he has received tradition of events that happened more than nine
thousand years ago, when the Athenians themselves were such ideal
citizens. Critias has received this tradition, he says, from a
ninety-year-old grandfather, whose father, Dropides, was the friend of
Solon. Solon, lawgiver and poet, had heard it from the priests of the
goddess Neïth or Athene at Sais, and had begun to shape it into a heroic
poem.

This was the tradition:--Nine thousand years before the time of Solon,
the goddess Athene, who was worshipped also in Sais, had given to her
Athenians a healthy climate, a fertile soil, and temperate people strong
in wisdom and courage. Their Republic was like that which Socrates
imagined, and it had to bear the shock of a great invasion by the people
of the vast island Atlantis. This island, larger than all Libya and Asia
put together, was once in the sea westward beyond the Atlantic
waves,--thus America was dreamed of long before it was discovered.
Atlantis had ten kings, descended from ten sons of Poseidon (Neptune),
who was the god magnificently worshipped by its people. Vast power and
dominion, that extended through all Libya as far as Egypt, and over a
part of Europe, caused the Atlantid kings to grow ambitious and unjust.
Then they entered the Mediterranean and fell upon Athens with enormous
force. But in the little band of citizens, temperate, brave, and wise,
there were forces of Reason able to resist and overcome brute strength.
Now, however, gone are the Atlantids, gone are the old virtues of
Athens. Earthquakes and deluges laid waste the world. The whole great
island of Atlantis, with its people and its wealth, sank to the bottom
of the ocean. The ideal warriors of Athens, in one day and night, were
swallowed by an earthquake, and were to be seen no more.

Plato, a philosopher with the soul of a poet, died in the year 347