼ ὡς χαλεπὰ πρὸς δόξαν ὄντα ἀπεικάζειν δεῖ διανοεῖσθαι.\n\n### Stephanus 108\n\n[108a] ΚΡΙ. ταῦτα δὴ βουλόμενος ὑμᾶς ὑπομνῆσαι, καὶ τὸ τῆς συγγνώμης οὐκ ἔλαττον ἀλλὰ μεῖζον αἰτῶν περὶ τῶν μελλόντων ῥηθήσεσθαι, πάντα ταῦτα εἴρηκα, ὦ Σώκρατες. εἰ δὴ δικαίως αἰτεῖν φαίνομαι τὴν δωρεάν, ἑκόντες δίδοτε.\n\nΣΩ. τί δʼ οὐ μέλλομεν, ὦ Κριτία, διδόναι; καὶ πρός γε ἔτι τρίτῳ δεδόσθω ταὐτὸν τοῦτο Ἑρμοκράτει παρʼ ἡμῶν. δῆλον γὰρ ὡς ὀλίγον ὕστερον, ὅταν αὐτὸν δέῃ λέγειν, [108b] παραιτήσεται καθάπερ ὑμεῖς· ἵνʼ οὖν ἑτέραν ἀρχὴν ἐκπορίζηται καὶ μὴ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀναγκασθῇ λέγειν, ὡς ὑπαρχούσης αὐτῷ συγγνώμης εἰς τότε οὕτω λεγέτω. προλέγω γε μήν, ὦ φίλε Κριτία, σοὶ τὴν τοῦ θεάτρου διάνοιαν, ὅτι θαυμαστῶς ὁ πρότερος ηὐδοκίμηκεν ἐν αὐτῷ ποιητής, ὥστε τῆς συγγνώμης δεήσει τινός σοι παμπόλλης, εἰ μέλλεις αὐτὰ δυνατὸς γενέσθαι παραλαβεῖν.\n\nΕΡ. ταὐτὸν μήν, ὦ Σώκρατες, κἀμοὶ παραγγέλλεις ὅπερ [108c] τῷδε. ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἀθυμοῦντες ἄνδρες οὔπω τρόπαιον ἔστησαν, ὦ Κριτία· προϊέναι τε οὖν ἐπὶ τὸν λόγον ἀνδρείως χρή, καὶ τὸν Παίωνά τε καὶ τὰς μούσας ἐπικαλούμενον τοὺς παλαιοὺς πολίτας ἀγαθοὺς ὄντας ἀναφαίνειν τε καὶ ὑμνεῖν.\n\nΚΡΙ. ὦ φίλε Ἑρμόκρατες, τῆς ὑστέρας τεταγμένος, ἐπίπροσθεν ἔχων ἄλλον, ἔτι θαρρεῖς. τοῦτο μὲν οὖν οἷόν ἐστιν, αὐτό σοι τάχα δηλώσει· παραμυθουμένῳ δʼ οὖν καὶ [108d] παραθαρρύνοντί σοι πειστέον, καὶ πρὸς οἷς θεοῖς εἶπες τούς τε ἄλλους κλητέον καὶ δὴ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα Μνημοσύνην. σχεδὸν γὰρ τὰ μέγιστα ἡμῖν τῶν λόγων ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ θεῷ πάντʼ ἐστίν· μνησθέντες γὰρ ἱκανῶς καὶ ἀπαγγείλαντες τά ποτε ῥηθέντα ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερέων καὶ δεῦρο ὑπὸ Σόλωνος κομισθέντα σχεδὸν οἶδʼ ὅτι τῷδε τῷ θεάτρῳ δόξομεν τὰ προσήκοντα μετρίως ἀποτετελεκέναι. τοῦτʼ οὖν αὔτʼ ἤδη δραστέον, καὶ μελλητέον οὐδὲν ἔτι.\n\n[108e]\n\nπάντων δὴ πρῶτον μνησθῶμεν ὅτι τὸ κεφάλαιον ἦν ἐνακισχίλια ἔτη, ἀφʼ οὗ γεγονὼς ἐμηνύθη πόλεμος τοῖς θʼ ὑπὲρ Ἡρακλείας στήλας ἔξω κατοικοῦσιν καὶ τοῖς ἐντὸς πᾶσιν· ὃν δεῖ νῦν διαπεραίνειν. τῶν μὲν οὖν ἥδε ἡ πόλις ἄρξασα καὶ πάντα τὸν πόλεμον διαπολεμήσασα ἐλέγετο, τῶν δʼ οἱ τῆς Ἀτλαντίδος νήσου βασιλῆς, ἣν δὴ Λιβύης καὶ Ἀσίας μείζω νῆσον οὖσαν ἔφαμεν εἶναί ποτε, νῦν δὲ ὑπὸ σεισμῶν δῦσαν ἄπορον πηλὸν τοῖς ἐνθένδε ἐκπλέουσιν\n\n### Stephanus 109\n\n[109a] ἐπὶ τὸ πᾶν πέλαγος, ὥστε μηκέτι πορεύεσθαι, κωλυτὴν παρασχεῖν.\n\nΚΡΙ. τὰ μὲν δὴ πολλὰ ἔθνη βάρβαρα, καὶ ὅσα Ἑλλήνων ἦν γένη τότε, καθʼ ἕκαστα ἡ τοῦ λόγου διέξοδος οἷον ἀνειλλομένη τὸ προστυχὸν ἑκασταχοῦ δηλώσει· τὸ δὲ Ἀθηναίων τε τῶν τότε καὶ τῶν ἐναντίων, οἷς διεπολέμησαν, ἀνάγκη κατʼ ἀρχὰς διελθεῖν πρῶτα, τήν τε δύναμιν ἑκατέρων καὶ τὰς πολιτείας. αὐτῶν δὲ τούτων τὰ τῇδε ἔμπροσθεν προτιμητέον εἰπεῖν. [109b]\n\nθεοὶ γὰρ ἅπασαν γῆν ποτε κατὰ τοὺς τόπους διελάγχανον—οὐ κατʼ ἔριν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ὀρθὸν ἔχοι λόγον θεοὺς ἀγνοεῖν τὰ πρέποντα ἑκάστοις αὑτῶν, οὐδʼ αὖ γιγνώσκοντας τὸ μᾶλλον ἄλλοις προσῆκον τοῦτο ἑτέρους αὑτοῖς διʼ ἐρίδων ἐπιχειρεῖν κτᾶσθαι—δίκης δὴ κλήροις τὸ φίλον λαγχάνοντες κατῴκιζον τὰς χώρας, καὶ κατοικίσαντες, οἷον νομῆς ποίμνια, κτήματα καὶ θρέμματα ἑαυτῶν ἡμᾶς ἔτρεφον, πλὴν οὐ σώμασι [109c] σώματα βιαζόμενοι, καθάπερ ποιμένες κτήνη πληγῇ νέμοντες, ἀλλʼ ᾗ μάλιστα εὔστροφον ζῷον, ἐκ πρύμνης ἀπευθύνοντες, οἷον οἴακι πειθοῖ ψυχῆς ἐφαπτόμενοι κατὰ τὴν αὐτῶν διάνοιαν, οὕτως ἄγοντες τὸ θνητὸν πᾶν ἐκυβέρνων. ἄλλοι μὲν οὖν κατʼ ἄλλους τόπους κληρουχήσαντες θεῶν ἐκεῖνα ἐκόσμουν, Ἥφαιστος δὲ κοινὴν καὶ Ἀθηνᾶ φύσιν ἔχοντες, ἅμα μὲν ἀδελφὴν ἐκ ταὐτοῦ πατρός, ἅμα δὲ φιλοσοφίᾳ φιλοτεχνίᾳ τε ἐπὶ τὰ αὐτὰ ἐλθόντες, οὕτω μίαν ἄμφω λῆξιν τήνδε τὴν χώραν εἰλήχατον ὡς οἰκείαν καὶ πρόσφορον ἀρετῇ [109d] καὶ φρονήσει πεφυκυῖαν, ἄνδρας δὲ ἀγαθοὺς ἐμποιήσαντες αὐτόχθονας ἐπὶ νοῦν ἔθεσαν τὴν τῆς πολιτείας τάξιν· ὧν τὰ μὲν ὀνόματα σέσωται, τὰ δὲ ἔργα διὰ τὰς τῶν παραλαμβανόντων φθορὰς καὶ τὰ μήκη τῶν χρόνων ἠφανίσθη. τὸ γὰρ περιλειπόμενον ἀεὶ γένος, ὥσπερ καὶ πρόσθεν ἐρρήθη, κατελείπετο ὄρειον καὶ ἀγράμματον, τῶν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ δυναστῶν τὰ ὀνόματα ἀκηκοὸς μόνον καὶ βραχέα πρὸς αὐτοῖς τῶν ἔργων. τὰ μὲν οὖν ὀνόματα τοῖς ἐκγόνοις ἐτίθεντο [109e] ἀγαπῶντες, τὰς δὲ ἀρετὰς καὶ τοὺς νόμους τῶν ἔμπροσθεν οὐκ εἰδότες, εἰ μὴ σκοτεινὰς περὶ ἑκάστων τινὰς ἀκοάς, ἐν ἀπορίᾳ δὲ τῶν ἀναγκαίων ἐπὶ πολλὰς γενεὰς ὄντες αὐτοὶ\n\n### Stephanus 110\n\n[110a] καὶ παῖδες, πρὸς οἷς ἠπόρουν τὸν νοῦν ἔχοντες, τούτων πέρι καὶ τοὺς λόγους ποιούμενοι, τῶν ἐν τοῖς πρόσθεν καὶ πάλαι ποτὲ γεγονότων ἠμέλουν.\n\nΚΡΙ. μυθολογία γὰρ ἀναζήτησίς τε τῶν παλαιῶν μετὰ σχολῆς ἅμʼ ἐπὶ τὰς πόλεις ἔρχεσθον, ὅταν ἴδητόν τισιν ἤδη τοῦ βίου τἀναγκαῖα κατεσκευασμένα, πρὶν δὲ οὔ. ταύτῃ δὴ τὰ τῶν παλαιῶν ὀνόματα ἄνευ τῶν ἔργων διασέσωται. λέγω δὲ αὐτὰ τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι Κέκροπός τε καὶ Ἐρεχθέως καὶ Ἐριχθονίου καὶ Ἐρυσίχθονος [110b] τῶν τε ἄλλων τὰ πλεῖστα ὅσαπερ καὶ Θησέως τῶν ἄνω περὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων ἑκάστων ἀπομνημονεύεται, τούτων ἐκείνους τὰ πολλὰ ἐπονομάζοντας τοὺς ἱερέας Σόλων ἔφη τὸν τότε διηγεῖσθαι πόλεμον, καὶ τὰ τῶν γυναικῶν κατὰ τὰ αὐτά. καὶ δὴ καὶ τὸ τῆς θεοῦ σχῆμα καὶ ἄγαλμα, ὡς κοινὰ τότʼ ἦν τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα ταῖς τε γυναιξὶ καὶ τοῖς ἀνδράσι τὰ περὶ τὸν πόλεμον, οὕτω κατʼ ἐκεῖνον τὸν νόμον ὡπλισμένην τὴν θεὸν ἀνάθημα εἶναι τοῖς τότε, ἔνδειγμα ὅτι πάνθʼ [110c] ὅσα σύννομα ζῷα θήλεα καὶ ὅσα ἄρρενα, τὴν προσήκουσαν ἀρετὴν ἑκάστῳ γένει πᾶν κοινῇ δυνατὸν ἐπιτηδεύειν πέφυκεν.\n\nὤικει δὲ δὴ τότʼ ἐν τῇδε τῇ χώρᾳ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα ἔθνη τῶν πολιτῶν περὶ τὰς δημιουργίας ὄντα καὶ τὴν ἐκ τῆς γῆς τροφήν, τὸ δὲ μάχιμον ὑπʼ ἀνδρῶν θείων κατʼ ἀρχὰς ἀφορισθὲν ᾤκει χωρίς, πάντα εἰς τροφὴν καὶ παίδευσιν τὰ προσήκοντα ἔχον, ἴδιον μὲν αὐτῶν οὐδεὶς οὐδὲν κεκτημένος, [110d] ἅπαντα δὲ πάντων κοινὰ νομίζοντες αὑτῶν, πέρα δὲ ἱκανῆς τροφῆς οὐδὲν ἀξιοῦντες παρὰ τῶν ἄλλων δέχεσθαι πολιτῶν, καὶ πάντα δὴ τὰ χθὲς λεχθέντα ἐπιτηδεύματα ἐπιτηδεύοντες, ὅσα περὶ τῶν ὑποτεθέντων ἐρρήθη φυλάκων. καὶ δὴ καὶ τὸ περὶ τῆς χώρας ἡμῶν πιθανὸν καὶ ἀληθὲς ἐλέγετο, πρῶτον μὲν τοὺς ὅρους αὐτὴν ἐν τῷ τότʼ ἔχειν ἀφωρισμένους πρὸς τὸν Ἰσθμὸν καὶ τὸ κατὰ τὴν ἄλλην ἤπειρον μέχρι τοῦ [110e] Κιθαιρῶνος καὶ Πάρνηθος τῶν ἄκρων, καταβαίνειν δὲ τοὺς ὅρους ἐν δεξιᾷ τὴν Ὠρωπίαν ἔχοντας, ἐν ἀριστερᾷ δὲ πρὸς θαλάττης ἀφορίζοντας τὸν Ἀσωπόν· ἀρετῇ δὲ πᾶσαν γῆν ὑπὸ τῆς ἐνθάδε ὑπερβάλλεσθαι, διὸ καὶ δυνατὴν εἶναι τότε τρέφειν τὴν χώραν στρατόπεδον πολὺ τῶν περὶ γῆν ἀργὸν ἔργων.\n\nΚΡΙ. μέγα δὲ τεκμήριον ἀρετῆς· τὸ γὰρ νῦν αὐτῆς λείψανον ἐνάμιλλόν ἐστι πρὸς ἡντινοῦν τῷ πάμφορον εὔκαρπόν\n\n### Stephanus 111\n\n[111a] τε εἶναι καὶ τοῖς ζῴοις πᾶσιν εὔβοτον. τότε δὲ πρὸς τῷ κάλλει καὶ παμπλήθη ταῦτα ἔφερεν. πῶς οὖν δὴ τοῦτο πιστόν, καὶ κατὰ τί λείψανον τῆς τότε γῆς ὀρθῶς ἂν λέγοιτο; πᾶσα ἀπὸ τῆς ἄλλης ἠπείρου μακρὰ προτείνουσα εἰς τὸ πέλαγος οἷον ἄκρα κεῖται· τὸ δὴ τῆς θαλάττης ἀγγεῖον περὶ αὐτὴν τυγχάνει πᾶν ἀγχιβαθὲς ὄν. πολλῶν οὖν γεγονότων καὶ μεγάλων κατακλυσμῶν ἐν τοῖς ἐνακισχιλίοις ἔτεσι—τοσαῦτα γὰρ πρὸς τὸν νῦν ἀπʼ ἐκείνου τοῦ χρόνου [111b] γέγονεν ἔτη—τὸ τῆς γῆς ἐν τούτοις τοῖς χρόνοις καὶ πάθεσιν ἐκ τῶν ὑψηλῶν ἀπορρέον οὔτε χῶμα, ὡς ἐν ἄλλοις τόποις, προχοῖ λόγου ἄξιον ἀεί τε κύκλῳ περιρρέον εἰς βάθος ἀφανίζεται· λέλειπται δή, καθάπερ ἐν ταῖς σμικραῖς νήσοις, πρὸς τὰ τότε τὰ νῦν οἷον νοσήσαντος σώματος ὀστᾶ, περιερρυηκυίας τῆς γῆς ὅση πίειρα καὶ μαλακή, τοῦ λεπτοῦ σώματος τῆς χώρας μόνου λειφθέντος. τότε δὲ ἀκέραιος [111c] οὖσα τά τε ὄρη γηλόφους ὑψηλοὺς εἶχε, καὶ τὰ φελλέως νῦν ὀνομασθέντα πεδία πλήρη γῆς πιείρας ἐκέκτητο, καὶ πολλὴν ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσιν ὕλην εἶχεν, ἧς καὶ νῦν ἔτι φανερὰ τεκμήρια· τῶν γὰρ ὀρῶν ἔστιν ἃ νῦν μὲν ἔχει μελίτταις μόναις τροφήν, χρόνος δʼ οὐ πάμπολυς ὅτε δένδρων αὐτόθεν εἰς οἰκοδομήσεις τὰς μεγίστας ἐρεψίμων τμηθέντων στεγάσματʼ ἐστὶν ἔτι σᾶ. πολλὰ δʼ ἦν ἄλλʼ ἥμερα ὑψηλὰ δένδρα, νομὴν δὲ βοσκήμασιν ἀμήχανον ἔφερεν. καὶ δὴ καὶ [111d] τὸ κατʼ ἐνιαυτὸν ὕδωρ ἐκαρποῦτʼ ἐκ Διός, οὐχ ὡς νῦν ἀπολλῦσα ῥέον ἀπὸ ψιλῆς τῆς γῆς εἰς θάλατταν, ἀλλὰ πολλὴν ἔχουσα καὶ εἰς αὐτὴν καταδεχομένη, τῇ κεραμίδι στεγούσῃ γῇ διαταμιευομένη, τὸ καταποθὲν ἐκ τῶν ὑψηλῶν ὕδωρ εἰς τὰ κοῖλα ἀφιεῖσα κατὰ πάντας τοὺς τόπους παρείχετο ἄφθονα κρηνῶν καὶ ποταμῶν νάματα, ὧν καὶ νῦν ἔτι ἐπὶ ταῖς πηγαῖς πρότερον οὔσαις ἱερὰ λελειμμένα ἐστὶν σημεῖα ὅτι περὶ αὐτῆς ἀληθῆ λέγεται τὰ νῦν. [111e]\n\nτὰ μὲν οὖν τῆς ἄλλης χώρας φύσει τε οὕτως εἶχε, καὶ διεκεκόσμητο ὡς εἰκὸς ὑπὸ γεωργῶν μὲν ἀληθινῶν καὶ πραττόντων αὐτὸ τοῦτο, φιλοκάλων δὲ καὶ εὐφυῶν, γῆν δὲ ἀρίστην καὶ ὕδωρ ἀφθονώτατον ἐχόντων καὶ ὑπὲρ τῆς γῆς ὥρας μετριώτατα κεκραμένας· τὸ δʼ ἄστυ κατῳκισμένον ὧδʼ ἦν ἐν τῷ τότε χρόνῳ.\n\nΚΡΙ. πρῶτον μὲν τὸ τῆς ἀκροπόλεως εἶχε\n\n### Stephanus 112\n\n[112a] τότε οὐχ ὡς τὰ νῦν ἔχει. νῦν μὲν γὰρ μία γενομένη νὺξ ὑγρὰ διαφερόντως γῆς αὐτὴν ψιλὴν περιτήξασα πεποίηκε, σεισμῶν ἅμα καὶ πρὸ τῆς ἐπὶ Δευκαλίωνος φθορᾶς τρίτου πρότερον ὕδατος ἐξαισίου γενομένου· τὸ δὲ πρὶν ἐν ἑτέρῳ χρόνῳ μέγεθος μὲν ἦν πρὸς τὸν Ἠριδανὸν καὶ τὸν Ἰλισὸν ἀποβεβηκυῖα καὶ περιειληφυῖα ἐντὸς τὴν Πύκνα καὶ τὸν Λυκαβηττὸν ὅρον ἐκ τοῦ καταντικρὺ τῆς Πυκνὸς ἔχουσα, γεώδης δʼ ἦν πᾶσα καὶ πλὴν ὀλίγον ἐπίπεδος ἄνωθεν. [112b] ᾠκεῖτο δὲ τὰ μὲν ἔξωθεν, ὑπʼ αὐτὰ τὰ πλάγια αὐτῆς, ὑπὸ τῶν δημιουργῶν καὶ τῶν γεωργῶν ὅσοι πλησίον ἐγεώργουν· τὰ δʼ ἐπάνω τὸ μάχιμον αὐτὸ καθʼ αὑτὸ μόνον γένος περὶ τὸ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς Ἡφαίστου τε ἱερὸν κατῳκήκειν, οἷον μιᾶς οἰκίας κῆπον ἑνὶ περιβόλῳ προσπεριβεβλημένοι. τὰ γὰρ πρόσβορρα αὐτῆς ᾤκουν οἰκίας κοινὰς καὶ συσσίτια χειμερινὰ κατασκευασάμενοι, καὶ πάντα ὅσα πρέποντʼ ἦν τῇ κοινῇ [112c] πολιτείᾳ διʼ οἰκοδομήσεων ὑπάρχειν αὐτῶν καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν, ἄνευ χρυσοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου—τούτοις γὰρ οὐδὲν οὐδαμόσε προσεχρῶντο, ἀλλὰ τὸ μέσον ὑπερηφανίας καὶ ἀνελευθερίας μεταδιώκοντες κοσμίας ᾠκοδομοῦντο οἰκήσεις, ἐν αἷς αὐτοί τε καὶ ἐκγόνων ἔκγονοι καταγηρῶντες ἄλλοις ὁμοίοις τὰς αὐτὰς ἀεὶ παρεδίδοσαν—τὰ δὲ πρὸς νότου, κήπους καὶ γυμνάσια συσσίτιά τε ἀνέντες οἷα θέρους, κατεχρῶντο ἐπὶ ταῦτα αὐτοῖς. κρήνη δʼ ἦν μία κατὰ τὸν τῆς νῦν ἀκροπόλεως τόπον, ἧς [112d] ἀποσβεσθείσης ὑπὸ τῶν σεισμῶν τὰ νῦν νάματα μικρὰ κύκλῳ καταλέλειπται, τοῖς δὲ τότε πᾶσιν παρεῖχεν ἄφθονον ῥεῦμα, εὐκρὰς οὖσα πρὸς χειμῶνά τε καὶ θέρος. τούτῳ δὴ κατῴκουν τῷ σχήματι, τῶν μὲν αὑτῶν πολιτῶν φύλακες, τῶν δὲ ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων ἡγεμόνες ἑκόντων, πλῆθος δὲ διαφυλάττοντες ὅτι μάλιστα ταὐτὸν αὑτῶν εἶναι πρὸς τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν, τὸ δυνατὸν πολεμεῖν ἤδη καὶ τὸ ἔτι, περὶ δύο [112e] μάλιστα ὄντας μυριάδας.οὗτοι μὲν οὖν δὴ τοιοῦτοί τε ὄντες αὐτοὶ καί τινα τοιοῦτον ἀεὶ τρόπον τήν τε αὑτῶν καὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα δίκῃ διοικοῦντες, ἐπὶ πᾶσαν Εὐρώπην καὶ Ἀσίαν κατά τε σωμάτων κάλλη καὶ κατὰ τὴν τῶν ψυχῶν παντοίαν ἀρετὴν ἐλλόγιμοί τε ἦσαν καὶ ὀνομαστότατοι πάντων τῶν τότε· τὰ δὲ δὴ τῶν ἀντιπολεμησάντων αὐτοῖς οἷα ἦν ὥς τε ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς ἐγένετο, μνήμης ἂν μὴ στερηθῶμεν ὧν ἔτι παῖδες ὄντες ἠκούσαμεν, εἰς τὸ μέσον αὐτὰ νῦν ἀποδώσομεν ὑμῖν τοῖς φίλοις εἶναι κοινά.\n\n### Stephanus 113\n\n[113a] ΚΡΙ. τὸ δʼ ἔτι βραχὺ πρὸ τοῦ λόγου δεῖ δηλῶσαι, μὴ πολλάκις ἀκούοντες Ἑλληνικὰ βαρβάρων ἀνδρῶν ὀνόματα θαυμάζητε· τὸ γὰρ αἴτιον αὐτῶν πεύσεσθε. Σόλων, ἅτʼ ἐπινοῶν εἰς τὴν αὑτοῦ ποίησιν καταχρήσασθαι τῷ λόγῳ, διαπυνθανόμενος τὴν τῶν ὀνομάτων δύναμιν, ηὗρεν τούς τε Αἰγυπτίους τοὺς πρώτους ἐκείνους αὐτὰ γραψαμένους εἰς τὴν αὑτῶν φωνὴν μετενηνοχότας, αὐτός τε αὖ πάλιν ἑκάστου τὴν διάνοιαν ὀνόματος [113b] ἀναλαμβάνων εἰς τὴν ἡμετέραν ἄγων φωνὴν ἀπεγράφετο· καὶ ταῦτά γε δὴ τὰ γράμματα παρὰ τῷ πάππῳ τʼ ἦν καὶ ἔτʼ ἐστὶν παρʼ ἐμοὶ νῦν, διαμεμελέτηταί τε ὑπʼ ἐμοῦ παιδὸς ὄντος. ἂν οὖν ἀκούητε τοιαῦτα οἷα καὶ τῇδε ὀνόματα, μηδὲν ὑμῖν ἔστω θαῦμα· τὸ γὰρ αἴτιον αὐτῶν ἔχετε. μακροῦ δὲ δὴ λόγου τοιάδε τις ἦν ἀρχὴ τότε.\n\nκαθάπερ ἐν τοῖς πρόσθεν ἐλέχθη περὶ τῆς τῶν θεῶν λήξεως, ὅτι κατενείμαντο γῆν πᾶσαν ἔνθα μὲν μείζους [113c] λήξεις, ἔνθα δὲ καὶ ἐλάττους, ἱερὰ θυσίας τε αὑτοῖς κατασκευάζοντες, οὕτω δὴ καὶ τὴν νῆσον Ποσειδῶν τὴν Ἀτλαντίδα λαχὼν ἐκγόνους αὑτοῦ κατῴκισεν ἐκ θνητῆς γυναικὸς γεννήσας ἔν τινι τόπῳ τοιῷδε τῆς νήσου. πρὸς θαλάττης μέν, κατὰ δὲ μέσον πάσης πεδίον ἦν, ὃ δὴ πάντων πεδίων κάλλιστον ἀρετῇ τε ἱκανὸν γενέσθαι λέγεται, πρὸς τῷ πεδίῳ δὲ αὖ κατὰ μέσον σταδίους ὡς πεντήκοντα ἀφεστὸς ἦν ὄρος βραχὺ πάντῃ. τούτῳ δʼ ἦν ἔνοικος τῶν ἐκεῖ κατὰ ἀρχὰς ἐκ [113d] γῆς ἀνδρῶν γεγονότων Εὐήνωρ μὲν ὄνομα, γυναικὶ δὲ συνοικῶν Λευκίππῃ· Κλειτὼ δὲ μονογενῆ θυγατέρα ἐγεννησάσθην. ἤδη δʼ εἰς ἀνδρὸς ὥραν ἡκούσης τῆς κόρης ἥ τε μήτηρ τελευτᾷ καὶ ὁ πατήρ, αὐτῆς δὲ εἰς ἐπιθυμίαν Ποσειδῶν ἐλθὼν συμμείγνυται, καὶ τὸν γήλοφον, ἐν ᾧ κατῴκιστο, ποιῶν εὐερκῆ περιρρήγνυσιν κύκλῳ, θαλάττης γῆς τε ἐναλλὰξ ἐλάττους μείζους τε περὶ ἀλλήλους ποιῶν τροχούς, δύο μὲν γῆς, θαλάττης δὲ τρεῖς οἷον τορνεύων ἐκ μέσης τῆς νήσου, [113e] πάντῃ ἴσον ἀφεστῶτας, ὥστε ἄβατον ἀνθρώποις εἶναι· πλοῖα γὰρ καὶ τὸ πλεῖν οὔπω τότε ἦν. αὐτὸς δὲ τήν τε ἐν μέσῳ νῆσον οἷα δὴ θεὸς εὐμαρῶς διεκόσμησεν, ὕδατα μὲν διττὰ ὑπὸ γῆς ἄνω πηγαῖα κομίσας, τὸ μὲν θερμόν, ψυχρὸν δὲ ἐκ κρήνης ἀπορρέον ἕτερον, τροφὴν δὲ παντοίαν καὶ ἱκανὴν ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἀναδιδούς.\n\nΚΡΙ. παίδων δὲ ἀρρένων πέντε γενέσεις διδύμους γεννησάμενος ἐθρέψατο, καὶ τὴν νῆσον τὴν Ἀτλαντίδα πᾶσαν δέκα μέρη κατανείμας τῶν μὲν πρεσβυτάτων τῷ προτέρῳ\n\n### Stephanus 114\n\n[114a] γενομένῳ τήν τε μητρῴαν οἴκησιν καὶ τὴν κύκλῳ λῆξιν, πλείστην καὶ ἀρίστην οὖσαν, ἀπένειμε, βασιλέα τε τῶν ἄλλων κατέστησε, τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἄρχοντας, ἑκάστῳ δὲ ἀρχὴν πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ τόπον πολλῆς χώρας ἔδωκεν. ὀνόματα δὲ πᾶσιν ἔθετο, τῷ μὲν πρεσβυτάτῳ καὶ βασιλεῖ τοῦτο οὗ δὴ καὶ πᾶσα ἡ νῆσος τό τε πέλαγος ἔσχεν ἐπωνυμίαν, Ἀτλαντικὸν λεχθέν, ὅτι τοὔνομʼ ἦν τῷ πρώτῳ βασιλεύσαντι [114b] τότε Ἄτλας· τῷ δὲ διδύμῳ μετʼ ἐκεῖνόν τε γενομένῳ, λῆξιν δὲ ἄκρας τῆς νήσου πρὸς Ἡρακλείων στηλῶν εἰληχότι ἐπὶ τὸ τῆς Γαδειρικῆς νῦν χώρας κατʼ ἐκεῖνον τὸν τόπον ὀνομαζομένης, Ἑλληνιστὶ μὲν Εὔμηλον, τὸ δʼ ἐπιχώριον Γάδειρον, ὅπερ τʼ ἦν ἐπίκλην ταύτῃ ὄνομʼ ἂν παράσχοι. τοῖν δὲ δευτέροιν γενομένοιν τὸν μὲν Ἀμφήρη, τὸν δὲ Εὐαίμονα ἐκάλεσεν· τρίτοις δέ, Μνησέα μὲν τῷ προτέρῳ γενομένῳ, [114c] τῷ δὲ μετὰ τοῦτον Αὐτόχθονα· τῶν δὲ τετάρτων Ἐλάσιππον μὲν τὸν πρότερον, Μήστορα δὲ τὸν ὕστερον· ἐπὶ δὲ τοῖς πέμπτοις τῷ μὲν ἔμπροσθεν Ἀζάης ὄνομα ἐτέθη, τῷ δʼ ὑστέρῳ Διαπρέπης. οὗτοι δὴ πάντες αὐτοί τε καὶ ἔκγονοι τούτων ἐπὶ γενεὰς πολλὰς ᾤκουν ἄρχοντες μὲν πολλῶν ἄλλων κατὰ τὸ πέλαγος νήσων, ἔτι δέ, ὥσπερ καὶ πρότερον ἐρρήθη, μέχρι τε Αἰγύπτου καὶ Τυρρηνίας τῶν ἐντὸς δεῦρο ἐπάρχοντες. [114d] Ἄτλαντος δὴ πολὺ μὲν ἄλλο καὶ τίμιον γίγνεται γένος, βασιλεὺς δὲ ὁ πρεσβύτατος ἀεὶ τῷ πρεσβυτάτῳ τῶν ἐκγόνων παραδιδοὺς ἐπὶ γενεὰς πολλὰς τὴν βασιλείαν διέσῳζον, πλοῦτον μὲν κεκτημένοι πλήθει τοσοῦτον, ὅσος οὔτε πω πρόσθεν ἐν δυναστείαις τισὶν βασιλέων γέγονεν οὔτε ποτὲ ὕστερον γενέσθαι ῥᾴδιος, κατεσκευασμένα δὲ πάντʼ ἦν αὐτοῖς ὅσα ἐν πόλει καὶ ὅσα κατὰ τὴν ἄλλην χώραν ἦν ἔργον κατασκευάσασθαι. πολλὰ μὲν γὰρ διὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν αὐτοῖς προσῄειν [114e] ἔξωθεν, πλεῖστα δὲ ἡ νῆσος αὐτὴ παρείχετο εἰς τὰς τοῦ βίου κατασκευάς, πρῶτον μὲν ὅσα ὑπὸ μεταλλείας ὀρυττόμενα στερεὰ καὶ ὅσα τηκτὰ γέγονε, καὶ τὸ νῦν ὀνομαζόμενον μόνον—τότε δὲ πλέον ὀνόματος ἦν τὸ γένος ἐκ γῆς ὀρυττόμενον ὀρειχάλκου κατὰ τόπους πολλοὺς τῆς νήσου, πλὴν χρυσοῦ τιμιώτατον ἐν τοῖς τότε ὄν—καὶ ὅσα ὕλη πρὸς τὰ τεκτόνων διαπονήματα παρέχεται, πάντα φέρουσα ἄφθονα, τά τε αὖ περὶ τὰ ζῷα ἱκανῶς ἥμερα καὶ ἄγρια τρέφουσα.\n\nΚΡΙ. καὶ δὴ καὶ ἐλεφάντων ἦν ἐν αὐτῇ γένος πλεῖστον· νομὴ γὰρ τοῖς τε ἄλλοις ζῴοις, ὅσα καθʼ ἕλη καὶ λίμνας καὶ ποταμούς, ὅσα\n\n### Stephanus 115\n\n[115a] τʼ αὖ κατʼ ὄρη καὶ ὅσα ἐν τοῖς πεδίοις νέμεται, σύμπασιν παρῆν ἅδην, καὶ τούτῳ κατὰ ταὐτὰ τῷ ζῴῳ, μεγίστῳ πεφυκότι καὶ πολυβορωτάτῳ. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις, ὅσα εὐώδη τρέφει που γῆ τὰ νῦν, ῥιζῶν ἢ χλόης ἢ ξύλων ἢ χυλῶν στακτῶν εἴτε ἀνθῶν ἢ καρπῶν, ἔφερέν τε ταῦτα καὶ ἔτρεφεν εὖ· ἔτι δὲ τὸν ἥμερον καρπόν, τόν τε ξηρόν, ὃς ἡμῖν τῆς τροφῆς ἕνεκά ἐστιν, καὶ ὅσοις χάριν τοῦ σίτου προσχρώμεθα—καλοῦμεν δὲ αὐτοῦ [115b] τὰ μέρη σύμπαντα ὄσπρια—καὶ τὸν ὅσος ξύλινος, πώματα καὶ βρώματα καὶ ἀλείμματα φέρων, παιδιᾶς τε ὃς ἕνεκα ἡδονῆς τε γέγονε δυσθησαύριστος ἀκροδρύων καρπός, ὅσα τε παραμύθια πλησμονῆς μεταδόρπια ἀγαπητὰ κάμνοντι τίθεμεν, ἅπαντα ταῦτα ἡ τότε [ποτὲ] οὖσα ὑφʼ ἡλίῳ νῆσος ἱερὰ καλά τε καὶ θαυμαστὰ καὶ πλήθεσιν ἄπειρʼ ἔφερεν. ταῦτα οὖν λαμβάνοντες πάντα παρὰ τῆς γῆς κατεσκευάζοντο τά τε [115c] ἱερὰ καὶ τὰς βασιλικὰς οἰκήσεις καὶ τοὺς λιμένας καὶ τὰ νεώρια καὶ σύμπασαν τὴν ἄλλην χώραν, τοιᾷδʼ ἐν τάξει διακοσμοῦντες.\n\nτοὺς τῆς θαλάττης τροχούς, οἳ περὶ τὴν ἀρχαίαν ἦσαν μητρόπολιν, πρῶτον μὲν ἐγεφύρωσαν, ὁδὸν ἔξω καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ βασίλεια ποιούμενοι. τὰ δὲ βασίλεια ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τῶν προγόνων κατοικήσει κατʼ ἀρχὰς ἐποιήσαντο εὐθύς, ἕτερος δὲ παρʼ ἑτέρου δεχόμενος, κεκοσμημένα κοσμῶν, [115d] ὑπερεβάλλετο εἰς δύναμιν ἀεὶ τὸν ἔμπροσθεν, ἕως εἰς ἔκπληξιν μεγέθεσιν κάλλεσίν τε ἔργων ἰδεῖν τὴν οἴκησιν ἀπηργάσαντο. διώρυχα μὲν γὰρ ἐκ τῆς θαλάττης ἀρχόμενοι τρίπλεθρον τὸ πλάτος, ἑκατὸν δὲ ποδῶν βάθος, μῆκος δὲ πεντήκοντα σταδίων, ἐπὶ τὸν ἐξωτάτω τροχὸν συνέτρησαν, καὶ τὸν ἀνάπλουν ἐκ τῆς θαλάττης ταύτῃ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον ὡς εἰς λιμένα ἐποιήσαντο, διελόντες στόμα ναυσὶν ταῖς μεγίσταις ἱκανὸν εἰσπλεῖν. καὶ δὴ καὶ τοὺς τῆς γῆς τροχούς, οἳ τοὺς [115e] τῆς θαλάττης διεῖργον, κατὰ τὰς γεφύρας διεῖλον ὅσον μιᾷ τριήρει διέκπλουν εἰς ἀλλήλους, καὶ κατεστέγασαν ἄνωθεν ὥστε τὸν ὑπόπλουν κάτωθεν εἶναι· τὰ γὰρ τῶν τῆς γῆς τροχῶν χείλη βάθος εἶχεν ἱκανὸν ὑπερέχον τῆς θαλάττης. ἦν δὲ ὁ μὲν μέγιστος τῶν τροχῶν, εἰς ὃν ἡ θάλαττα συνετέτρητο, τριστάδιος τὸ πλάτος, ὁ δʼ ἑξῆς τῆς γῆς ἴσος ἐκείνῳ· τοῖν δὲ δευτέροιν ὁ μὲν ὑγρὸς δυοῖν σταδίοιν πλάτος, ὁ δὲ ξηρὸς ἴσος αὖ πάλιν τῷ πρόσθεν ὑγρῷ· σταδίου δὲ ὁ\n\n### Stephanus 116\n\n[116a] περὶ αὐτὴν τὴν ἐν μέσῳ νῆσον περιθέων.\n\nΚΡΙ. ἡ δὲ νῆσος, ἐν ᾗ τὰ βασίλεια ἦν, πέντε σταδίων τὴν διάμετρον εἶχεν. ταύτην δὴ κύκλῳ καὶ τοὺς τροχοὺς καὶ τὴν γέφυραν πλεθριαίαν τὸ πλάτος οὖσαν ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν λιθίνῳ περιεβάλλοντο τείχει, πύργους καὶ πύλας ἐπὶ τῶν γεφυρῶν κατὰ τὰς τῆς θαλάττης διαβάσεις ἑκασταχόσε ἐπιστήσαντες· τὸν δὲ λίθον ἔτεμνον ὑπὸ τῆς νήσου κύκλῳ τῆς ἐν μέσῳ καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν τροχῶν ἔξωθεν καὶ ἐντός, τὸν μὲν λευκόν, τὸν δὲ μέλανα, [116b] τὸν δὲ ἐρυθρὸν ὄντα, τέμνοντες δὲ ἅμʼ ἠργάζοντο νεωσοίκους κοίλους διπλοῦς ἐντός, κατηρεφεῖς αὐτῇ τῇ πέτρᾳ. καὶ τῶν οἰκοδομημάτων τὰ μὲν ἁπλᾶ, τὰ δὲ μειγνύντες τοὺς λίθους ποικίλα ὕφαινον παιδιᾶς χάριν, ἡδονὴν αὐτοῖς σύμφυτον ἀπονέμοντες· καὶ τοῦ μὲν περὶ τὸν ἐξωτάτω τροχὸν τείχους χαλκῷ περιελάμβανον πάντα τὸν περίδρομον, οἷον ἀλοιφῇ προσχρώμενοι, τοῦ δʼ ἐντὸς καττιτέρῳ περιέτηκον, τὸν δὲ [116c] περὶ αὐτὴν τὴν ἀκρόπολιν ὀρειχάλκῳ μαρμαρυγὰς ἔχοντι πυρώδεις.