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Critias

Plato

c. 360 BC · Ancient · Philosophy · Greek

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Summary

The Critias is the unfinished second part of a planned series that begins with the Timaeus. In the Timaeus, Socrates had asked to see the ideal city of his earlier conversation set in motion, as one might wish to see beautiful animals in a painting come to life, and Critias promised to supply this through an old story: Egyptian priests at Sais had told the Athenian lawgiver Solon of a war fought nine thousand years before, in which a primeval Athens defeated the invading empire of Atlantis. Timaeus first gave his long account of the making of the cosmos and of man. The Critias opens as Timaeus, relieved, prays that his words may be corrected where wrong, asking for knowledge, 'of all medicines the most perfect and best'. Critias then asks for more indulgence than Timaeus received: an audience will accept a vague picture of the gods, he argues, but it judges every flaw in a portrait of human beings. Socrates grants it, warns that Hermocrates will need the same, and Critias, invoking Mnemosyne (Memory), begins. He describes how the gods divided the earth by lot without quarrelling and guided their peoples 'by the rudder of persuasion'. Hephaestus and Athena received Attica, a land fitted for wisdom and virtue. Its ancient inhabitants had a warrior class living apart, holding no private gold or silver, with men and women sharing the common pursuits of war, as in the city of the Republic. The land itself was then richer: the Acropolis was broad and covered with soil, the hills wooded, the rain stored rather than lost to the sea, and what remains today is only 'the bones of the wasted body' after many floods. Critias explains that Solon translated the names back into Greek from the Egyptian, and that his own great-grandfather Dropides kept Solon's manuscript. He then turns to Atlantis. Poseidon, receiving the island as his lot, loved Cleito, a mortal woman, and enclosed her hill in alternating rings of sea and land. Their ten sons, five pairs of twins led by Atlas, ruled ten kingdoms. Critias describes in close detail the island's orichalcum, elephants and crops, the canals cut through the rings, the walls coated with brass, tin and orichalcum, the temple of Poseidon, the springs, baths and racecourse, and the great irrigated plain. The ten kings met every fifth and sixth year at a pillar of orichalcum inscribed with Poseidon's laws, hunted a bull without weapons, sacrificed it over the inscription, swore to judge by the laws, and gave judgment through the night in azure robes. For many generations they despised everything but virtue; but as the divine portion in them was diluted by the mortal, they grew greedy and ambitious, though they looked most glorious to those who could not see true happiness. Zeus called the gods together to decide their punishment, 'that they might be chastened and improve', and the text breaks off as he begins to speak.

Plot or Argument

Timaeus' prayer and Critias' plea for indulgence
Timaeus hands over the argument with a prayer for correction and knowledge. Critias argues that describing men to men is harder than describing gods, since we judge portraits of familiar things strictly; Socrates and Hermocrates grant the request and urge him on (Stephanus 106a-108d).
The war and the allotment of the gods
Critias dates the war between Athens and the peoples beyond the Pillars of Heracles to nine thousand years before, and describes how the gods divided the earth justly by lot and governed mortals by persuasion; Hephaestus and Athena took Attica (108e-109d).
Primeval Athens and its land
A separate warrior class owned nothing privately and lived in common on a broad, fertile Acropolis with a single spring; the country's soil, forests and waters were abundant before repeated floods stripped it to a skeleton (109d-112e).
Solon's names and the founding of Atlantis
Critias explains why foreigners bear Greek names and that Dropides held Solon's manuscript. Poseidon loves Cleito, rings her hill with zones of sea and land, and fathers ten sons who divide the island, Atlas the eldest giving his name to it and to the ocean (113a-114d).
The wealth and works of Atlantis
Mines, forests, animals and harvests supply the island. The kings bridge and tunnel the rings, wall them with brass, tin and orichalcum, build Poseidon's temple of silver and gold with a colossal statue of the god, and lay out springs, baths, gardens, docks and a vast canal-watered plain with its quota of chariots, soldiers and ships (114d-119b).
The laws on the pillar and the bull sacrifice
The ten kings meet alternately every fifth and sixth year at the orichalcum pillar, capture a bull with staves and nooses, sacrifice it so its blood runs over the inscription, swear to judge by Poseidon's laws, and pass sentence by night; no king may kill a kinsman without the assent of the majority (119c-120d).
Decline and the council of Zeus
While the divine nature lasted, the kings held wealth lightly and valued virtue and friendship; as it faded they became visibly debased, though outwardly splendid. Zeus gathers the gods to judge them, and the dialogue breaks off mid-sentence (120d-121c).

