Sunday

Critias


Plato’s description of Atlantis (the plain and the mountain):

Looking towards the sea, but in the centre of the whole island, there was a plain which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and very fertile. Also in the centre of the island, there was a mountain not very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth-born primeval men of that country, who had an only daughter who was called Cleito.[*] The maiden had already reached womanhood, when her father and mother died; Poseidon fell in love with her and had intercourse with her, and breaking the ground, inclosed the hill in which she dwelt all round, making alternate zones of sea and land larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water, which he turned as with a lathe, each having its circumference equidistant from the centre, so that no man could get to the island.

NB: Circles of land and water:

They arranged the whole country in the following manner:

First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded the ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the royal palace.

Then, beginning from the sea, they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which became a harbour, leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress.

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

All this, including the zones and the bridge, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in.

[Plato, ‘Critias’, Collected Dialogues, pp. 1218-22]

Am I the only one to see it sounds like here?




[*] See >Xanthippe.



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