\n\nτὰ δὲ δὴ τῆς ἀκροπόλεως ἐντὸς βασίλεια κατεσκευασμένα ὧδʼ ἦν. ἐν μέσῳ μὲν ἱερὸν ἅγιον αὐτόθι τῆς τε Κλειτοῦς καὶ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ἄβατον ἀφεῖτο, περιβόλῳ χρυσῷ περιβεβλημένον, τοῦτʼ ἐν ᾧ κατʼ ἀρχὰς ἐφίτυσαν καὶ ἐγέννησαν τὸ τῶν δέκα βασιλειδῶν γένος· ἔνθα καὶ κατʼ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐκ πασῶν τῶν δέκα λήξεων ὡραῖα αὐτόσε ἀπετέλουν ἱερὰ ἐκείνων ἑκάστῳ. τοῦ δὲ Ποσειδῶνος αὐτοῦ νεὼς ἦν, σταδίου [116d] μὲν μῆκος, εὖρος δὲ τρίπλεθρος, ὕψος δʼ ἐπὶ τούτοις σύμμετρον ἰδεῖν, εἶδος δέ τι βαρβαρικὸν ἔχοντος. πάντα δὲ ἔξωθεν περιήλειψαν τὸν νεὼν ἀργύρῳ, πλὴν τῶν ἀκρωτηρίων, τὰ δὲ ἀκρωτήρια χρυσῷ· τὰ δʼ ἐντός, τὴν μὲν ὀροφὴν ἐλεφαντίνην ἰδεῖν πᾶσαν χρυσῷ καὶ ἀργύρῳ καὶ ὀρειχάλκῳ πεποικιλμένην, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα πάντα τῶν τοίχων τε καὶ κιόνων καὶ ἐδάφους ὀρειχάλκῳ περιέλαβον. χρυσᾶ δὲ ἀγάλματα ἐνέστησαν, τὸν μὲν θεὸν ἐφʼ ἅρματος ἑστῶτα ἓξ ὑποπτέρων [116e] ἵππων ἡνίοχον, αὐτόν τε ὑπὸ μεγέθους τῇ κορυφῇ τῆς ὀροφῆς ἐφαπτόμενον, Νηρῇδας δὲ ἐπὶ δελφίνων ἑκατὸν κύκλῳ— τοσαύτας γὰρ ἐνόμιζον αὐτὰς οἱ τότε εἶναι—πολλὰ δʼ ἐντὸς ἄλλα ἀγάλματα ἰδιωτῶν ἀναθήματα ἐνῆν. περὶ δὲ τὸν νεὼν ἔξωθεν εἰκόνες ἁπάντων ἕστασαν ἐκ χρυσοῦ, τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ αὐτῶν ὅσοι τῶν δέκα ἐγεγόνεσαν βασιλέων, καὶ πολλὰ ἕτερα ἀναθήματα μεγάλα τῶν τε βασιλέων καὶ ἰδιωτῶν ἐξ αὐτῆς τε τῆς πόλεως καὶ τῶν ἔξωθεν ὅσων ἐπῆρχον.\n\nΚΡΙ. βωμός\n\n### Stephanus 117\n\n[117a] τε δὴ συνεπόμενος ἦν τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τὸ τῆς ἐργασίας ταύτῃ τῇ κατασκευῇ, καὶ τὰ βασίλεια κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ πρέποντα μὲν τῷ τῆς ἀρχῆς μεγέθει, πρέποντα δὲ τῷ περὶ τὰ ἱερὰ κόσμῳ. ταῖς δὲ δὴ κρήναις, τῇ τοῦ ψυχροῦ καὶ τῇ τοῦ θερμοῦ νάματος, πλῆθος μὲν ἄφθονον ἐχούσαις, ἡδονῇ δὲ καὶ ἀρετῇ τῶν ὑδάτων πρὸς ἑκατέρου τὴν χρῆσιν θαυμαστοῦ πεφυκότος, ἐχρῶντο περιστήσαντες οἰκοδομήσεις καὶ δένδρων φυτεύσεις πρεπούσας [117b] ὕδασι, δεξαμενάς τε αὖ τὰς μὲν ὑπαιθρίους, τὰς δὲ χειμερινὰς τοῖς θερμοῖς λουτροῖς ὑποστέγους περιτιθέντες, χωρὶς μὲν βασιλικάς, χωρὶς δὲ ἰδιωτικάς, ἔτι δὲ γυναιξὶν ἄλλας καὶ ἑτέρας ἵπποις καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὑποζυγίοις, τὸ πρόσφορον τῆς κοσμήσεως ἑκάστοις ἀπονέμοντες. τὸ δὲ ἀπορρέον ἦγον ἐπὶ τὸ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ἄλσος, δένδρα παντοδαπὰ κάλλος ὕψος τε δαιμόνιον ὑπʼ ἀρετῆς τῆς γῆς ἔχοντα, καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς ἔξω κύκλους διʼ ὀχετῶν κατὰ τὰς γεφύρας [117c] ἐπωχέτευον· οὗ δὴ πολλὰ μὲν ἱερὰ καὶ πολλῶν θεῶν, πολλοὶ δὲ κῆποι καὶ πολλὰ γυμνάσια ἐκεχειρούργητο, τὰ μὲν ἀνδρῶν, τὰ δὲ ἵππων χωρὶς ἐν ἑκατέρᾳ τῇ τῶν τροχῶν νήσῳ, τά τε ἄλλα καὶ κατὰ μέσην τὴν μείζω τῶν νήσων ἐξῃρημένος ἱππόδρομος ἦν αὐτοῖς, σταδίου τὸ πλάτος ἔχων, τὸ δὲ μῆκος περὶ τὸν κύκλον ὅλον ἀφεῖτο εἰς ἅμιλλαν τοῖς ἵπποις. δορυφορικαὶ δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν ἔνθεν τε καὶ ἔνθεν οἰκήσεις ἦσαν [117d] τῷ πλήθει τῶν δορυφόρων· τοῖς δὲ πιστοτέροις ἐν τῷ μικροτέρῳ τροχῷ καὶ πρὸς τῆς ἀκροπόλεως μᾶλλον ὄντι διετέτακτο ἡ φρουρά, τοῖς δὲ πάντων διαφέρουσιν πρὸς πίστιν ἐντὸς τῆς ἀκροπόλεως περὶ τοὺς βασιλέας αὐτοὺς ἦσαν οἰκήσεις δεδομέναι. τὰ δὲ νεώρια τριήρων μεστὰ ἦν καὶ σκευῶν ὅσα τριήρεσιν προσήκει, πάντα δὲ ἐξηρτυμένα ἱκανῶς. καὶ τὰ μὲν δὴ περὶ τὴν τῶν βασιλέων οἴκησιν οὕτω κατεσκεύαστο· διαβάντι δὲ τοὺς λιμένας ἔξω τρεῖς ὄντας ἀρξάμενον ἀπὸ [117e] τῆς θαλάττης ᾔειν ἐν κύκλῳ τεῖχος, πεντήκοντα σταδίους τοῦ μεγίστου τροχοῦ τε καὶ λιμένος ἀπέχον πανταχῇ, καὶ συνέκλειεν εἰς ταὐτὸν πρὸς τὸ τῆς διώρυχος στόμα τὸ πρὸς θαλάττης. τοῦτο δὴ πᾶν συνῳκεῖτο μὲν ὑπὸ πολλῶν καὶ πυκνῶν οἰκήσεων, ὁ δὲ ἀνάπλους καὶ ὁ μέγιστος λιμὴν ἔγεμεν πλοίων καὶ ἐμπόρων ἀφικνουμένων πάντοθεν, φωνὴν καὶ θόρυβον παντοδαπὸν κτύπον τε μεθʼ ἡμέραν καὶ διὰ νυκτὸς ὑπὸ πλήθους παρεχομένων.\n\nΚΡΙ. τὸ μὲν οὖν ἄστυ καὶ τὸ περὶ τὴν ἀρχαίαν οἴκησιν σχεδὸν ὡς τότʼ ἐλέχθη νῦν διεμνημόνευται· τῆς δʼ ἄλλης χώρας\n\n### Stephanus 118\n\n[118a] ὡς ἡ φύσις εἶχεν καὶ τὸ τῆς διακοσμήσεως εἶδος, ἀπομνημονεῦσαι πειρατέον. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ὁ τόπος ἅπας ἐλέγετο σφόδρα τε ὑψηλὸς καὶ ἀπότομος ἐκ θαλάττης, τὸ δὲ περὶ τὴν πόλιν πᾶν πεδίον, ἐκείνην μὲν περιέχον, αὐτὸ δὲ κύκλῳ περιεχόμενον ὄρεσιν μέχρι πρὸς τὴν θάλατταν καθειμένοις, λεῖον καὶ ὁμαλές, πρόμηκες δὲ πᾶν, ἐπὶ μὲν θάτερα τρισχιλίων σταδίων, κατὰ δὲ μέσον ἀπὸ θαλάττης ἄνω δισχιλίων. [118b] ὁ δὲ τόπος οὗτος ὅλης τῆς νήσου πρὸς νότον ἐτέτραπτο, ἀπὸ τῶν ἄρκτων κατάβορρος. τὰ δὲ περὶ αὐτὸν ὄρη τότε ὑμνεῖτο πλῆθος καὶ μέγεθος καὶ κάλλος παρὰ πάντα τὰ νῦν ὄντα γεγονέναι, πολλὰς μὲν κώμας καὶ πλουσίας περιοίκων ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἔχοντα, ποταμοὺς δὲ καὶ λίμνας καὶ λειμῶνας τροφὴν τοῖς πᾶσιν ἡμέροις καὶ ἀγρίοις ἱκανὴν θρέμμασιν, ὕλην δὲ καὶ πλήθει καὶ γένεσι ποικίλην σύμπασίν τε τοῖς ἔργοις καὶ πρὸς ἕκαστα ἄφθονον. ὧδε οὖν τὸ πεδίον φύσει [118c] καὶ ὑπὸ βασιλέων πολλῶν ἐν πολλῷ χρόνῳ διεπεπόνητο. τετράγωνον μὲν αὔθʼ ὑπῆρχεν τὰ πλεῖστʼ ὀρθὸν καὶ πρόμηκες, ὅτι δὲ ἐνέλειπε, κατηύθυντο τάφρου κύκλῳ περιορυχθείσης· τὸ δὲ βάθος καὶ πλάτος τό τε μῆκος αὐτῆς ἄπιστον μὲν λεχθέν, ὡς χειροποίητον ἔργον, πρὸς τοῖς ἄλλοις διαπονήμασι τοσοῦτον εἶναι, ῥητέον δὲ ὅ γε ἠκούσαμεν· πλέθρου μὲν γὰρ βάθος ὀρώρυκτο, τὸ δὲ πλάτος ἁπάντῃ σταδίου, [118d] περὶ δὲ πᾶν τὸ πεδίον ὀρυχθεῖσα συνέβαινεν εἶναι τὸ μῆκος σταδίων μυρίων. τὰ δʼ ἐκ τῶν ὀρῶν καταβαίνοντα ὑποδεχομένη ῥεύματα καὶ περὶ τὸ πεδίον κυκλωθεῖσα, πρὸς τὴν πόλιν ἔνθεν τε καὶ ἔνθεν ἀφικομένη, ταύτῃ πρὸς θάλατταν μεθεῖτο ἐκρεῖν. ἄνωθεν δὲ ἀπʼ αὐτῆς τὸ πλάτος μάλιστα ἑκατὸν ποδῶν διώρυχες εὐθεῖαι τετμημέναι κατὰ τὸ πεδίον πάλιν εἰς τὴν τάφρον τὴν πρὸς θαλάττης ἀφεῖντο, ἑτέρα δὲ ἀφʼ ἑτέρας αὐτῶν σταδίους ἑκατὸν ἀπεῖχεν· ᾗ δὴ τήν [118e] τε ἐκ τῶν ὀρῶν ὕλην κατῆγον εἰς τὸ ἄστυ καὶ τἆλλα δὲ ὡραῖα πλοίοις κατεκομίζοντο, διάπλους ἐκ τῶν διωρύχων εἰς ἀλλήλας τε πλαγίας καὶ πρὸς τὴν πόλιν τεμόντες. καὶ δὶς δὴ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ τὴν γῆν ἐκαρποῦντο, χειμῶνος μὲν τοῖς ἐκ Διὸς ὕδασι χρώμενοι, θέρους δὲ ὅσα γῆ φέρει τὰ ἐκ τῶν διωρύχων ἐπάγοντες νάματα.\n\nΚΡΙ. πλῆθος δέ, τῶν μὲν ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ χρησίμων πρὸς πόλεμον ἀνδρῶν ἐτέτακτο τὸν\n\n### Stephanus 119\n\n[119a] κλῆρον ἕκαστον παρέχειν ἄνδρα ἡγεμόνα, τὸ δὲ τοῦ κλήρου μέγεθος εἰς δέκα δεκάκις ἦν στάδια, μυριάδες δὲ συμπάντων τῶν κλήρων ἦσαν ἕξ· τῶν δʼ ἐκ τῶν ὀρῶν καὶ τῆς ἄλλης χώρας ἀπέραντος μὲν ἀριθμὸς ἀνθρώπων ἐλέγετο, κατὰ δὲ τόπους καὶ κώμας εἰς τούτους τοὺς κλήρους πρὸς τοὺς ἡγεμόνας ἅπαντες διενενέμηντο. τὸν οὖν ἡγεμόνα ἦν τεταγμένον εἰς τὸν πόλεμον παρέχειν ἕκτον μὲν ἅρματος πολεμιστηρίου μόριον εἰς μύρια ἅρματα, ἵππους δὲ δύο καὶ [119b] ἀναβάτας, ἔτι δὲ συνωρίδα χωρὶς δίφρου καταβάτην τε μικράσπιδα καὶ τὸν ἀμφοῖν μετʼ ἐπιβάτην τοῖν ἵπποιν ἡνίοχον ἔχουσαν, ὁπλίτας δὲ δύο καὶ τοξότας σφενδονήτας τε ἑκατέρους δύο, γυμνῆτας δὲ λιθοβόλους καὶ ἀκοντιστὰς τρεῖς ἑκατέρους, ναύτας δὲ τέτταρας εἰς πλήρωμα διακοσίων καὶ χιλίων νεῶν. τὰ μὲν οὖν πολεμιστήρια οὕτω διετέτακτο τῆς βασιλικῆς πόλεως, τῶν δὲ ἐννέα ἄλλα ἄλλως, ἃ μακρὸς ἂν χρόνος εἴη λέγειν. [119c]\n\nτὰ δὲ τῶν ἀρχῶν καὶ τιμῶν ὧδʼ εἶχεν ἐξ ἀρχῆς διακοσμηθέντα. τῶν δέκα βασιλέων εἷς ἕκαστος ἐν μὲν τῷ καθʼ αὑτὸν μέρει κατὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ πόλιν τῶν ἀνδρῶν καὶ τῶν πλείστων νόμων ἦρχεν, κολάζων καὶ ἀποκτεινὺς ὅντινʼ ἐθελήσειεν· ἡ δὲ ἐν ἀλλήλοις ἀρχὴ καὶ κοινωνία κατὰ ἐπιστολὰς ἦν τὰς τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος, ὡς ὁ νόμος αὐτοῖς παρέδωκεν καὶ γράμματα ὑπὸ τῶν πρώτων ἐν στήλῃ γεγραμμένα [119d] ὀρειχαλκίνῃ, ἣ κατὰ μέσην τὴν νῆσον ἔκειτʼ ἐν ἱερῷ Ποσειδῶνος, οἷ δὴ διʼ ἐνιαυτοῦ πέμπτου, τοτὲ δὲ ἐναλλὰξ ἕκτου, συνελέγοντο, τῷ τε ἀρτίῳ καὶ τῷ περιττῷ μέρος ἴσον ἀπονέμοντες, συλλεγόμενοι δὲ περί τε τῶν κοινῶν ἐβουλεύοντο καὶ ἐξήταζον εἴ τίς τι παραβαίνοι, καὶ ἐδίκαζον. ὅτε δὲ δικάζειν μέλλοιεν, πίστεις ἀλλήλοις τοιάσδε ἐδίδοσαν πρότερον. ἀφέτων ὄντων ταύρων ἐν τῷ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος ἱερῷ, μόνοι γιγνόμενοι δέκα ὄντες, ἐπευξάμενοι τῷ θεῷ τὸ κεχαρισμένον [119e] αὐτῷ θῦμα ἑλεῖν, ἄνευ σιδήρου ξύλοις καὶ βρόχοις ἐθήρευον, ὃν δὲ ἕλοιεν τῶν ταύρων, πρὸς τὴν στήλην προσαγαγόντες κατὰ κορυφὴν αὐτῆς ἔσφαττον κατὰ τῶν γραμμάτων. ἐν δὲ τῇ στήλῃ πρὸς τοῖς νόμοις ὅρκος ἦν μεγάλας ἀρὰς ἐπευχόμενος τοῖς ἀπειθοῦσιν.\n\nΚΡΙ. ὅτʼ οὖν κατὰ τοὺς\n\n### Stephanus 120\n\n[120a] αὑτῶν νόμους θύσαντες καθαγίζοιεν πάντα τοῦ ταύρου τὰ μέλη, κρατῆρα κεράσαντες ὑπὲρ ἑκάστου θρόμβον ἐνέβαλλον αἵματος, τὸ δʼ ἄλλʼ εἰς τὸ πῦρ ἔφερον, περικαθήραντες τὴν στήλην· μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο χρυσαῖς φιάλαις ἐκ τοῦ κρατῆρος ἀρυτόμενοι, κατὰ τοῦ πυρὸς σπένδοντες ἐπώμνυσαν δικάσειν τε κατὰ τοὺς ἐν τῇ στήλῃ νόμους καὶ κολάσειν εἴ τίς τι πρότερον παραβεβηκὼς εἴη, τό τε αὖ μετὰ τοῦτο μηδὲν τῶν γραμμάτων ἑκόντες παραβήσεσθαι, μηδὲ ἄρξειν μηδὲ ἄρχοντι [120b] πείσεσθαι πλὴν κατὰ τοὺς τοῦ πατρὸς ἐπιτάττοντι νόμους. ταῦτα ἐπευξάμενος ἕκαστος αὐτῶν αὑτῷ καὶ τῷ ἀφʼ αὑτοῦ γένει, πιὼν καὶ ἀναθεὶς τὴν φιάλην εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, περὶ τὸ δεῖπνον καὶ τἀναγκαῖα διατρίψας, ἐπειδὴ γίγνοιτο σκότος καὶ τὸ πῦρ ἐψυγμένον τὸ περὶ τὰ θύματα εἴη, πάντες οὕτως ἐνδύντες ὅτι καλλίστην κυανῆν στολήν, ἐπὶ τὰ τῶν ὁρκωμοσίων καύματα χαμαὶ καθίζοντες, νύκτωρ, [120c] πᾶν τὸ περὶ τὸ ἱερὸν ἀποσβεννύντες πῦρ, ἐδικάζοντό τε καὶ ἐδίκαζον εἴ τίς τι παραβαίνειν αὐτῶν αἰτιῷτό τινα· δικάσαντες δέ, τὰ δικασθέντα, ἐπειδὴ φῶς γένοιτο, ἐν χρυσῷ πίνακι γράψαντες μετὰ τῶν στολῶν μνημεῖα ἀνετίθεσαν. νόμοι δὲ πολλοὶ μὲν ἄλλοι περὶ τὰ γέρα τῶν βασιλέων ἑκάστων ἦσαν ἴδιοι, τὰ δὲ μέγιστα, μήτε ποτὲ ὅπλα ἐπʼ ἀλλήλους οἴσειν βοηθήσειν τε πάντας, ἄν πού τις αὐτῶν ἔν τινι πόλει τὸ βασιλικὸν καταλύειν ἐπιχειρῇ γένος, κοινῇ [120d] δέ, καθάπερ οἱ πρόσθεν, βουλευόμενοι τὰ δόξαντα περὶ πολέμου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων πράξεων, ἡγεμονίαν ἀποδιδόντες τῷ Ἀτλαντικῷ γένει. θανάτου δὲ τὸν βασιλέα τῶν συγγενῶν μηδενὸς εἶναι κύριον, ὃν ἂν μὴ τῶν δέκα τοῖς ὑπὲρ ἥμισυ δοκῇ.\n\nταύτην δὴ τοσαύτην καὶ τοιαύτην δύναμιν ἐν ἐκείνοις τότε οὖσαν τοῖς τόποις ὁ θεὸς ἐπὶ τούσδε αὖ τοὺς τόπους συντάξας ἐκόμισεν ἔκ τινος τοιᾶσδε, ὡς λόγος, προφάσεως. [120e] ἐπὶ πολλὰς μὲν γενεάς, μέχριπερ ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ φύσις αὐτοῖς ἐξήρκει, κατήκοοί τε ἦσαν τῶν νόμων καὶ πρὸς τὸ συγγενὲς θεῖον φιλοφρόνως εἶχον·\n\nΚΡΙ. τὰ γὰρ φρονήματα ἀληθινὰ καὶ πάντῃ μεγάλα ἐκέκτηντο, πρᾳότητι μετὰ φρονήσεως πρός τε τὰς ἀεὶ συμβαινούσας τύχας καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους χρώμενοι, διὸ πλὴν ἀρετῆς πάντα ὑπερορῶντες μικρὰ ἡγοῦντο\n\n### Stephanus 121\n\n[121a] τὰ παρόντα καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἔφερον οἷον ἄχθος τὸν τοῦ χρυσοῦ τε καὶ τῶν ἄλλων κτημάτων ὄγκον, ἀλλʼ οὐ μεθύοντες ὑπὸ τρυφῆς διὰ πλοῦτον ἀκράτορες αὑτῶν ὄντες ἐσφάλλοντο, νήφοντες δὲ ὀξὺ καθεώρων ὅτι καὶ ταῦτα πάντα ἐκ φιλίας τῆς κοινῆς μετʼ ἀρετῆς αὐξάνεται, τῇ δὲ τούτων σπουδῇ καὶ τιμῇ φθίνει ταῦτά τε αὐτὰ κἀκείνη συναπόλλυται τούτοις. ἐκ δὴ λογισμοῦ τε τοιούτου καὶ φύσεως θείας παραμενούσης πάντʼ αὐτοῖς ηὐξήθη ἃ πρὶν διήλθομεν. ἐπεὶ δʼ ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ μὲν μοῖρα ἐξίτηλος ἐγίγνετο ἐν αὐτοῖς πολλῷ τῷ θνητῷ καὶ [121b] πολλάκις ἀνακεραννυμένη, τὸ δὲ ἀνθρώπινον ἦθος ἐπεκράτει, τότε ἤδη τὰ παρόντα φέρειν ἀδυνατοῦντες ἠσχημόνουν, καὶ τῷ δυναμένῳ μὲν ὁρᾶν αἰσχροὶ κατεφαίνοντο, τὰ κάλλιστα ἀπὸ τῶν τιμιωτάτων ἀπολλύντες, τοῖς δὲ ἀδυνατοῦσιν ἀληθινὸν πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν βίον ὁρᾶν τότε δὴ μάλιστα πάγκαλοι μακάριοί τε ἐδοξάζοντο εἶναι, πλεονεξίας ἀδίκου καὶ δυνάμεως ἐμπιμπλάμενοι. θεὸς δὲ ὁ θεῶν Ζεὺς ἐν νόμοις βασιλεύων, ἅτε δυνάμενος καθορᾶν τὰ τοιαῦτα, ἐννοήσας γένος ἐπιεικὲς ἀθλίως διατιθέμενον, δίκην αὐτοῖς [121c] ἐπιθεῖναι βουληθείς, ἵνα γένοιντο ἐμμελέστεροι σωφρονισθέντες, συνήγειρεν θεοὺς πάντας εἰς τὴν τιμιωτάτην αὐτῶν οἴκησιν, ἣ δὴ κατὰ μέσον παντὸς τοῦ κόσμου βεβηκυῖα καθορᾷ πάντα ὅσα γενέσεως μετείληφεν, καὶ συναγείρας εἶπεν—","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/critias/original.txt"},"translations":[{"id":"trn_critias_mouseia","translator":"Mouseia","kind":"curated","note":"Mouseia's complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the complete Greek text (John Burnet's Oxford edition, Perseus Digital Library) across all 16 Stephanus pages and 76 sections, for fidelity, descriptive clarity, dialogue, and structure.","text":"### Stephanus 106\n\n[106a] Timaeus: How glad I am, Socrates, to have won through at last and escaped the long journey of the argument, as a man rests gladly at the end of a road. And to the god who of old was real in deed and has only now come to be in words I offer my prayer: that, of what has been said, where it was said in due measure, he may grant us [106b] safe deliverance; and if against our will we spoke any note out of tune about these things, that he impose the fitting penalty—for the right penalty is to bring the offender back into tune. So that from now on we may speak correctly about the coming-to-be of the gods, we pray that he give us the most perfect remedy, the best of remedies, knowledge; and having prayed, we hand over the next account to Critias, according to our agreement.\n\nCritias: I accept it, Timaeus; and the same plea that you yourself made at the [106c] outset, asking indulgence because you were about to speak of great matters—that same request I too now put forward,\n\n### Stephanus 107\n\n[107a] and I ask to win it in even greater measure for what I am about to say.\n\nCritias: And yet I know full well that the excuse I am about to offer is one of high ambition and rather boorish in view of what the occasion demands; still, it must be made. For that what you have said was not well said—who in his right mind would attempt to maintain? But that what is about to be said stands in greater need of indulgence, being the harder task—this I must try to make clear in some way. For when a man speaks of the gods to human beings, it is easier for him to seem to speak adequately [107b] than when he speaks of mortal things to us. The inexperience and deep ignorance of the hearers about matters of which they know nothing give a great abundance of material to anyone who is to say anything about them; whereas the gods—we know how things stand with them. To make my meaning clearer, follow me along this line. What has been said by all of us must be some sort of imitation and representation; let us consider the image-making of painters, in what they do with divine and human bodies, [107c] as regards the ease and the difficulty of appearing to spectators to have been adequately imitated; and we shall see that in the case of earth and mountains and rivers and forests and the whole heaven and the things that are and move within it, in the first place we would be glad if anyone could imitate even a small part of it in some likeness; and besides, since we know nothing precise about such things, we neither examine nor test what is painted, [107d] but make use of an unclear and deceptive shadow-painting in our dealings with them. But when anyone tries to represent our own bodies, we quickly perceive what has been left out, because of the understanding that is always at our side, and we become harsh judges of the man who does not render every single likeness in full. The same thing, then, one must see happening with accounts as well: heaven and the divine we accept gladly even when they are said to be only slightly probable, whereas mortal and human things we examine with precision. Given, then, what is now being said on the spur of the moment, [107e] if we cannot render what is fitting in every respect, indulgence is owed; for we must conceive that mortal things are not easy but hard to represent to the satisfaction of opinion.\n\n### Stephanus 108\n\n[108a] Critias: It was to remind you of all this, and to ask for indulgence not less but greater for what is about to be said, that I have said all this, Socrates. If then I seem to be asking for this gift justly, grant it of your own accord.\n\nSocrates: Why, of course we shall grant it, Critias. And let this same gift be given a third time to Hermocrates on our behalf as well. For plainly a little later, when he too must speak, [108b] he will make the same plea as you; so that he may devise some other opening and not be forced to repeat the same one, let him speak now on the understanding that indulgence is already his until that time. Let me warn you in advance, dear Critias, what this audience is thinking: the poet who spoke before you has won astonishing approval here, so you will need a very great deal of indulgence if you are to be capable of taking over the theme.\n\nHermocrates: The same charge, Socrates, you lay upon me as [108c] upon him. But men of faint heart have never yet raised a trophy, Critias; so you must advance upon the account with courage, and calling upon Paean and the Muses, set forth and sing the praise of the ancient citizens, who were good men.\n\nCritias: My dear Hermocrates, you are posted last in the order and have another man in front of you, and yet you are still bold. What that boldness is worth will perhaps become clear to you; but since you both comfort and [108d] hearten me, I must obey you, and besides the gods you named I must call upon the others, and above all upon Mnemosyne. For the greater part of our account lies altogether with this goddess: if we can remember adequately and report what was told long ago by the priests and brought here by Solon, I am well assured that we shall seem to this audience to have accomplished what is fitting in reasonable measure. This, then, is what we must now do, with no more delay.\n\n[108e]\n\nFirst of all, then, let us recall that the sum total was nine thousand years since the war was revealed as having taken place between those who dwelt beyond the Pillars of Heracles and all who dwelt this side of them—the war which we must now carry to its completion. Of the two sides, this city of ours was said to have led the way and to have fought the whole war through; of the other, the kings of the island of Atlantis, which we said was once an island larger than Libya and Asia, but which has now sunk beneath earthquakes and left impassable mud for those who sail out from here\n\n### Stephanus 109\n\n[109a] over the whole open sea, so that no one can make the crossing any longer—that was the obstacle it put in their way.