Characters

Critias, narrator of the Atlantis story
An elderly Athenian who claims descent from Dropides, a kinsman of Solon. Whether Plato means the Critias of the Thirty or his grandfather of the same name is disputed.
Timaeus of Locri, speaker of the preceding dialogue
Philosopher from Italian Locri who has just completed his account of the cosmos; possibly a figure invented by Plato, since no independent record of him survives.
Socrates, host and judge
Speaks only briefly, granting indulgence and announcing 'the judgment of the theatre'; the series answers his request to see his ideal city in action.
Hermocrates, Syracusan statesman, next speaker
Encourages Critias with 'faint heart never yet raised a trophy'; historically the Syracusan general who resisted the Athenian expedition of 415-413 BC. His own speech was never written.
Poseidon and Cleito, founders of the Atlantid line
The god and the mortal daughter of Evenor and Leucippe, whose hill he encircles with rings of sea and land.
Atlas and the ten kings, rulers of Atlantis
Five pairs of twin sons of Poseidon and their descendants, bound by laws inscribed on a pillar of orichalcum.
Zeus, judge of the gods
'The god of gods, who rules according to law', who summons the gods to decide how to chasten Atlantis as the text ends.

Lessons

Why it is harder to describe men than gods
Critias' preface argues that every speech is 'imitation and representation', and that audiences forgive a vague picture of the heavens but punish errors in a picture of human life, which they know well. The point is partly a rhetorical bid for sympathy and partly a real observation about representation and familiarity. Students can test it against their own experience of fiction, history and portraiture.
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- How does his preface prepare us to receive a story that may not be literally true?
- What does Critias' appeal to Mnemosyne suggest about the source and reliability of his tale?
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Context

The Critias belongs with the Timaeus in Plato's late period. Its Atlantis story is presented as an Egyptian record carried to Athens by Solon, but no source before Plato mentions Atlantis, and most scholars regard it as Plato's own invention, built from Greek traditions of floods, Egyptian antiquity and Athenian memories of the Persian Wars, with the sea empire of Atlantis perhaps reflecting Athens' own naval imperialism. The cast is pointed: Hermocrates was the Syracusan leader who helped destroy the Athenian expedition to Sicily, a later real-world defeat of an overreaching sea power.

Composition

The dialogue is usually dated to the last decade or so of Plato's life, after the Timaeus and perhaps alongside the Laws; 'c. 360 BC' is a conventional estimate. It breaks off mid-sentence, and the Hermocrates that was apparently planned to follow was never written; why Plato stopped is unknown. The library's text is Benjamin Jowett's translation with his introduction, from The Dialogues of Plato (3rd ed., 1892), reproduced from Project Gutenberg #1571. Stephanus numbers cited here come from standard editions; the attached text does not print them.

Reception

Ancient readers already disagreed. Proclus' commentary on the Timaeus reports that Crantor, an early Platonist, took the story as history, while Strabo records the opinion, attributed to Aristotle, that the inventor of Atlantis made it vanish. Renaissance writers reused the frame for ideal societies, most directly Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627), and Thomas More's Utopia shares its device of a far-off island reported by a traveller. From Ignatius Donnelly's Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882) onward, the story has fed speculation about a real lost continent, which historians treat as a misreading of Plato. The work was included in the Great Books of the Western World (2nd ed., 1990), volume 6.

