Critias

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.

Critias: 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,

107a and I claim the right to get it to an even larger degree, for what I am going to say.

Critias: 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.

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.

Socrates: 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.

Hermocrates: 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.

Critias: 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.

108e

First 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,

109a to sail out over the whole open sea, so that no one can get through any more. It stands in the way.

Critias: 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

For 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,

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.

Critias: 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.

Now 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.

Critias: 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,

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

So 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.

Critias: First, the acropolis was

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.

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.

Just 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.

Critias: 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

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.

Critias: 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

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:

The 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

116a that ran around the island in the middle was one stade wide.

Critias: 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.

The 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.

Critias: An altar

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.

Critias: 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,

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.

Critias: As for the number of the men in the plain fit for war, it was ordered that each

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

The 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.

Critias: So when, by their

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.

The 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—

Critias: 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,

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—