\n\nCritias: The many peoples who were barbarians, and whatever Greek tribes existed at the time, the course of the account will reveal one by one as it unrolls, taking up whatever it meets along the way; but the Athenians of that day and the opponents they fought, it is necessary to go through first at the outset—the power of each side and their forms of government. And of these, we must give first place to telling of what happened here in earlier times. [109b]\n\nFor the gods once portioned out the whole earth by regions—not through strife, for it would not be right to suppose that the gods do not know what belongs fittingly to each of them, nor again that, knowing what better suits others, they would strive to win it for themselves through conflict—so by just allotments, each receiving the portion it held dear, they settled the regions; and having settled them, like herdsmen with the flocks of a pasture, they reared us as their own possession and their own nurslings, not by [109c] compelling bodies with bodies, as shepherds drive their beasts with blows, but turning the creature from the stern, where it is most easily guided, and laying hold of its soul with persuasion as with a tiller, in accordance with their own design—so they steered and guided the whole mortal race. Others, then, taking their lots in other regions, set those lands in order; but Hephaestus and Athena, having a common nature—brother and sister of the same father, and alike come together in their love of wisdom and love of craft upon the same pursuits—these two received this land as a single allotment, as their own, by nature fitted for [109d] excellence and good sense; and implanting good men, children of the soil, they set in order the structure of the constitution. Of these men the names have survived, but the deeds have vanished, through the destructions that came upon those who inherited them and through the length of time. For the stock that was always left over, as was said before, remained mountain-dwelling and without letters, having heard only the names of the rulers of the land, and of their deeds only a little. The names, then, they bestowed on their descendants [109e] gladly, but the achievements and the laws of their predecessors they did not know—save for some dim reports about each—and for many generations they and their children, being in want of the necessities of life,\n\n### Stephanus 110\n\n[110a] with their minds fixed on what they lacked and their talk all about these things, they paid no heed to what had happened in earlier ages and long ago.\n\nCritias: For storytelling and the inquiry into things of old come to cities together with leisure, when they see that the necessities of life have already been provided; before that, they do not come. This, then, is how the names of the men of old have come down to us without their deeds. I infer it from this: the names of Cecrops, Erechtheus, Erichthonius, and Erysichthon, [110b] of most of the others, and of Theseus as well, are remembered one by one from the earlier account; and Solon said that the priests, in relating the war of those days, applied these names to most of the men of that time, and the women's names likewise. And indeed the very figure and image of the goddess make the point: since in those days the pursuits of war were common to women and to men alike, the goddess was dedicated in armor by the men of that time according to that custom, as a demonstration that of all [110c] creatures that live in company, both the female and the male, every kind is by nature capable of cultivating in common the excellence that belongs to it.\n\nIn this land, then, in those days, the other classes of the citizens lived by the crafts and by the food the earth provides; but the warrior class, set apart at the beginning by men of divine nature, dwelt apart, with everything it needed provided for its sustenance and training, each of them possessing nothing of his own, [110d] but holding everything to belong to all in common, and deeming it right to receive nothing from the other citizens beyond adequate sustenance; and they practiced all the pursuits described yesterday, everything that was said about the Guardians who were put forward. And indeed what was said about our country was plausible and true: first, that its boundaries in those days were fixed toward the Isthmus and along the rest of the mainland as far as the heights of [110e] Cithaeron and Parnes; and that the boundaries came down, with Oropia on the right, and on the left, toward the sea, bounded by the Asopus; and that it surpassed all the surrounding land in excellence, which is why the country was able at that time to support a great host, kept free from the work of the land.\n\nCritias: And there is a great proof of its excellence; for what remains of it today can compete with any land in bearing everything and yielding rich crops\n\n### Stephanus 111\n\n[111a] and good pasture for every kind of creature. But in those days, in addition to its beauty, it produced these things in abundance. How, then, is this credible, and in what sense can it rightly be called a remnant of the land of that time? The whole of it lies like a headland stretched far out from the rest of the mainland into the open sea; and the basin of sea around it happens to be deep right up to the shore. Many great floods, then, having occurred within the nine thousand years—for that is the number of years that has passed from that time to the present [111b]—the soil, in these times and these experiences, washing down from the heights, deposits no silt worth mentioning, as it does in other places, but keeps flowing off around it and disappearing into the deep; what is left, compared with what was there then, is like the bones of a body that has wasted away, all the rich, soft earth having washed away, and only the thin body of the land surviving. In those days, being still unimpaired, [111c] it had high hills of earth, and the plains now called stony ground were full of deep soil; and it held much forest on the mountains, of which clear evidence is still visible: for some of the mountains now sustain bees alone, and yet it is not so very long ago that trees were felled there for the roofs of the largest buildings, and the roofing is still sound. There were also many other tall cultivated trees, and the land bore pasture for flocks beyond reckoning. And indeed [111d] it made its yearly crop of the water from Zeus; not as now, when the water is lost, flowing off the bare earth into the sea, but holding much and drawing it into itself, storing it up in the earth that roofed it like tiling, and letting the water absorbed from the heights down into the hollows, it furnished in every region abundant streams of springs and rivers, of which even now, at the springs that existed then, shrines are still left behind as signs that what is now said about this land is true. [111e]\n\nSuch, then, was the nature of the rest of the country, and it was ordered as one would expect by farmers who were true tillers of the soil and made that their whole business, men who loved beauty and were of good natural parts, possessing excellent soil and most abundant water, and seasons tempered most moderately over the land; and the city was settled in the following fashion in those days.\n\nCritias: First of all, the acropolis was\n\n### Stephanus 112\n\n[112a] at that time not as it is now. For now, after one night of exceptionally heavy rain stripped it bare of earth, it has been left so—by earthquakes, and before that by the destruction in the time of Deucalion, when the extraordinary flood came third of such disasters; but in an earlier age its size was such that it reached down to the Eridanus and the Ilissus, and enclosed within it the Pnyx, with Lycabettus as its boundary on the side facing the Pnyx; and it was all of earth, and level on top except for a little. [112b] The lower outer parts, along its very flanks, were inhabited by the craftsmen and by the farmers who tilled the fields close by; but the heights were inhabited by the warrior class alone, keeping to itself, around the temple of Athena and Hephaestus, as if they had enclosed the garden of a single house within one surrounding wall. For on the northern side of it they lived, having built common dwellings and winter mess halls, together with everything that was fitting for the common [112c] life to have in the way of buildings, for themselves and for their temples, without gold or silver—for these they made use of nowhere at all, but pursuing the mean between arrogance and meanness they built themselves orderly houses, in which they grew old, they and their children's children after them, always handing them on to others like themselves; while on the southern side they laid out gardens and gymnasia and summer mess halls, and used them for these purposes. There was a single spring on the site of the present acropolis, and when it was [112d] choked by the earthquakes only small streams were left around it, but in those days it furnished an abundant flow, being tempered to suit winter and summer alike. In this fashion they dwelt—guardians of their own citizens and leaders of the rest of the Greeks who followed of their own will—keeping their numbers as nearly constant as they could from generation to generation, of men and women fit for war, both those already of age and those yet to come, about two [112e] myriads in all. Such were these men, and since they always governed their own land and Hellas in the same spirit and with justice, they were renowned throughout all Europe and Asia for the beauty of their bodies and for every kind of excellence of their souls, and were the most celebrated of all the people of those days; and how their opponents fared, and how the whole story came about from the beginning, we shall now set before you, our friends, to share in common, if only we are not robbed of the memory of what we heard when we were still children.\n\n### Stephanus 113\n\n[113a] Critias: One thing more I must make clear before the account, so that you are not surprised at hearing Greek names many times over for men who were foreigners; for you shall learn the reason. Solon, intending to make use of the story for his own poetry, and inquiring into the force of the names, found that the Egyptians had first recorded them by rendering them into their own language, while he in turn, taking up the meaning of each name [113b] and bringing it into our language, wrote it down. And these writings were with my grandfather, and are still with me now, and I studied them when I was a boy. So if you hear names such as the ones used here, let it cause you no wonder; for you have the reason for them. The beginning of that long story, then, was something like this.\n\nJust as was said before about the allotment of the gods—how they portioned out the whole earth, here [113c] in larger lots and there in smaller, establishing temples and sacrifices for themselves—so in the same way Poseidon, receiving the island of Atlantis as his lot, settled it with his own descendants, whom he begot of a mortal woman in a certain place on the island, of this sort. There was a plain by the sea, in the middle of the whole island, which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and richly fertile; and near the plain again, at its center, about fifty stades away, there stood a mountain, low on every side. On this there dwelt one of the men who in the beginning had been born of the [113d] earth there, Evenor by name, with his wife Leucippe; and they had one only daughter, Cleito. When the girl reached the bloom of womanhood, her mother and her father died; and Poseidon, desiring her, lay with her; and the hill on which she dwelt he made secure, breaking rings around it, alternately of sea and of land, lesser and greater, one about another—two of land and three of sea—turning them as on a lathe out of the middle of the island, [113e] all at equal distances from one another, so that the place was impassable for men; for as yet there were no ships and no seafaring. And the island in the middle he ordered with ease, as befits a god, bringing up two springs of water from beneath the earth, one hot and the other cold, and making the earth yield food of every kind in abundance.\n\nCritias: And he reared five generations of twin-born sons; and dividing the whole island of Atlantis into ten portions, to the elder of the eldest pair\n\n### Stephanus 114\n\n[114a] To the firstborn he allotted the dwelling of the mother and the lands that lay round about it, which were the largest and the best, and he made him king over the rest, and the rest he made chiefs, giving to each rule over a host of people and a broad stretch of country. And he gave names to them all. To the eldest, who was king, he gave the name from which the whole island and the ocean too took theirs, both called Atlantic, because Atlas was the name of the first who was king [114b] in those days. The twin born after him, whose allotment had fallen at the far end of the island toward the Pillars of Heracles, at the spot now called after that region the Gadeiran country, he named in Greek Eumelus, and in the speech of the land Gadeirus—which must be what gave that land its name. Of the second pair of twins, one he called Ampheres and the other Evaemon; of the third, Mneseus the elder [114c] and Autochthon the one born after him; of the fourth, Elasippus the elder and Mestor the younger; and for the fifth pair, the name Azaes was set for the elder and Diaprepes for the younger. All these, they themselves and their descendants after them, dwelt there through many generations, chiefs of many other islands scattered over the ocean, and rulers besides, as was said before, of all the peoples this side of it, as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. [114d] From Atlas, then, besides these, there sprang another line, numerous and held in honor; and they kept the kingship safe through many generations, the eldest king always handing it on to the eldest of his offspring. Their wealth was of such magnitude as had never yet come to any royal house before, nor would it be easy to come again afterward; and everything had been furnished for them that in a city, or in the country at large, it was a task to furnish. For much came in to them from abroad [114e] through the reach of their empire, and the island itself supplied most of what was needed for living: first, all that is dug out of the mines, the solid metals, and all that can be smelted; and that substance which today keeps only its name—orichalcum, dug from the earth in those days in many places of the island and then more than a name, the most precious of all things then in being after gold—and all the timber that the work of their builders required, all this the island bore in abundance, while it fed a plentiful stock of animals, tame and wild alike.\n\nCritias: And there was in it, too, the greatest plenty of elephants; for pasture was at hand in abundance for all the other creatures—those that haunt the marshes and lakes and rivers, those\n\n### Stephanus 115\n\n[115a] that graze upon the mountains, and those that feed on the plains—as well as for this animal, the largest by nature and the most ravenous of eaters. And besides these, whatever fragrant things the earth rears even now—roots, or herbage, or wood, or the distilled juices of gums and flowers and fruits—it bore all these and nourished them well; and further, the cultivated crop: both the dry kind that is our food, and the kinds we use to season our food—for we call all its parts [115b] pulses—and the crop of trees, yielding drink and food and unguents, and the fruit of orchards, hard to store, which came into being for our sport and pleasure; and all those after-dinner comforts of repletion which we set out for the guest grown weary, so welcome to him in his weariness—all this the sacred island, then [once] lying beneath the sun, bore in beauty and wonder and in quantities past counting. Receiving all these things from the earth, they furnished out their temples [115c] and the dwellings of the kings and the harbors and the docks and the whole of the rest of the country, ordering it in the manner that follows.\n\nFirst they bridged the rings of sea that lay about the ancient metropolis, making a road outward and toward the palace. The palace itself they built on this site, the dwelling-place of the god and of their fathers, from the very beginning, each king receiving it from the one before him and, adorning what he received, [115d] always surpassing his predecessor as far as he was able, until they had made the residence a thing to astonish the eye in the size and the beauty of its works. For, beginning at the sea, they cut a canal through to the outermost ring, three plethra in breadth, a hundred feet in depth, and fifty stades in length, and they made it the passage for ships from the sea into that ring, as into a harbor, opening a mouth wide enough for the largest vessels to sail in. And they cut through the rings of land as well, those that divided the rings [115e] of sea, at the bridges, leaving a passage from one to another just wide enough for a single trireme, and roofed them over above, so that the passage beneath was covered; for the lips of the rings of land had depth enough to stand well above the sea. Now the largest of the rings, into which the sea had been cut, was three stades across, and the ring of land next to it was equal to that; of the second pair, the water ring was two stades across, and the dry ring once more equal to the water ring before it; while the\n\n### Stephanus 116\n\n[116a] ring that ran about the central island itself was a single stade across.