Utopia / Dystopia Power / Politics Language / Storytelling Money Wealth Justice Law Memory / Time Nature / Landscape

Comparisons

Timaeus
The Timaeus introduces the Atlantis story in summary through Critias' account of Solon in Egypt and then sets it aside for Timaeus' cosmology; the Critias resumes the tale in full and turns the cosmic order of the Timaeus into a test of whether human cities can keep that order.
The Republic
Primeval Athens is the Republic's city of guardians made into history: common property, no private gold, men and women sharing military life. Atlantis, rich and maritime, resembles the luxurious, inflamed city the Republic warns against.
Laws
The Laws, written in the same late period, also uses ancient catastrophes and floods to explain the origins of societies and also sets rulers under inscribed law; the oath of the Atlantid kings is a mythic version of the rule of law the Laws legislates.
New Atlantis
Bacon borrows the name and the motif of a hidden island civilization, but replaces Plato's moral decline with a society of scientific research and Christian piety, presented as continuing rather than lost.
Utopia
More's island of Utopia, reached through a traveller's report and described down to its towns and customs, follows the Platonic pattern of a detailed imaginary polity used to judge one's own; More's Utopians, unlike the later Atlantids, scorn gold.
The Histories
Herodotus visits Egypt, reports the priests' vast records of past ages and tells of Solon's travels; the Critias borrows that authority of Egyptian antiquity to frame a story Herodotus never mentions.

Quotes

“I pray him to give me knowledge, which of all medicines is the most perfect and best”

— Plato, Critias, Stephanus 106b, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1892).Quote card

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“All that is said by any of us can only be imitation and representation”

— Plato, Critias, Stephanus 107b, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1892).Quote card

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“to seem to speak well of the gods to men is far easier than to speak well of men to men”

— Plato, Critias, Stephanus 107a, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1892).Quote card

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— Plato, Critias, Stephanus 108c, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1892).Quote card

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“holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their own pleasure”

— Plato, Critias, Stephanus 109c, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1892).Quote card

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“there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called”

— Plato, Critias, Stephanus 111b, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1892).Quote card

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The Ten Books on Architecture, known in Latin as De Architectura, is the only complete treatise on architecture to survive from classical antiquity. It was written by the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius in the reign of Augustus, to whom it is dedicated, probably between about 30 and 15 BC. This text is the translation by Morris Hicky Morgan of Harvard University, completed after his death and published in 1914, with illustrations described in the text. Vitruvius begins with the education of the architect,...
On the Nature of the Universe, Absence Of Secondary Qualities
Now to true reason give thy mind for us Since here strange truth is putting forth its might To hit thee in thine ears a new aspect Of things to show its front Yet naught there is So easy that it standeth not at first More hard to credit than it after is And naught soe'er that's great to such degree Nor wonderful so far but all mankind Little by little abandon their surprise Look upward yonder at the bright clear sky And what it holds--the stars that wander o'er The moon the radiance of the splendour-sun Yet all...
The Bridal Wreath (Kristin Lavransdatter I), Full Text
the nephews of Queen Margret Skulesdatter Kristin could not even pluck up heart to say it was not her forefather but his brother who had come to the land an outlaw She sat and gazed at the dark hillsides across the dale and she thought of the day many years gone by when she had been up on the upland wastes and seen how many fells there were twixt her own valley and the outer world Then Lady Aashild said they must go home now and bade her call on Arne So Kristin put her hands to her mouth and hallooed and waved h...

“They despised everything but virtue, caring little for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them”

— Plato, Critias, Stephanus 120e, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1892).Quote card

