Critias

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.

Top 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.

• Ancient Athens: a just city with a ruined landscape

  Plato's primeval Athens has the institutions of the Republic: guardians who own no gold or silver and live in common. Critias pairs this political portrait with a striking account of how the land itself was once deep-soiled and wooded and is now only 'the bones of the wasted body'. The passage invites reflection on stewardship and loss, and on how Plato links the order of a city to the condition of its land, without turning it into a modern ecological argument.

• Atlantis: splendour, law and the oath over blood

  The long description of Atlantis is a catalogue of engineering, wealth and ritual. Its kings are bound by inscribed law, a shared sacrifice and an oath, and for generations they keep it. Students should notice that Plato does not condemn Atlantis for its wealth as such: its early kings held gold lightly and saw that goods increase 'by virtue and friendship with one another'.

• Decline from within and the judgment of Zeus

  Atlantis falls not by external attack but because the divine portion in its kings is diluted by the mortal, until they appear 'glorious and blessed' to the undiscerning while full of greed. Zeus, who 'rules according to law', aims to chasten them so they may improve. Christian readers may compare biblical accounts of pride preceding a fall and of judgment as correction, while keeping clear that Plato's gods and theology are his own.

Verified Quotes

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.

• Stephanus 106a-b

  Timaeus prays for knowledge, which he calls the most perfect and best of medicines, to correct anything he said amiss.

• 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.