\n\nCritias: The island on which the palace stood was five stades in diameter. Around it, together with the rings and the bridge—which was a plethrum in width on either side—they threw a wall of stone, setting towers and gates upon the bridges wherever the crossings of the sea came. The stone they quarried from beneath the circle of the central island and from beneath the rings, from outside and from within: one kind white, another black, [116b] a third red; and as they cut it, they hollowed out at the same time ship-sheds, hollow and double within, roofed by the native rock itself. And of their buildings some were simple, while in others they blended the stones and wove them into varied patterns for the sake of delight, giving them a pleasure native to their substance. The wall about the outermost ring they sheathed with bronze all round its circuit, as one might apply an ointment; the wall inside that they overlaid with tin, melted on, [116c] and the wall about the acropolis itself with orichalcum, which flashed like fire.\n\nInside the acropolis the palace was furnished as follows. In the middle they set apart a holy precinct, inviolate, of Cleito and Poseidon, girdled about with a fence of gold; this was the very spot where in the beginning they sowed and begot the race of the ten kings, and here, too, year by year, from every one of the ten allotments, they carried to this place the offerings of the season, making sacrifice there to each of them. There was also a temple of Poseidon himself, [116d] a stade in length, three plethra in breadth, and in height proportionate to these to look upon, though of a somewhat barbaric aspect. The outside of the temple they overlaid all about with silver, except the ornaments at its crowning points, which were of gold; within, the ceiling was of ivory throughout, inlaid with gold and silver and orichalcum, while all the rest—the walls and the pillars and the floor—they covered with orichalcum. And they set up statues of gold: the god himself standing in a chariot, the charioteer of six winged [116e] horses, of such a size that his head touched the ridge of the roof; and Nereids mounted upon dolphins, a hundred of them all around—for that was the number they believed these to be in those days—and within were many other statues, the private offerings of individuals. About the temple outside stood figures of gold of all the wives, and of the kings themselves, all the ten of them, and many other great dedications, from kings and private men alike, both from the city itself and from all the peoples they ruled beyond it.\n\nCritias: An altar\n\n### Stephanus 117\n\n[117a] accompanied it too, matching it in size and in the artistry of its making; and the palaces in their turn were worthy of the greatness of their empire and worthy of the ornament that belonged to the temples. And the springs, the one of cold water and the one of warm, whose supply was without stint, and whose waters were a marvel both in sweetness and in fitness for either use, they made much of, surrounding them with buildings and with plantings of trees suited [117b] to the waters, and setting reservoirs about them, some in the open air, others roofed over for the warm baths in winter: the royal baths apart, the private apart, others again for women, and yet others for horses and the other beasts of burden, giving to each the adornment that befitted it. The overflow they led to the grove of Poseidon, where trees of every kind, of beauty and a wondrous height, grew by the excellence of the soil; and they carried it on to the outer rings through channels cut at the bridges. [117c] There many temples of many gods, many gardens, and many gymnasia had been built, some for men and some apart for horses, in each of the two rings of land; and in particular, in the middle of the larger of the islands, a racecourse had been marked out for them, a stade in breadth, while its length ran the whole way round the ring, left open for the contest of horses. About it on either side were quarters for the guard, [117d] for the host of the bodyguard; the more trusted of them were stationed in the smaller ring, nearer the acropolis, and those who surpassed all the rest in fidelity had dwellings given them within the acropolis itself, about the persons of the kings. The shipyards were full of triremes, and of all the equipment that belongs to triremes, everything amply fitted out. Such, then, was what stood about the dwelling of the kings. But once past the harbors, which were three, facing outward, there ran from [117e] the sea a wall in a circle, keeping everywhere a distance of fifty stades from the largest ring and the harbor, and closing upon itself at the mouth of the canal where it faced the sea. All this was densely covered with many dwellings, and the ship-channel and the great harbor were thick with ships and merchants arriving from every quarter, whose multitude raised by day and by night a clamor of voices, a tumult of every kind, and a din of sound.\n\nCritias: So much, then, for the capital and what lay about the ancient dwelling-place, kept in memory now very nearly as it was told then; but of the rest of the land\n\n### Stephanus 118\n\n[118a] and of its natural character and the manner of its ordering I must now try to preserve the memory. First, then, the whole region was said to rise very high and sheer above the sea, while all about the city lay a plain, encircling that place and itself encircled in a ring by mountains that sank down toward the sea; level and even throughout, elongated as a whole, three thousand stades in one direction and two thousand, at the middle, up from the sea. [118b] This district lay turned toward the south of the whole island, sheltered from the north winds. The mountains about it were in those days celebrated as surpassing in multitude and size and beauty all the mountains now in being, holding within them many villages, rich and full of inhabitants, and rivers and lakes and meadows giving food in plenty to all creatures, tame and wild, and timber abundant both in quantity and in variety of kind, ample for every sort of work and for each particular need. Such, then, was the plain by nature, [118c] and many kings, over a long stretch of time, labored upon it further. It was for the most part four-square and elongated, with straight sides, and where it fell short of that they made it true by digging a ditch round it in a circle. Of the depth and breadth and length of it, the account is past belief, being, as a work of human hands, greater than the other labors besides; yet we must say what we heard: it was dug to a depth of a plethrum, its breadth was everywhere a stade, [118d] and dug as it was about the whole plain, its length came to ten thousand stades. Receiving the streams that came down from the mountains and running round the plain in a circle, it came to the city on this side and on that, and there let itself off to flow toward the sea. From it, running inland, straight canals of about a hundred feet in breadth were cut across the plain, let out again into the ditch that faced the sea, and these lay a hundred stades apart from one another; and by them [118e] they brought down the timber from the mountains to the city, and the rest of the season's produce was carried by boat, cutting passages from the canals into the cross-channels and to the city. And twice in the year they gathered in the earth's fruit, in winter using the waters of Zeus, in summer watering what the earth bears with streams led in from the canals.\n\nCritias: As for numbers: of the men in the plain fit for war, it was appointed that each\n\n### Stephanus 119\n\n[119a] lot furnish a commander. The measure of a lot was ten stades each way, ten times ten, and of all the lots together there were six myriads; of the men from the mountains and the rest of the country the number was said to be past counting, and all of them, by districts and villages, were apportioned to these lots and to their leaders. Each leader was then required to furnish for the war a sixth portion of a war-chariot's unit, to the amount of ten thousand chariots; two horses [119b] and their riders; and further a light two-horse car without a box, carrying a small-shielded fighter who could dismount, and the driver of the pair of horses with a man mounted behind them; two hoplites; archers and slingers, two of each; light-armed stone-throwers and javelin men, three of each; and four sailors, toward the manning of twelve hundred ships. Such, then, was the war equipment appointed for the royal city; for the other nine it was appointed otherwise, and it would take a long time to tell. [119c]\n\nSuch was the ordering of command and honor as it was arranged from the beginning. Each one of the ten kings, in his own district and in his own city, ruled over the men and over most of the laws, chastising and putting to death whom he pleased; but their rule over one another and their common intercourse were governed by the injunctions of Poseidon, as the law handed them down, and by the record inscribed by their first kings on a pillar of orichalcum, [119d] which stood in the middle of the island in the temple of Poseidon. To that place they assembled every fifth year, and in alternate years every sixth, giving equal honor to the even and to the odd; and when they were gathered they took counsel about their common affairs, and made inquiry whether anyone had transgressed in anything, and gave judgment. When they were about to judge, they first gave one another pledges after this manner: there were bulls at large in the temple of Poseidon, and the ten kings, being left alone, ten and no more, prayed to the god that they might capture a sacrifice pleasing [119e] to him, and hunted the bulls without iron, with staves and nooses; and whichever bull they caught they led up to the pillar and slaughtered it over the top of the pillar, over the writing. On the pillar, besides the laws, there was an oath invoking mighty curses upon the disobedient.\n\nCritias: So then, when according to their\n\n### Stephanus 120\n\n[120a] own laws they had sacrificed and consecrated all the limbs of the bull, they mixed a bowl of wine and cast into it a clot of the blood, one for each, and carried the rest to the fire, having purified the pillar round about; and after this, ladling from the bowl with cups of gold and pouring the wine upon the fire, they swore to give judgment according to the laws written upon the pillar, and to punish anyone who had already transgressed in anything, and for the future to transgress none of the writings willingly, nor themselves to rule, nor to obey any ruler, [120b] except according to the laws of their fathers. This prayer each of them made for himself and for his line after him; then he drank and dedicated his cup in the sanctuary of the god, and gave himself to dinner and the needs of the body; and when darkness came on, and the fire about the offerings had died down, all of them, clothed in their most beautiful dark-blue robes, sat down on the ground beside the embers of their oath, and by night, [120c] putting out every fire in the precinct of the temple, they were judged and gave judgment, if anyone laid accusation against any among them of transgressing; and when they had judged, they wrote the verdicts upon a plate of gold, and when daylight came they set up the records, together with their robes, as memorials. There were many other special laws concerning the several prerogatives of each king, but the greatest were these: that they should never bear arms against one another, and that all should come to the aid of any one of them if anyone anywhere in a city should attempt to overthrow the royal house; and that in common [120d], as their fathers before them, they should take counsel over war and their other undertakings as seemed best, rendering the leadership to the house of Atlas. And no king was to have power over the death of any kinsman, unless more than half of the ten so judged.\n\nSuch a power, then, so great and of such a kind, as it was in those places at that time, the god gathered and brought against these same lands again, on a pretext of some such kind as this, as the story runs. [120e] For many generations, so long as the divine nature in them sufficed, they were obedient to the laws and bore themselves kindly toward the divinity of their own kindred;\n\nCritias: For they possessed thoughts that were true and great in every way, applying a gentleness joined with wisdom to the chances that befell them at all times and to one another; and so, because they looked down upon everything but virtue, they counted\n\n### Stephanus 121\n\n[121a] the goods at hand of little account, and bore lightly, as though it were but a burden they carried, the mass of their gold and of all their other possessions; they were not drunk with luxury nor, for all their wealth, without command of themselves and so brought low, but sober they saw clearly that all such things grow out of the common friendship joined with virtue, and that in the eager pursuit and honor of the goods themselves, both the goods decay and that friendship perishes away with them. By such reasoning, then, and with the divine nature abiding in them, everything we have passed through before grew great among them. But when the divine portion in them grew faint, watered down with a great measure of the mortal and [121b] blended again and again, until the human temper gained the mastery, then at last they could no longer carry their fortune, and fell into unseemly ways; and to those who could see they showed themselves base, squandering the most beautiful of their possessions, the most precious, while to those who could not see the life that truly leads to happiness they seemed at that moment most supremely beautiful and blessed, brimming over with unjust greed and power. And Zeus, the god who reigns among the gods by law, since he was able to see such things, when he marked a noble race sunk in wretchedness, and wished to lay upon them [121c] punishment, that chastened they might grow more orderly, gathered all the gods into his own most honored abode, which, standing at the center of the whole world, looks out upon all that has a share in becoming; and gathering them he said—","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/critias/translations/trn_critias_mouseia.txt"},{"id":"trn_critias_plain","translator":"Mouseia","kind":"plain","note":"Mouseia's complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from all 16 Stephanus pages of the Greek.","text":"### Stephanus 106\n\n[106a] Timaeus: How glad I am, Socrates. It is like being rested after a long journey. Now I am gladly free at last from the hard going of the account. I pray to the god who long ago was real in deed but has only now come to be in words. I ask him to keep safe for us whatever parts of what we said were said well. [106b] If we said anything out of tune about them without meaning to, I ask him to impose the fitting correction. The right correction makes the person who hit a wrong note sing in tune. So that we may speak rightly from now on about the coming to be of the gods, we pray that he give us knowledge, which is the most complete and best of all remedies. Having prayed, we now hand over the next account to Critias, as we agreed.\n\nCritias: But Timaeus, I accept it. You too used a request at the [106c] beginning, asking for indulgence because you were going to speak about great matters. I ask for the very same thing now,\n\n### Stephanus 107\n\n[107a] and I claim the right to get it to an even larger degree, for what I am going to say.\n\nCritias: And yet I almost know that I am about to ask for an indulgence that is very proud of itself and ruder than it should be. Still I must say it. What sane person would claim that what you said was not well said? But that what will be said needs more indulgence, because it is harder, this I must try to show in some way. For Timaeus, when someone speaks to humans about the gods, it seems easier for him to speak well enough [107b] than when he speaks to us about mortal things. The listeners' lack of experience and their deep ignorance about the things they know so little of give plenty of help to anyone who is going to say something about them. But about the gods we know how things stand with us. To make what I mean clearer, follow this line of thought with me. Everything that all of us have said must surely be an act of copying and making likenesses. Let us look at the way painters make images of divine and human bodies, [107c] and see how easy or hard it is for them to seem to the people looking to have copied them well enough. Then we shall see the following. As for earth, mountains, rivers, woodland, the whole heaven, and the things that are and move around it, first we are satisfied if anyone can copy even a little of them in a likeness. And besides, since we know nothing precise about such things, we neither examine nor test the paintings. [107d] We use a vague and misleading shading for them instead. But when someone tries to copy our own bodies, we notice keenly what is left out, because we always have that understanding close at hand, and we become harsh judges of anyone who does not reproduce every single similarity. The same thing, you must see, happens with accounts. The heavenly and the divine we accept even when they are said to be only slightly like the truth. The mortal and the human we examine strictly. So, for the things now being said on the spot, [107e] if we cannot reproduce the fitting in every way, we must be forgiving. We must think of mortal things not as easy but as hard to copy so as to look right.\n\n### Stephanus 108\n\n[108a] Critias: I have said all this, Socrates, because I wanted to remind you of it, and to ask for not less but more indulgence for what I am going to say. If it seems that I ask for this gift rightly, give it willingly.\n\nSocrates: Why would we not give it, Critias? And let the same thing be given as a third to Hermocrates from us. For it is clear that a little later, when he has to speak, [108b] he will make the same request as you. So let him speak with this indulgence already granted to him until then, so that he can find a different opening and not be forced to say the same one. But I warn you in advance, my friend Critias, what the audience is thinking. The poet before you has won wonderful praise with them, so you will need a very large amount of indulgence if you are going to be able to take over from him.\n\nHermocrates: Socrates, you are giving me the same instruction [108c] as you gave him. But men who lose heart have never set up a trophy, Critias. So you must go on to your account bravely. Call on Paean and the Muses, and bring to light and praise those ancient citizens, who were good men.