Meno, Full Text
Produced by Sue Asscher MENO by Plato Translated by Benjamin Jowett INTRODUCTION This Dialogue begins abruptly with a question of Meno who asks whether virtue can be taught Socrates replies that he does not as yet know what virtue is and has never known anyone who did Then he cannot have met Gorgias when he was at Athens Yes Socrates had met him but he has a bad memory and has forgotten what Gorgias said Will Meno tell him his own notion which is probably not very different from that of Gorgias O yes--nothing ea...
Rerum Novarum, Full Text
the hands of a few individuals so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself To remedy these wrongs the Socialists working on the poor man's envy of the rich are striving to do away with private property and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies They hold that by thus transferring property from private individua...
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Contents
more gallant deeds than in any other but of all British kings Arthur was the most valiant as I have heard tell therefore will I set forth a wondrous adventure that fell out in his time And if ye will listen to me but for a little while I will tell it even as it stands in story stiff and strong fixed in the letter as it hath long been known in the land How Arthur held high feast at Camelot King Arthur lay at Camelot upon a Christmas-tide with many a gallant lord and lovely lady and all the noble brotherhood of th...
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, Full Text
because in those regions the chief citizens always must have titles of some sort and so the usual courtesy had been extended to Hawkins The mail was monthly and sometimes amounted to as much as three or four letters at a single delivery Even a rush like this did not fill up the postmaster's whole month though and therefore he kept store in the intervals The Squire was contemplating the morning It was balmy and tranquil the vagrant breezes were laden with the odor of flowers the murmur of bees was in the air ther...
The Satires of Horace and Persius, The Art Of Poetry. To The Pisos, Father And Sons. Humano Capiti.
Greek with just a twist or so But why should Rome capriciously forbid Our bards from doing what their fathers did Or why should Plautus and Caecilius gain What Virgil or what Varius asks in vain Nay I myself if with my scanty wit I coin a word or two why grudge me it When Ennius and old Cato boldly flung Their terms broadcast and amplified our tongue To utter words stamped current by the mill Has always been thought right and always will When forests shed their foliage at the fall The earliest born still drops t...

“but when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, behaved unseemly”

— Plato, Critias, Stephanus 121a, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1892).Quote card

The Odes and Carmen Saeculare, Book I, Ode 11 (Tu ne quaesieris)
Seize the present; trust to-morrow e'en as little as you may. The end of the advice to Leuconoe not to consult astrologers: the carpe diem ode.
The Argonautica, Full Text
of Apollonius for chronological reasons and there is considerable difficulty about it The date of Callimachus Hymn to Apollo which closes with some lines that are admittedly an allusion to Apollonius may be put with much probability at or B C Apollonius must at that date have been at least twenty years old Eratosthenes died B C This would make Apollonius seventy-two to seventy-five when he succeeded Eratosthenes This is not impossible it is true but it is difficult But the difficulty is taken away if we assume w...
War and Peace, Full Text
IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII BOOK ONE CHAPTER I Well Prince so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes But I warn you if you don t tell me that this means war if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist I really believe he is Antichrist I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend no longer my faithful slave as you call yourself But how do you do I see I have frightened you sit down and tell me all the news It was in...
Principles of Geology, Full Text
such glowing descriptions those sandy tracts had begun to yield spontaneously an annual supply of grain we might then indeed have fancied alterations still more remarkable in the economy of nature to have attended the first coming of our species into the planet Or if when a volcanic island like Ischia was for the first time brought under cultivation by the enterprise and industry of a Greek colony the internal fire had become dormant and the earthquake had remitted its destructive violence there would then have...
Middlemarch, Prelude
Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed. The close of the Prelude, introducing the theme of a great spirit with no great outlet.

“to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power”

— Plato, Critias, Stephanus 121b, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1892).Quote card

Elements of Chemistry, Full Text
alluded to to give Tables of the same nature with those of Mr Lavoisier for facilitating the calculations of the results of chemical experiments PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR When I began the following Work my only object was to extend and explain more fully the Memoir which I read at the public meeting of the Academy of Sciences in the month of April on the necessity of reforming and completing the Nomenclature of Chemistry While engaged in this employment I perceived better than I had ever done before the justice of t...
Titus Andronicus, Summary
Titus Andronicus is a Roman revenge tragedy, probably Shakespeare's first, set in an invented late-imperial Rome where the old general Titus returns from ten years of war against the Goths with his captives: Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her three sons, and her Moorish lover Aaron. Titus has lost twenty-one of his twenty-five sons in Rome's service. To appease their spirits he has Tamora's eldest son Alarbus hewn and burned as a sacrifice, though she kneels and begs for his life. The Roman people offer Titus the e...
The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, Virginia Resolutions (1798)
deep regret that a spirit has in sundry instances been manifested by the federal government to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter which defines them and that implications have appeared of a design to expound certain general phrases which having been copied from the very limited grant of power in the former articles of confederation were the less liable to be misconstrued so as to destroy the meaning and effect of the particular enumeration which necessarily explains and limi...
Lepanto, Lesson: Sound as meaning
Sound as meaning. Lepanto is meant to be heard. Alliteration (Dim drums throbbing, Strong gongs groaning), internal rhyme, and the returning refrain give the poem the rhythm of a march and a battle, so that the coming of Don John is felt before it is understood.
Early Black Church Sermons and Addresses, Moee Fokceful Attacks
fall a victim to its cruel oppression But he is to be advertised and if no owner appear how can an owner appear for a man who is free and belongs to no one if no owner appear he is exposed for sale Oh inhuman spectacle found in no unjust act convicted of no crime he is barbarously sold like the produce of the soil to the highest bidder or what is still worse for no crimes without the inestimable privilege of a trial by his peers doomed to the dreary walls of a prison for the term of seven tedious years My NEGRO...