\n\nCritias: My dear Hermocrates, you are placed later in the order and have someone in front of you, so you are still confident. What this is really like, the thing itself will soon show you. But I must obey your words of comfort and [108d] encouragement. And besides the gods you named, I must call on the others, and most of all on Mnemosyne. For almost everything that matters most in our account rests with this goddess. If we remember well enough and report what the priests once told and Solon brought here, I am fairly sure that we shall seem to this audience to have finished in a modest way what was fitting. So now this is what we must do, and put it off no longer.\n\n[108e]\n\nFirst of all, let us remember that the total was nine thousand years since the war broke out and was reported to us. It was fought between the people who lived outside the Pillars of Heracles and all those who lived inside them. This is the war that we must now finish telling. It is said that this city of ours began the war and fought all the way through it. The other side was led by the kings of the island of Atlantis. We said that this island was once larger than Libya and Asia. But now it has sunk because of earthquakes and become impassable mud for the sailors who set out from here,\n\n### Stephanus 109\n\n[109a] to sail out over the whole open sea, so that no one can get through any more. It stands in the way.\n\nCritias: As for the many foreign peoples and all the Greek peoples there were then, my account as it unrolls will show each of them as it comes up in turn. But first I must go through the story of the Athenians of that time and of the opponents they fought: the power of each side and their forms of government. And before these things, I must give first place to the earlier story of our land here. [109b]\n\nFor the gods once divided all the earth among themselves by regions. It was not by strife. It would not make sense that gods do not know what suits each of them. Nor would they, knowing that what they wanted belonged rather to others, try to win it for themselves through quarrels. By just lots each received what it loved and settled the regions. And once they had settled us, like a shepherd raising flocks, they raised us as their own possessions and creatures. But they did not use bodies [109c] to force bodies, the way herdsmen drive their animals with blows. Instead, as with a creature that turns most easily, they steered it from the stern. As if with a tiller, they took hold of the soul by persuasion, in line with their own plan. Leading it this way, they guided all of mortal life. So other gods, who had received other regions by lot, set those places in order. But Hephaestus and Athena, who share one nature, as sister and brother from the same father, and who both came to the same place through their love of wisdom and their love of skill, received this one land as their common lot. By nature it was suited to courage [109d] and good judgment. They put good men into it, born of the land, and set the order of the state in their minds. Their names have been saved, but their deeds were lost, because of the destructions that came upon the people who received them and the long stretches of time. For the group that always survived was left, as was said before, living in the mountains and without writing. It had heard only the names of the rulers in the land, and a few of their deeds besides. So they were glad to give those names to their children. [109e] But they did not know the virtues and the laws of the people before them, except for a few dim reports about each of them. And for many generations they and their children were in want of the necessities of life,\n\n### Stephanus 110\n\n[110a] with their minds on what they lacked and their talk all about those things. They paid no attention to what had happened before and long ago.\n\nCritias: For storytelling and searching into old things come to cities only along with free time. They come when people see that the necessities of life have already been provided for them, and not before. That is why the names of the people of old have been kept without their deeds. I say this based on the fact that the names of Cecrops, Erechtheus, Erichthonius, Erysichthon, [110b] most of the others, and Theseus are the ones remembered from those early times I spoke of. Solon said that the priests told him the story of the war of those days, and that people mostly named their children after these, and the women's names in the same way. And in fact the figure and the statue of the goddess show this too. Since warlike pursuits were shared by women and men at that time, the goddess was dedicated in full armor by the people of that time, in keeping with that custom. It was a sign that [110c] all creatures that live in groups, both female and male, are by nature able to practice together whatever excellence belongs to each kind.\n\nNow at that time in this land the other groups of citizens were busy with their crafts and with getting food from the earth. But the fighting class, set apart at the beginning by godlike men, lived on its own. It had everything it needed for food and training. No one owned anything of his own. [110d] They held everything to be common to all of them. And they thought it right to take nothing from the other citizens beyond enough food. And they practiced all the ways of life that were described yesterday, everything that was said about the guardians who were proposed. And what was said about our land was both plausible and true. First, in those days the land had its borders set toward the Isthmus and toward the rest of the mainland, as far as [110e] the peaks of Cithaeron and Parnes. The borders ran down, with Oropia on the right and, on the left toward the sea, the Asopus as the dividing line. In excellence it surpassed every other land. That is why the land was able back then to support a large army that did not have to work the fields.\n\nCritias: And here is a great proof of its excellence. Even now what is left of it can match any other land, since it grows every crop and bears good fruit,\n\n### Stephanus 111\n\n[111a] and gives good grazing to all animals. In those days, besides its beauty, it produced all this in huge amounts. How is this believable, and in what way is it right to call it a leftover of the land of that time? The whole of it lies stretched far out from the rest of the mainland into the open sea, like a headland. And the stretch of sea all around it happens to be deep right up to the shore. Many great floods have happened in the nine thousand years, for that is how many years have passed from that time [111b] to now. In these periods and events, the soil that washes down from the heights never builds up a deposit of silt, as it does in other places. It always flows off around and disappears into the depths. So what is left now, compared to what was there then, is like the bones of a body that has fallen sick. All the rich soft earth has washed away, and only the thin body of the land is left. Back then, when it was still whole, [111c] its mountains were high hills, and the plains now called stony ground held full rich soil. It had much woodland on the mountains, and there are still clear signs of it today. Some of the mountains now give food only to bees. But it is not so very long ago that trees cut there were used to roof the largest buildings, and the roofs are still sound. There were many other tall cultivated trees, and the land carried amazing grazing for the flocks. And in fact [111d] the yearly rain from Zeus made the land bear fruit. It did not destroy the land by flowing off bare ground into the sea, as it does now. The land held a great deal of water and took it in. The earth stored it up, covered like a roof with tiles, and let the water absorbed from the heights flow down into the hollows. In every region it provided plenty of springs and rivers. And even now there are still shrines beside the springs that existed before. These are signs that what is now said about the land is true. [111e]\n\nSo this is how the rest of the country was by nature. And it was farmed, as you would expect, by real farmers who did exactly that work, who loved beauty and had good natural abilities, and who had the best soil and very abundant water, with the seasons over the land mixed in the most moderate way. And the city was settled as follows in those days.\n\nCritias: First, the acropolis was\n\n### Stephanus 112\n\n[112a] not as it is now. Now one single night of unusually heavy rain has stripped it bare and made it what it is, along with earthquakes, and this happened before the destruction in the time of Deucalion, with an extraordinary flood of water coming third before it. In an earlier period it came down to the Eridanus and the Ilissus and enclosed the Pnyx within it, with Lycabettus as its boundary on the side opposite the Pnyx. It was all made of earth, and flat on top except for a small part. [112b] The outer parts, right along its lower slopes, were lived in by craftsmen and by the farmers who farmed nearby. But up above, the fighting class by itself, alone, lived around the sanctuary of Athena and Hephaestus, as if they had put one fence around the garden of a single house. On its north side they lived in shared houses with winter dining halls. They had buildings that provided everything fitting for the common [112c] life of the state, for themselves and for the temples, but without gold or silver. They made no use of these at all anywhere. They aimed at the middle ground between arrogance and meanness, and so they built orderly houses. In these they and their children's children grew old and always handed the same houses on to people like themselves. On the south side they set out gardens, gymnasiums, and summer dining halls, and used them for these purposes. There was one spring on the site of the present acropolis. [112d] It was put out by the earthquakes, and today only small streams are left around it. But in those days it gave everyone an abundant flow, and it was equally good in winter and in summer. In this arrangement they lived, as guardians of their own citizens and as leaders of the other Greeks, who followed willingly. They kept the number of their people as nearly the same as possible for all time, both men and women, those already old enough to fight and those still to come, about two [112e] myriads in all. These people, being like this and always governing their own land and Greece in justice, were famous across the whole of Europe and Asia both for the beauty of their bodies and for every kind of excellence of their souls, and they were the most renowned of all people at that time. As for the people who fought against them, what they were like and how it all came about from the beginning, we shall now set out in the open for you, our friends, to share, if we do not lose the memory of what we heard when we were still children.\n\n### Stephanus 113\n\n[113a] Critias: One short point I must still make clear before the account. Do not be surprised when you hear Greek names belonging to foreign men. You will learn the reason for them. Solon, since he planned to use the story for his own poetry, asked about the meaning of the names. He found that the first Egyptians who wrote these things down had translated them into their own language. [113b] Then he took the meaning of each name and, bringing it into our language, wrote it down. These writings were with my grandfather and are still with me now, and I studied them as a child. So if you hear names that are like the ones here, do not be at all surprised. You have the reason for them. This is how the long account began at that time.\n\nJust as was said before about the allotment of the gods, how they divided all the earth among themselves, where larger [113c] portions and where smaller, and set up shrines and sacrifices for themselves, so also Poseidon, when he received the island of Atlantis by lot, settled his own children on it. He had born them from a mortal woman, in a place on the island like this. It faced the sea, but in the middle of the whole island there was a plain. This plain is said to have been the most beautiful of all plains and rich enough to match any. Near the plain, in the middle of it, about fifty stades away, there was a mountain that was low on every side. On this mountain there lived one of the men who had been born there from the earth in the beginning. [113d] His name was Evenor. He lived with his wife Leucippe. They had one daughter, Cleito. When the girl came to the age for marriage, her mother died and her father too. Poseidon desired her and lay with her. He made the hill where she lived strong, breaking off the ground around it in circles. He made rings of sea and land, smaller and larger ones alternating around each other. There were two rings of land and three of sea, as if turned on a lathe from the middle of the island. [113e] They were all the same distance apart, so that the place was impossible for humans to reach. For ships and sailing did not yet exist in those days. Like a god, he easily arranged the island in the middle. He brought up two springs of water from under the ground, one hot and the other cold, flowing from a spring, and made the earth provide food of every kind and in plenty.\n\nCritias: Then he fathered and raised five sets of twin boys, and he divided the whole island of Atlantis into ten parts. To the eldest of them, to the first one\n\n### Stephanus 114\n\n[114a] To the first-born son he gave the home of their mother and the allotment of land around it, which was the largest and the best, and he made him king over the others. The others he made rulers, and to each he gave command over many people and a place with much land. He gave names to all of them. The oldest son, who was king, received the name that the whole island and the sea took from him. The sea is called Atlantic, [114b] because Atlas was the name of the first king at that time. The twin born after him had drawn as his lot the end of the island at the Pillars of Heracles, facing the country that in that region is now called the land of Gadeira. His name in Greek was Eumelus, but in the speech of the country it was Gadeirus, and that name is likely the one the country was named from. Of the second pair of twins he called one Ampheres and the other Evaemon. To the third pair he gave Mneseus for the one born first, [114c] and Autochthon for the one born after him. Of the fourth pair, the first was Elasippus and the younger was Mestor. For the fifth pair, the name Azaes was set for the older one, and Diaprepes for the younger. All these sons, and the children born to them, lived as rulers for many generations. They were lords of many other islands in the sea. And, as was said before, they also governed the peoples here inside, as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. [114d] From Atlas there grew a family very large in number and honored. The kingship always passed from the oldest king to the oldest of his descendants, and they kept it safe for many generations. They held wealth of a size that no royal house had ever had before, and that it would not be easy to have again later. Everything was furnished for them that needed to be furnished, both in the city and in the rest of the country. Much came to them because of their empire [114e] from outside, but the island itself gave most of what was needed for life. First, whatever is dug out by mining, the solid ores and the metals that melt. And the kind that is now called orichalc alone—in that time the name fit more than one kind of thing dug from the earth. Orichalc was mined in many places on the island, and it was the most precious thing in the world then, except gold. The island also bore all the timber needed for the works of carpenters, and it gave plenty of it. And it fed plenty of animals, both tame and wild.\n\nCritias: There were also elephants on the island, in very great numbers. There was pasture for the other animals too, the ones that live in the marshes and the lakes and the rivers, the ones\n\n### Stephanus 115\n\n[115a] that graze in the mountains and those that feed on the plains—for all of them alike there was abundance, and for this animal too, the largest by nature and the one that eats the most. Beyond these, the island bore all the sweet-smelling things the earth now grows, and grew them well: things from roots, or from herbage, or from wood, or from juices that drip, or from flowers, or from fruits. And still further, the cultivated fruit: the dry kind, which is our food, and the kinds we use along with our bread grain—we call [115b] all the parts of it pulses—and the fruit of trees, which gives drinks and food and ointments; and the fruit of orchard trees, which has come to be for play and pleasure and is hard to store; and the after-dinner comforts against being overfull, which we set out for the tired, so dear to them. All these the sacred island, as it was then under the sun, bore, beautiful and wonderful and beyond counting in amount. Taking all these things from the earth, they furnished [115c] the temples, the royal homes, the harbors, the shipyards, and the whole rest of the country, arranging everything in this order:\n\nThe rings of sea around the ancient mother city they bridged first, making a road from outside to the royal palace. The palace had been built at the very beginning in this dwelling place of the god and their ancestors. Each king received it from the one before, and each one, as he made it beautiful, [115d] went beyond the last, as far as he could, until they had made the home an amazing sight in the size and the beauty of its works. They cut through, starting from the sea, a canal three plethra wide, a hundred feet deep, and fifty stades long, and it ran through to the outermost ring. They made this the ship passage from the sea up to that ring, as to a harbor, cutting an entrance wide enough for the largest ships to sail in. They also cut the rings of land, which separated [115e] the rings of sea, at the bridges, leaving a passage from one to the next just wide enough for one trireme. They roofed these over on top, so the sailing could pass below; for the banks of the land rings stood high enough above the sea. The largest ring, the one into which the sea had been cut, was three stades wide, and the next land ring was equal to it. Of the second pair, the water ring was two stades wide, and the land ring again equal to the water ring before it; and the ring\n\n### Stephanus 116\n\n[116a] that ran around the island in the middle was one stade wide.\n\nCritias: The island where the palace stood was five stades across. They surrounded it with a circle of stone wall, and the rings and the bridge too—the bridge was a plethrum wide on each side. They set towers and gates on the bridges, at every crossing of the sea. They cut the stone from under the ring of the island in the middle, and from under the rings outside and inside. Some was white, some black, [116b] and some red. As they cut it, they also made ship sheds, hollow and double inside, roofed with the native rock. Some of the buildings they left plain. In others they mixed the stones and wove varied patterns, for the pleasure of it, giving the buildings a charm that grew out of them. They covered the whole circuit of the wall around the outermost ring with bronze, as one uses an ointment. The inner one they coated with melted tin, and the one [116c] around the acropolis itself with orichalc that flashed like fire.\n\nThe royal home inside the acropolis was fitted out like this. In the middle there was a holy place set apart for Cleito and Poseidon, barred to all, fenced with a wall of gold. This was the spot where, at the beginning, they planted and brought forth the family of the ten kings. And there, each year, from all the ten lots, they brought seasonal offerings, for each of these two. The temple of Poseidon himself was one stade [116d] long, three plethra wide, and its height matched these to the eye, and it had a look that was somehow foreign. They covered the whole outside of the temple with silver, except the ornaments at the roof ends; those they covered with gold. Inside, the whole roof looked ivory, patterned with gold and silver and orichalc; and all the rest—the walls, the columns, and the floor—they covered with orichalc. They set up golden statues: the god standing in a chariot as the driver of six winged [116e] horses, so tall that his head touched the top of the roof; and a hundred Nereids on dolphins around him in a circle—for the people of that time believed there were that many of them. Many other statues stood inside, gifts from private people. Outside, around the temple, stood golden statues of them all: the wives, and the ten kings themselves, all who had ever been. And there were many other large gifts, from the kings and from private people, both from the city itself and from the peoples outside, over whom they ruled.\n\nCritias: An altar\n\n### Stephanus 117\n\n[117a] was there too, matching that building in size and in the quality of its work. The royal palaces, in the same way, were fit for the size of their power and fit for the splendor that was about the temples. They used the two springs, the one of cold water and the one of hot. The water came in endless supply, and it was wonderfully pleasant and good for each kind of use. They surrounded the springs with buildings and with plantings of trees suited to [117b] the waters. They set in cisterns as well—some in the open air, and some roofed over for the warm baths in winter—separate ones for the kings, separate ones for private people, and still others for the women, and others again for the horses and the other beasts of burden, giving each its fitting share of this comfort. They led the overflow to the grove of Poseidon, which had trees of every kind, beautiful, with a wondrous height from the goodness of the soil. They ran the water out to the outer rings through channels at the bridges. [117c] In those rings many temples had been built by hand, to many gods, and many gardens and many exercise grounds—some for men, and some set apart for horses—in each of the two land rings. And, besides these, a racecourse had been cut out for them through the middle of the larger land island, one stade wide, while its length ran the whole way around the circle, kept open for contests of horses. Around it, on this side and on that, stood guard houses [117d], sized for the crowd of the guards. The post for the more trusted men was set in the smaller ring, the one nearer the acropolis. Homes inside the acropolis, around the kings themselves, were given to the men who were most to be trusted of all. The shipyards were full of triremes, and of all the gear that belongs to triremes, and everything was well fitted out. So much, then, for the way the home of the kings was furnished. But past the harbors, which were three, on the outside, a wall, starting [117e] at the sea, ran around in a circle, fifty stades from the largest ring and harbor at every point, and it closed in at the mouth of the canal, the one toward the sea. All this space was covered with many thickly packed houses, and the waterway and the great harbor were full of ships and of merchants arriving from every side, and the crowd filled day and night with voices, with every kind of noise and clatter.\n\nCritias: The city, then, and the land around the ancient dwelling place have now been described almost exactly as it was told back then. The rest of the country,\n\n### Stephanus 118\n\n[118a] in its natural state and in the way it was laid out, we must now try to recall. First, the whole region was said to rise very high and steep from the sea. But all the land around the city was a plain. It enclosed the city on its own side, and it was itself enclosed in a circle by mountains that ran down to the sea. The plain was smooth and level. It was long in shape through its whole length, three thousand stades in one direction, and two thousand going up from the sea at its middle. [118b] This part of the island faced south, and the north winds could not strike it. The mountains around it were then famous beyond all the mountains that now exist, for their number and their size and their beauty. They held many rich villages of country people. They had rivers and lakes and meadows that gave food enough to all their tame and wild creatures. And they had timber, rich in amount and in many kinds, plentiful for every kind of work and for each need. So the plain had been shaped, by its own nature [118c] and by many kings over a long time. It was for the most part four-sided and straight, stretched long. Where it fell short, they corrected it with a ditch dug around it in a circle. Its depth and its width and its length were said to be hard to believe, as a work of human hands, on top of all the other labors. But we must say what we heard. The depth was dug a plethrum, and the width was everywhere a stade. [118d] Since it was dug around the whole plain, its length came to ten thousand stades. The ditch took in the streams that came down from the mountains and ran its circle around the plain. It came to the city on this side and on that, and there it was let off to flow out to the sea. From the ditch, inland, straight channels were cut across the plain, most of them a hundred feet wide, and these again were let out into the ditch at the sea. Each one lay a hundred stades from the next. They used them to bring down [118e] the timber from the mountains into the city, and boats carried down the rest of the season's produce, cutting across from channel to channel sideways, and to the city. They took crops from the land twice in the year: in winter they used the rains from Zeus, and in summer they watered the crops the earth bears with streams led in from the channels.\n\nCritias: As for the number of the men in the plain fit for war, it was ordered that each\n\n### Stephanus 119\n\n[119a] lot provide one man as leader. The size of a lot was ten times ten stades, and the lots in all came to six myriads. The people from the mountains and the rest of the country were said to be endless in number. But all of them were sorted, by place and by village, into these lots, under these leaders. Each leader was ordered to supply for the war a sixth part of a war chariot, so that the whole came to ten thousand chariots; two horses and [119b] riders for them; and besides, a light two-horse team without a chariot, carrying a small-shielded fighter who could leap down to fight, and the driver of the two horses, with a fighting man mounted behind; two hoplites, and two archers and two slingers; three each of light-armed stone throwers and javelin men; and four sailors, to fill out the crews of twelve hundred ships. Such were the war arrangements of the royal city. The other nine were arranged differently, and it would take a long time to tell. [119c]\n\nThe offices and the honors were arranged from the beginning as follows. Each one of the ten kings ruled in his own part, in his own city, over the men, by most of the laws; he could punish and put to death anyone he wished. But their rule over one another and their partnership were governed by the instructions of Poseidon, as the law handed them down, and by the writings the first kings had cut on a pillar [119d] of orichalc, which stood in the middle of the island in the temple of Poseidon. They gathered there every fifth year, and in turn every sixth year, giving an equal share of honor to the even number and the odd. When they had gathered, they took counsel about their common affairs, examined whether anyone had broken any law, and gave judgment. When they were about to judge, they first gave each other pledges of this kind. Bulls roamed free in the temple of Poseidon. The ten, being alone, prayed to the god that they might take the sacrifice pleasing [119e] to him. Then they hunted the bulls without iron, with wooden staves and nooses. Whichever bull they caught, they led it up to the pillar and killed it at the top of the pillar, over the writing. On the pillar, along with the laws, there was an oath that called down great curses on whoever disobeyed.\n\nCritias: So when, by their\n\n### Stephanus 120\n\n[120a] own laws, they had offered the sacrifice and made all the parts of the bull sacred, they mixed a bowl of wine and dropped in a clot of blood, one for each of them; the rest they brought to the fire, after they had cleansed the pillar all around. After that they drew from the bowl with golden cups, poured it over the fire, and swore: to give judgment by the laws on the pillar, and to punish anyone who had already broken any of them; and then also never to break any of the written laws on purpose, and never to rule or to obey a ruler [120b] except as the laws of their fathers commanded. When each of them had prayed these things for himself and for the family that would come after him, he drank, and gave his cup to the god's temple. Then they spent time on the dinner and on their needs. When darkness came, and the fire around the offerings had cooled, they all put on this most beautiful dark-blue robe, sat down on the ground on the embers of the oath, by night, [120c] put out every fire around the holy place, and then received judgment and gave judgment, if any one of them was accused by another of breaking any law. When they had judged, and daylight came, they wrote the judgments on a golden tablet, and they set up the record there together with their robes. There were many other special laws about the privileges of each of the kings. But the greatest were these: never to take up weapons against one another, and to go to the aid of them all if anyone tried to break up the royal family in any of their cities; and [120d] to take counsel together, as those before them had done, on what seemed best about war and about their other actions, while giving the lead to the family of Atlas. No king had power over any of his kinsmen to put him to death, unless more than half of the ten thought it right.\n\nThe god, then, marshaled and led this power, so great and of such a kind as it then was in those places, against these places again, on some pretext of the following kind, as the story goes. [120e] For many generations, as long as the divine nature in them was strong enough, they were obedient to the laws, and they were kindly disposed toward the divine kin in them—\n\nCritias: For they kept thoughts that were true and great in every way. They met the chances that kept coming to them, and one another, with gentleness joined with wisdom. And so, since they looked down on everything except virtue, they thought the goods they had were small,\n\n### Stephanus 121\n\n[121a] and they bore the weight of the gold and of their other possessions easily, like some load. They did not get drunk on soft living because of their wealth, lose control of themselves, and fall. Sober, they saw clearly that all these goods grow out of the common friendship joined with virtue; but when these goods are pursued with too much eagerness and honor, they waste away, and both the goods and virtue itself are destroyed together. Because they kept to this reasoning, and because the divine nature stayed with them, everything we went through before grew for them. But when the god's share in them grew faint, worn down by the great amount of the mortal, [121b] blended with it again and again, and the human character took control, then they could no longer carry what they had, and they behaved shamefully. To anyone who could see, they showed themselves plainly foul, wasting the finest things from the most treasured. But to those who could not see the true life of happiness, they then seemed the most beautiful and the most blessed of men, as they swelled with unjust greed and with power. But Zeus, the god of the gods, who rules by laws, since he could see such things clearly, marked that a decent people was being put into a wretched state. Wanting to lay punishment on them [121c] so that, once corrected, they might come back into better measure, he gathered all the gods into his own most honored home, which stands at the middle of the whole universe and sees from there all the things that have a share in becoming. And, gathering them, he said—","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/critias/translations/trn_critias_plain.txt"},{"id":"trn_critias_historical","translator":"R. G. Bury (1929)","kind":"reference","note":"Public-domain Loeb translation from the Greek (Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 9, Harvard University Press, 1929), in the Perseus Digital Library's digital text, with the same Stephanus pages and sections as the Greek.","text":"### Stephanus 106\n\n[106a] Timaeus: How gladly do I now welcome my release, Socrates, from my protracted discourse, even as a traveller who takes his rest after a long journey! And I make my prayer to that God who has recently been created by our speech (although in reality created of old), that he will grant to us the conservation of all our sayings that have been rightly said, [106b] and, if unwittingly we have spoken aught discordantly, that he will impose the fitting penalty. And the correct penalty is to bring into tune him that is out of tune. In order, then, that for the future we may declare the story of the birth of the gods aright, we pray that he will grant to us that medicine which of all medicines is the most perfect and most good, even knowledge; and having made our prayer, we deliver over to Critias, in accordance with our compact, the task of speaking next in order.\n\nCritias: And I accept the task, Timaeus; but the request which you yourself made at the beginning, [106c] when you asked for indulgence on the ground of the magnitude of the theme you were about to expound, that same request I also make now on my own behalf, and I claim indeed to be granted a still larger measure of indulgence\n\n### Stephanus 107\n\n[107a] in respect of the discourse I am about to deliver.\n\nCritias: I am sufficiently aware that the request I am about to make is decidedly presumptuous and less civil than is proper, but none the less it must be uttered. For as regards the exposition you gave, what man in his senses would attempt to deny its excellence? But what I must somehow endeavor to show is that the discourse now to be delivered calls for greater indulgence because of its greater difficulty. For it is easier, Timaeus, to appear to speak satisfactorily to men about the gods, [107b] than to us about mortals. For when the listeners are in a state of inexperience and complete ignorance about a matter, such a state of mind affords great opportunities to the person who is going to discourse on that matter; and we know what our state is concerning knowledge of the gods. But in order that I may explain my meaning more clearly, pray follow me further. The accounts given by us all must be, of course, of the nature of imitations and representations; and if we look at the portraiture of divine and of human bodies as executed by painters, [107c] in respect of the ease or difficulty with which they succeed in imitating their subjects in the opinion of onlookers, we shall notice in the first place that as regards the earth and mountains and rivers and woods and the whole of heaven, with the things that exist and move therein, we are content if a man is able to represent them with even a small degree of likeness; and further, that, inasmuch as we have no exact knowledge about such objects, we do not examine closely or criticize the paintings, but tolerate, in such cases, an inexact [107d] and deceptive sketch. On the other hand, whenever a painter tries to render a likeness of our own bodies, we quickly perceive what is defective because of our constant familiar acquaintance with them, and become severe critics of him who fails to bring out to the full all the points of similarity. And precisely the same thing happens, as we should notice, in the case of discourses: in respect of what is celestial and divine we are satisfied if the account pocesses even a small degree of likelihood, but we examine with precision [107e] what is mortal and human. To an account given now on the spur of the moment indulgence must be granted, should we fail to make it a wholly fitting representation; for one must conceive of mortal objects as being difficult, and not easy, to represent satisfactorily.\n\nIt is because I wish to remind you of these facts,\n\n### Stephanus 108\n\n[108a] and crave a greater rather than a less measure of indulgence for what I am about to say, that I have made all these observations, Socrates. If, therefore, I seem justified in craving this boon, pray grant it willingly.\n\nSocrates: And why should we hesitate to grant it, Critias? Nay, what is more,the same boon shall be granted by us to a third, Hermocrates. For it is plain that later on, before long, when it is his duty to speak, he will make the same request as you.