“that they might be chastened and improve”

— Plato, Critias, Stephanus 121b-c, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1892).Quote card

Proslogion, Chapter I
For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. Chapter 1: Anselm's statement of faith seeking understanding.
Little Dorrit, Book the First, Ch. 6 ('The Father of the Marshalsea')
A little more elbow-room is all we want here. We are quiet here; we don’t get badgered here The drunken prison doctor, after delivering Amy, consoles the new debtor that the Marshalsea is a kind of freedom.
Coriolanus, Full Text
become rakes for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread not in thirst for revenge SECOND CITIZEN Would you proceed especially against Caius Martius FIRST CITIZEN Against him first He s a very dog to the commonalty SECOND CITIZEN Consider you what services he has done for his country FIRST CITIZEN Very well and could be content to give him good report for t but that he pays himself with being proud SECOND CITIZEN Nay but speak not maliciously FIRST CITIZEN I say unto you what he hath done famously he did...
Little Dorrit, Book the First, Ch. 21
Merdle's mysterious complaint: the Physician finds nothing, while Bar suggests mental strain and the Bishop prescribes egg beaten with sherry.
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, The Paradise of Children
Hope spiritualizes the earth; Hope makes it always new; and, even in the earth's best and brightest aspect, Hope shows it to be only the shadow of an infinite bliss hereafter. Closing the tale, the storyteller admits the Troubles are still in the world but says he cannot help being glad that Pandora let Hope out.

Medical Lens

The Critias has no medical subject, but two features are of interest. Timaeus' opening prayer calls knowledge the most perfect of medicines, linking the closing of the Timaeus (which treats disease, the humours and the care of body and soul at length) to the cure of error. Critias' description of Atlantis records an ideal of civic water management: hot and cold springs, cisterns roofed for winter bathing, separate baths for kings, private persons, women and animals, and drainage carried off to irrigate the groves. Critias also likens eroded Attica to the 'bones of the wasted body', a medical image applied to land. These are literary and civic details, not clinical teaching.

Public Health Sanitation Philosophy AS Therapy

Stephanus 106a-b
Timaeus prays for knowledge, which he calls the most perfect and best of medicines, to correct anything he said amiss.
Philosophy AS Therapy
Stephanus 117a-b
The springs, cisterns and segregated baths of Atlantis, and the channelling of their run-off to the grove of Poseidon and the outer rings.
Public Health Sanitation

Creative Prompts

Fiction
Write the speech of Zeus that the dialogue never delivers. Keep to what the text tells us: he rules according to law and wants the Atlantids chastened so that they may improve.
Classroom
Using only details from the text, draw a labelled plan of the central island of Atlantis with its rings, bridges, canals, temple and baths, then mark which features show wisdom and which show pride.
Essay
Is Atlantis history, myth or parable? Write an essay that weighs Critias' claims about Solon, Dropides and the Egyptian priests against what the dialogue seems designed to teach.
Dialogue
Write the opening of the lost Hermocrates: the Syracusan general, who helped defeat Athens in Sicily, responds to Critias' tale of an ancient Athens that defeated a great sea empire.