\n\n[108b] So, in order that he may provide a different prelude and not be compelled to repeat the same one, let him assume, when he comes to speak, that he already has our indulgence. I forewarn you, however, my dear Critias, of the mind of your audience,—how that the former poet won marvellous applause from it, so that you will require an extraordinary measure of indulgence if you are to prove capable of following in his steps.\n\nHermocrates: And in truth, Socrates, you are giving me the same warning as Critias.\n\n[108c] But men of faint heart never yet set up a trophy, Critias; wherefore you must go forward to your discoursing manfully, and, invoking the aid of Paion and the Muses, exhibit and celebrate the excellence of your ancient citizens.\n\nCritias: You, my dear Hermocrates, are posted in the last rank, with another man before you, so you are still courageous. But experience of our task will of itself speedily enlighten you as to its character. However, I must trust to your consolation [108d] and encouragement, and in addition to the gods you mentioned I must call upon all the rest and especially upon Mnemosyne. For practically all the most important part of our speech depends upon this goddess; for if I can sufficiently remember and report the tale once told by the priests and brought hither by Solon, I am wellnigh convinced that I shall appear to the present audience to have fulfilled my task adequately. This, then, I must at once proceed to do, and procrastinate no longer.\n\n[108e] Now first of all we must recall the fact that 9000 is the sum of years since the war occurred, as is recorded, between the dwellers beyond the pillars of Heracles and all that dwelt within them; which war we have now to relate in detail. It was stated that this city of ours was in command of the one side and fought through the whole of the war, and in command of the other side were the kings of the island of Atlantis, which we said was an island larger than Libya and Asia once upon a time, but now lies sunk by earthquakes and has created a barrier of impassable mud\n\n### Stephanus 109\n\n[109a] which prevents those who are sailing out from here to the ocean beyond from proceeding further.\n\nCritias: Now as regards the numerous barbaric tribes and all the Hellenic nations that then existed, the sequel of our story, when it is, as it were, unrolled, will disclose what happened in each locality; but the facts about the Athenians of that age and the enemies with whom they fought we must necessarily describe first, at the outset,—the military power, that is to say, of each and their forms of government. And of these two we must give the priority in our account to the state of Athens.\n\n[109b] Once upon a time the gods were taking over by lot the whole earth according to its regions,—not according to the results of strife: for it would not be reasonable to suppose that the gods were ignorant of their own several rights, nor yet that they attempted to obtain for themselves by means of strife a possession to which others, as they knew, had a better claim. So by just allotments they received each one his own, and they settled their countries; and when they had thus settled them, they reared us up, even as herdsmen [109c] rear their flocks, to be their cattle and nurslings; only it was not our bodies that they constrained by bodily force, like shepherds guiding their flocks with stroke of staff, but they directed from the stern where the living creature is easiest to turn about, laying hold on the soul by persuasion, as by a rudder, according to their own disposition; and thus they drove and steered all the mortal kind. Now in other regions others of the gods had their allotments and ordered the affairs, but inasmuch as Hephaestus and Athena were of a like nature, being born of the same father, and agreeing, moreover, in their love of wisdom and of craftsmanship, they both took for their joint portion this land of ours as being naturally congenial and adapted for virtue [109d] and for wisdom, and therein they planted as native to the soil men of virtue and ordained to their mind the mode of government. And of these citizens the names are preserved, but their works have vanished owing to the repeated destruction of their successors and the length of the intervening periods. For, as was said before, the stock that survived on each occasion was a remnant of unlettered mountaineers which had heard the names only of the rulers, and but little besides of their works. So though they gladly passed on these names [109e] to their descendants, concerning the mighty deeds and the laws of their predecessors they had no knowledge, save for some invariably obscure reports; and since, moreover, they and their children for many generations were themselves in want of the necessaries of life, their attention was given to their own needs\n\n### Stephanus 110\n\n[110a] and all their talk was about them; and in consequence they paid no regard to the happenings of bygone ages.\n\nCritias: For legendary lore and the investigation of antiquity are visitants that come to cities in company with leisure, when they see that men are already furnished with the necessaries of life, and not before.\n\nIn this way, then, the names of the ancients, without their works, have been preserved. And for evidence of what I say I point to the statement of Solon, that the Egyptian priests, in describing the war of that period, mentioned most of those names—such as those of Cecrops and Erechtheus and Erichthonius and Erysichthon and most of the other names [110b] which are recorded of the various heroes before Theseus—and in like manner also the names of the women. Moreover, the habit and figure of the goddess indicate that in the case of all animals, [110c] male and female, that herd together, every species is naturally capable of practising as a whole and in common its own proper excellence.\n\nNow at that time there dwelt in this country not only the other classes of the citizens who were occupied in the handicrafts and in the raising of food from the soil, but also the military class, which had been separated off at the commencement by divine heroes and dwelt apart. It was supplied with all that was required for its sustenance and training, and none of its members possessed any private property, but they regarded all they had [110d] as the common property of all; and from the rest of the citizens they claimed to receive nothing beyond a sufficiency of sustenance; and they practised all those pursuits which were mentioned yesterday, in the description of our proposed Guardians. Moreover, what was related about our country was plausible and true, namely, that, in the first place, it had its boundaries at that time marked off by the Isthmus, and on the inland side reaching to the heights of Cithaeron and Parnes;\n\n[110e] and that the boundaries ran down with Oropia on the right, and on the seaward side they shut off the Asopus on the left; and that all other lands were surpassed by ours in goodness of soil, so that it was actually able at that period to support a large host which was exempt from the labors of husbandry.\n\nAnd of its goodness a strong proof is this: what is now left of our soil rivals any other in being all-productive and abundant in crops and rich in pasturage for all kinds of cattle;\n\n### Stephanus 111\n\n[111a] and at that period, in addition to their fine quality it produced these things in vast quantity. How, then, is this statement plausible, and what residue of the land then existing serves to confirm its truth? The whole of the land lies like a promontory jutting out from the rest of the continent far into the sea and all the cup of the sea; round about it is, as it happens, of a great depth. Consequently, since many great convulsions took place during the 9000 years—for such was the number of years [111b] from that time to this —the soil which has kept breaking away from the high lands during these ages and these disasters, forms no pile of sediment worth mentioning, as in other regions, but keeps sliding away ceaselessly and disappearing in the deep. And, just as happens in small islands, what now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left. But at that epoch the country was unimpaired, and for its mountains it had [111c] high arable hills, and in place of the moorlands, as they are now called, it contained plains full of rich soil; and it had much forestland in its mountains, of which there are visible signs even to this day; for there are some mountains which now have nothing but food for bees, but they had trees no very long time ago, and the rafters from those felled there to roof the largest buildings are still sound. And besides, there were many lofty trees of cultivated species; and it produced boundless pasturage for flocks. Moreover, it was enriched by the yearly rains from Zeus, [111d] which were not lost to it, as now, by flowing from the bare land into the sea; but the soil; it had was deep, and therein it received the water, storing it up in the retentive loamy soil and by drawing off into the hollows from the heights the water that was there absorbed, it provided all the various districts with abundant supplies of springwaters and streams, whereof the shrines which still remain even now, at the spots where the fountains formerly existed, are signs which testify that our present description of the land is true.\n\n[111e] Such, then, was the natural condition of the rest of the country, and it was ornamented as you would expect from genuine husbandmen who made husbandry their sole task, and who were also men of taste and of native talent, and possessed of most excellent land and a great abundance of water, and also, above the land, a climate of most happily tempered seasons. And as to the city, this is the way in which it was laid out at that time.\n\nCritias: In the first place, the acropolis, as it existed then, was different from\n\n### Stephanus 112\n\n[112a] what it is now. For as it is now, the action of a single night of extraordinary rain has crumbled it away and made it bare of soil, when earthquakes occurred simultaneously with the third of the disastrous floods which preceded the destructive deluge in the time of Deucalion. But in its former extent, at an earlier period, it went down towards the Eridanus and the Ilissus, and embraced within it the Pnyx; and had the Lycabettus as its boundary over against the Pnyx; and it was all rich in soil and, save for a small space, level on the top.\n\n[112b] And its outer parts, under its slopes, were inhabited by the craftsmen and by such of the husbandmen as had their farms close by; but on the topmost part only the military class by itself had its dwellings round about the temple of Athene and Hephaestus, surrounding themselves with a single ring-fence, which formed, as it were, the enclosure of a single dwelling. On the northward side of it they had established their public dwellings and winter mess-rooms, and all the arrangements in the way of buildings which were required for the community life [112c] of themselves and the priests; but all was devoid of gold or silver, of which they made no use anywhere; on the contrary, they aimed at the mean between luxurious display and meanness, and built themselves tasteful houses, wherein they and their children's children grew old and handed them on in succession unaltered to others like themselves. As for the southward parts, when they vacated their gardens and gymnasia and mess-rooms as was natural in summer, they used them for these purposes. And near the place of the present Acropolis [112d] there was one spring— which was choked up by the earthquakes so that but small tricklings of it are now left round about; but to the men of that time it afforded a plentiful stream for them all, being well tempered both for winter and summer. In this fashion, then, they dwelt, acting as guardians of their own citizens and as leaders, by their own consent, of the rest of the Greeks and they watched carefully that their own numbers, of both men and women, who were neither too young nor too old to fight, should remain for all time as nearly as possible the same, namely, about 20,000.\n\n[112e] So it was that these men, being themselves of the character described and always justly administering in some such fashion both their own land and Hellas, were famous throughout all Europe and Asia both for their bodily beauty and for the perfection of their moral excellence, and were of all men then living the most renowned. And now, if we have not lost recollection of what we heard when we were still children, we will frankly impart to you all, as friends, our story of the men who warred against our Athenians, what their state was and how it originally came about.\n\n### Stephanus 113\n\n[113a] Critias: But before I begin my account, there is still a small point which I ought to explain, lest you should be surprised at frequently hearing Greek names given to barbarians. The reason of this you shall now learn. Since Solon was planning to make use of the story for his own poetry, he had found, on investigating the meaning of the names, that those Egyptians who had first written them down had translated them into their own tongue. So he himself in turn recovered the original sense of each name and, rendering it into our tongue, [113b] wrote it down so. And these very writings were in the possession of my grandfather and are actually now in mine, and when I was a child I learnt them all by heart. Therefore if the names you hear are just like our local names, do not be at all astonished; for now you know the reason for them. The story then told was a long one, and it began something like this.\n\nLike as we previously stated concerning the allotments of the Gods, that they portioned out the whole earth, here into larger allotments and there into smaller, and provided for themselves [113c] shrines and sacrifices, even so Poseidon took for his allotment the island of Atlantis and settled therein the children whom he had begotten of a mortal woman in a region of the island of the following description. Bordering on the sea and extending through the center of the whole island there was a plain, which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and highly fertile; and, moreover, near the plain, over against its center, at a distance of about 50 stades, there stood a mountain that was low on all sides. Thereon dwelt one of the natives originally sprung from the earth, Evenor by name, [113d] with his wife Leucippe; and they had for offspring an only-begotten daughter, Cleito. And when this damsel was now come to marriageable age, her mother died and also her father; and Poseidon, being smitten with desire for her, wedded her; and to make the hill whereon she dwelt impregnable he broke it off all round about; and he made circular belts of sea and land enclosing one another alternately, some greater, some smaller, two being of land and three of sea, which he carved as it were out of the midst of the island; and these belts were at even distances on all sides, so as to be impassable for man;\n\n[113e] for at that time neither ships nor sailing were as yet in existence. And Poseidon himself set in order with ease, as a god would, the central island, bringing up from beneath the earth two springs of waters, the one flowing warm from its source, the other cold, and producing out of the earth all kinds of food in plenty.\n\nAnd he begat five pairs of twin sons and reared them up; and when he had divided all the island of Atlantis into ten portions, he assigned to the first-born of the eldest sons\n\n### Stephanus 114\n\n[114a] his mother's dwelling and the allotment surrounding it, which was the largest and best; and him he appointed to be king over the rest, and the others to be rulers, granting to each the rule over many men and a large tract of country. And to all of them he gave names, giving to him that was eldest and king the name after which the whole island was called and the sea spoken of as the Atlantic, because the first king who then reigned had the name of Atlas. And the name of his younger twin-brother, [114b] who had for his portion the extremity of the island near the pillars of Heracles up to the part of the country now called Gadeira after the name of that region, was Eumelus in Greek, but in the native tongue Gadeirus,—which fact may have given its title to the country. And of the pair that were born next he called the one Ampheres and the other Evaemon; and of the third pair the elder was named Mneseus [114c] and the younger Autochthon; and of the fourth pair, he called the first Elasippus and the second Mestor; and of the fifth pair, Azaes was the name given to the elder, and Diaprepes to the second. So all these, themselves and their descendants, dwelt for many generations bearing rule over many other islands throughout the sea, and holding sway besides, as was previously stated, over the Mediterranean peoples as far as Egypt and Tuscany.\n\nNow a large family of distinguished sons sprang from Atlas; [114d] but it was the eldest, who, as king, always passed on the scepter to the eldest of his sons, and thus they preserved the sovereignty for many generations; and the wealth they possessed was so immense that the like had never been seen before in any royal house nor will ever easily be seen again; and they were provided with everything of which provision was needed either in the city or throughout the rest of the country. For because of their headship they had a large supply of imports from abroad, [114e] and the island itself furnished most of the requirements of daily life,—metals, to begin with, both the hard kind and the fusible kind, which are extracted by mining, and also that kind which is now known only by name but was more than a name then, there being mines of it in many places of the island,—I mean orichalcum, which was the most precious of the metals then known, except gold. It brought forth also in abundance all the timbers that a forest provides for the labors of carpenters; and of animals it produced a sufficiency, both of tame and wild.\n\nCritias: Moreover, it contained a very large stock of elephants; for there was an ample food-supply not only for all the other animals which haunt the marshes and lakes and rivers,\n\n### Stephanus 115\n\n[115a] or the mountains or the plains, but likewise also for this animal, which of its nature is the largest and most voracious. And in addition to all this, it produced and brought to perfection all those sweet-scented stuffs which the earth produces now, whether made of roots or herbs or trees, or of liquid gums derived from flowers or fruits. The cultivated fruit also, and the dry, which serves us for nutriment, and all the other kinds that we use for our meals—the various species of which are comprehended under the name vegetables—\n\n[115b] and all the produce of trees which affords liquid and solid food and unguents, and the fruit of the orchard-trees, so hard to store, which is grown for the sake of amusement and pleasure, and all the after-dinner fruits that we serve up as welcome remedies for the sufferer from repletion,—all these that hallowed island, as it lay then beneath the sun, produced in marvellous beauty and endless abundance. And thus, receiving from the earth all these products, they furnished forth [115c] their temples and royal dwellings, their harbors and their docks, and all the rest of their country, ordering all in the fashion following. First of all they bridged over the circles of sea which surrounded the ancient metropolis, making thereby a road towards and from the royal palace. And they had built the palace at the very beginning where the settlement was first made by their God and their ancestors; and as each king received it from his predecessor, he added to its adornment [115d] and did all he could to surpass the king before him, until finally they made of it an abode amazing to behold for the magnitude and beauty of its workmanship. For, beginning at the sea, they bored a channel right through to the outermost circle, which was three plethra in breadth, one hundred feet in depth, and fifty stades in length; and thus they made the entrance to it from the sea like that to a harbor by opening out a mouth large enough for the greatest ships to sail through. Moreover, through the circles of land, [115e] which divided those of sea, over against the bridges they opened out a channel leading from circle to circle, large enough to give passage to a single trireme; and this they roofed over above so that the sea-way was subterranean; for the lips of the landcircles were raised a sufficient height above the level of the sea. The greatest of the circles into which a boring was made for the sea was three stades in breadth, and the circle of land next to it was of equal breadth; and of the second pair of circles that of water was two stades in breadth and that of dry land equal again to the preceding one of water; and the circle which ran round the central island itself was of a stade's breadth.\n\nCritias: And this island,\n\n### Stephanus 116\n\n[116a] wherein stood the royal palace, was of five stades in diameter. Now the island and the circles and the bridge, which was a plethrum in breadth, they encompassed round about, on this side and on that, with a wall of stone; and upon the bridges on each side, over against the passages for the sea, they erected towers and gates. And the stone they quarried beneath the central island all round, and from beneath the outer and inner circles, some of it being white, some black [116b] and some red; and while quarrying it they constructed two inner docks, hollowed out and roofed over by the native rock. And of the buildings some they framed of one simple color, in others they wove a pattern of many colors by blending the stones for the sake of ornament so as to confer upon the buildings a natural charm. And they covered with brass, as though with plaster, all the circumference of the wall which surrounded the outermost circle; and that of the inner one they coated with tin; and that which encompassed the acropolis itself [116c] with orichalcum which sparkled like fire.\n\nThe royal palace within the acropolis was arranged in this manner. In the center there stood a temple sacred to Cleito and Poseidon, which was reserved as holy ground, and encircled with a wall of gold; this being the very spot where at the beginning they had generated and brought to birth the family of the ten royal lines. Thither also they brought year by year from all the ten allotments their seasonable offerings to do sacrifice to each of those princes.\n\n[116d] And the temple of Poseidon himself was a stade in length, three plethra in breadth, and of a height which appeared symmetrical therewith; and there was something of the barbaric in its appearance. All the exterior of the temple they coated with silver, save only the pinnacles, and these they coated with gold. As to the interior, they made the roof all of ivory in appearance, variegated with gold and silver and orichalcum, and all the rest of the walls and pillars and floors they covered with orichalcum. And they placed therein golden statues, one being that of the God standing on a chariot and driving six [116e] winged steeds, his own figure so tall as to touch the ridge of the roof, and round about him a hundred Nereids on dolphins (for that was the number of them as men then believed); and it contained also many other images, the votive offerings of private men. And outside, round about the temple, there stood images in gold of all the princes, both themselves and their wives, as many as were descended from the ten kings, together with many other votive offerings both of the kings and of private persons not only from the State itself but also from all the foreign peoples over whom they ruled.\n\nCritias: And the altar,\n\n### Stephanus 117\n\n[117a] in respect of its size and its workmanship, harmonized with its surroundings; and the royal palace likewise was such as befitted the greatness of the kingdom, and equally befitted the splendor of the temples.\n\nThe springs they made use of, one kind being of cold, another of warm water, were of abundant volume, and each kind was wonderfully well adapted for use because of the natural taste and excellence of its waters; and these they surrounded with buildings and with plantations of trees such as suited the waters;\n\n[117b] and, moreover, they set reservoirs round about, some under the open sky, and others under cover to supply hot baths in the winter; they put separate baths for the kings and for the private citizens, besides others for women, and others again for horses and all other beasts of burden, fitting out each in an appropriate manner. And the outflowing water they conducted to the sacred grove of Poseidon, which contained trees of all kinds that were of marvellous beauty and height because of the richness of the soil; and by means of channels they led the water to the outer circles over against the bridges.\n\n[117c] And there they had constructed many temples for gods, and many gardens and many exercising grounds, some for men and some set apart for horses, in each of the circular belts of island; and besides the rest they had in the center of the large island a racecourse laid out for horses, which was a stade in width, while as to length, a strip which ran round the whole circumference was reserved for equestrian contests. And round about it, on this side and on that, were barracks for the greater part of the spearmen; but the guard-house of the more trusty [117d] of them was posted in the smaller circle, which was nearer the acropolis; while those who were the most trustworthy of all had dwellings granted to them within the acropolis round about the persons of the kings.\n\nAnd the shipyards were full of triremes and all the tackling that belongs to triremes, and they were all amply equipped.\n\nSuch then was the state of things round about the abode of the kings. And after crossing the three outer harbors, [117e] one found a wall which began at the sea and ran round in a circle, at a uniform distance of fifty stades from the largest circle and harbor, and its ends converged at the seaward mouth of the channel. The whole of this wall had numerous houses built on to it, set close together; while the sea-way and the largest harbor were filled with ships and merchants coming from all quarters, which by reason of their multitude caused clamor and tumult of every description and an unceasing din night and day.\n\nCritias: Now as regards the city and the environs of the ancient dwelling we have now wellnigh completed the description as it was originally given. We must endeavor next to repeat the account of the rest of the country,\n\n### Stephanus 118\n\n[118a] what its natural character was, and in what fashion it was ordered. In the first place, then, according to the account, the whole region rose sheer out of the sea to a great height, but the part about the city was all a smooth plain, enclosing it round about, and being itself encircled by mountains which stretched as far as to the sea; and this plain had a level surface and was as a whole rectangular in shape, being 3000 stades long on either side and 2000 stades wide at its center, reckoning upwards from the sea. And this region, [118b] all along the island, faced towards the South and was sheltered from the Northern blasts. And the mountains which surrounded it were at that time celebrated as surpassing all that now exist in number, magnitude and beauty; for they had upon them many rich villages of country folk, and streams and lakes and meadows which furnished ample nutriment to all the animals both tame and wild, and timber of various sizes and descriptions, abundantly sufficient for the needs of all and every craft.\n\n[118c] Now as a result of natural forces, together with the labors of many kings which extended over many ages, the condition of the plain was this. It was originally a quadrangle, rectilinear for the most part, and elongated; and what it lacked of this shape they made right by means of a trench dug round about it. Now, as regards the depth of this trench and its breadth and length, it seems incredible that it should be so large as the account states, considering that it was made by hand, and in addition to all the other operations, but none the less we must report what we heard: it was dug out to the depth of a plethrum and to a uniform breadth of a stade, and since it was dug round the whole plain [118d] its consequent length was 10,000 stades. It received the streams which came down from the mountains and after circling round the plain, and coming towards the city on this side and on that, it discharged them thereabouts into the sea. And on the inland side of the city channels were cut in straight lines, of about 100 feet in width, across the plain, and these discharged themselves into the trench on the seaward side, the distance between each being 100 stades. It was in this way that they conveyed to the city [118e] the timber from the mountains and transported also on boats the seasons' products, by cutting transverse passages from one channel to the next and also to the city. And they cropped the land twice a year, making use of the rains from Heaven in the winter, and the waters that issue from the earth in summer, by conducting the streams from the trenches.\n\nCritias: As regards their manpower, it was ordained that each allotment should furnish one man as leader of all the men in the plain who were fit to bear arms;\n\n### Stephanus 119\n\n[119a] and the size of the allotment was about ten times ten stades, and the total number of all the allotments was 60,000; and the number of the men in the mountains and in the rest of the country was countless, according to the report, and according to their districts and villages they were all assigned to these allotments under their leaders. So it was ordained that each such leader should provide for war the sixth part of a war-chariots equipment, so as to make up 10,000 chariots in all, together with two horses and mounted men;\n\n[119b] also a pair of horses without a car, and attached thereto a combatant with a small shield and for charioteer the rider who springs from horse to horse; and two hoplites; and archers and slingers, two of each; and light-armed slingers and javelin-men, three of each; and four sailors towards the manning of twelve hundred ships. Such then were the military dispositions of the royal City; and those of the other nine varied in various ways, which it would take a long time to tell.\n\n[119c] Of the magistracies and posts of honor the disposition, ever since the beginning, was this. Each of the ten kings ruled over the men and most of the laws in his own particular portion and throughout his own city, punishing and putting to death whomsoever he willed. But their authority over one another and their mutual relations were governed by the precepts of Poseidon, as handed down to them by the law and by the records inscribed by the first princes on a pillar of orichalcum, which was placed within the temple of Poseidon in the center of the island;\n\n[119d] and thither they assembled every fifth year, and then alternately every sixth year—giving equal honor to both the even and the odd—and when thus assembled they took counsel about public affairs and inquired if any had in any way transgressed and gave judgement. And when they were about to give judgement they first gave pledges one to another of the following description. In the sacred precincts of Poseidon there were bulls at large; and the ten princes, being alone by themselves, after praying to the God that they might capture a victim well-pleasing unto him, [119e] hunted after the bulls with staves and nooses but with no weapon of iron; and whatsoever bull they captured they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of the pillar, raining down blood on the inscription. And inscribed upon the pillar, besides the laws, was an oath which invoked mighty curses upon them that disobeyed.\n\nCritias: When, then, they had done sacrifice according to their laws and were consecrating\n\n### Stephanus 120\n\n[120a] all the limbs of the bull, they mixed a bowl of wine and poured in on behalf of each one a gout of blood, and the rest they carried to the fire, when they had first purged the pillars round about. And after this they drew out from the bowl with golden ladles, and making libation over the fire swore to give judgement according to the laws upon the pillar and to punish whosoever had committed any previous transgression; and, moreover, that henceforth they would not transgress any of the writings willingly, nor govern nor submit to any governor's edict [120b] save in accordance with their father's laws. And when each of them had made this invocation both for himself and for his seed after him, he drank of the cup and offered it up as a gift in the temple of the God; and after spending the interval in supping and necessary business, when darkness came on and the sacrificial fire had died down, all the princes robed themselves in most beautiful sable vestments, and sate on the ground beside the cinders of the sacramental victims throughout the night, extinguishing all the fire that was round about the sanctuary;\n\n[120c] and there they gave and received judgement, if any of them accused any of committing any transgression. And when they had given judgement, they wrote the judgements, when it was light, upon a golden tablet, and dedicated them together with their robes as memorials. And there were many other special laws concerning the peculiar rights of the several princes, whereof the most important were these: that they should never take up arms against one another, and that, should anyone attempt to overthrow in any city their royal house, they should all lend aid, taking counsel in common, like their forerunners, [120d] concerning their policy in war and other matters, while conceding the leadership to the royal branch of Atlas; and that the king had no authority to put to death any of his brother-princes save with the consent of more than half of the ten.\n\nSuch was the magnitude and character of the power which existed in those regions at that time; and this power the God set in array and brought against these regions of ours on some such pretext as the following, according to the story. For many generations, [120e] so long as the inherited nature of the God remained strong in them, they were submissive to the laws and kindly disposed to their divine kindred.\n\nCritias: For the intents of their hearts were true and in all ways noble, and they showed gentleness joined with wisdom in dealing with the changes and chances of life and in their dealings one with another. Consequently they thought scorn of everything save virtue and lightly esteemed their rich possessions, bearing with ease\n\n### Stephanus 121\n\n[121a] the burden, as it were, of the vast volume of their gold and other goods; and thus their wealth did not make them drunk with pride so that they lost control of themselves and went to ruin; rather, in their soberness of mind they clearly saw that all these good things are increased by general amity combined with virtue, whereas the eager pursuit and worship of these goods not only causes the goods themselves to diminish but makes virtue also to perish with them. As a result, then, of such reasoning and of the continuance of their divine nature all their wealth had grown to such a greatness as we previously described. But when the portion of divinity within them was now becoming faint and weak through being ofttimes blended with a large measure of mortality, [121b] whereas the human temper was becoming dominant, then at length they lost their comeliness, through being unable to bear the burden of their possessions, and became ugly to look upon, in the eyes of him who has the gift of sight; for they had lost the fairest of their goods from the most precious of their parts; but in the eyes of those who have no gift of perceiving what is the truly happy life, it was then above all that they appeared to be superlatively fair and blessed, filled as they were with lawless ambition and power. And Zeus, the God of gods, who reigns by Law, inasmuch as he has the gift of perceiving such things, marked how this righteous race was in evil plight, and desired to inflict punishment upon them, to the end that when chastised they might strike a truer note.\n\n[121c] Wherefore he assembled together all the gods into that abode which they honor most, standing as it does at the center of all the Universe, and beholding all things that partake of generation and when he had assembled them, he spake thus:","download_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/critias/translations/trn_critias_historical.txt"}],"retex_markdown_url":"https://mouseia.org/api/works/critias/retex.md"}}