Remembering Atlantis

Abstract

There has been much scholarly disagreement concerning Plato’s participation in the mid-fourth century debates over Athens’s ancestral constitution (patrios politeia). This disunity stems from contrasting views about the relationship between philosophy and Athenian politics in Plato’s writings. Recently, several political theorists have reoriented our general understanding about Plato’s complex involvement with Athenian politics. However, these discussions do not discuss Plato’s specific relationship with patrios politeia. In order to bridge this gap, I turn to two dialogues within the later Platonic corpus: Timaeus and Critias. By examining the Atlantis myth that spans both dialogues, I discuss how Plato uses the story both to comment on and critique the democratic Athenian constitution. At the same time, however, Plato also advances a unique veneration of democracy by asserting that it is the politeia of the gods. In this way, I argue that Timaeus-Critias contributes a valuable new perspective in the ongoing debate regarding the relationship between Plato’s philosophy and democracy.

Keywords

Plato Timaeus-Critias Ancestral Constitution Athens Atlantis Politeia

Athens’s return to democracy in 403 bce began with an official act of forgetting. The Amnesty instituted that year provided a way for the dēmos to collectively move beyond the stasis that marked the period under the Thirty Tyrants. “Instead of vindictively turning upon their foes and thus completing a Corcyra-like downward spiral into chaos,” Josiah Ober writes, “the victorious Athenian democrats abruptly halted the cycle of retribution, by declaring and enforcing an amnesty.”¹ But the decision to forgive and forget the crimes of the past brought with it new challenges, particularly for those elites looking to constrain democratic participation. For them, political contestation became much more difficult. For starters, oligarchy—as Moses Finley points out—had “ceased to be a practical issue.”² This meant that anyone attempting to restrict participation had to make the explicit case for why his proposal was not oligarchic. Further, as Ober discusses, the legal reforms made during this period “asserted the human origin of Athenian law and the power of democratic bodies of ordinary citizens.”³ In other words, to critique the democracy meant running the risk of affronting the dēmos as a whole. In all, these elite critics of the democracy had to present themselves as fully committed to it even while attempting to drastically restrict it.

It was at this time that debates surrounding the concept of the ancestral constitution (patrios politeia) started to become ubiquitous among these certain members of the Athenian dēmos. Harkening back to an older ideal of Athens, the concept was used by numerous politicians and orators—among them Isocrates, Aeschines, and Demosthenes—as a means for proposing policies aimed at returning Athens to a less participatory form of democracy. These proposals explicitly acknowledged the human origin of Athens’s politeia, but also asserted a more conservative view of how the dēmos had been historically constituted within it. In their speeches and writings, these elite Athenians pointed to a series of prominent historical lawgivers, including Cleisthenes, Draco, and Solon, describing them as advocates of a more conservative democracy. Playing a particularly prominent part in their thinking was Solon, whose early sixth-century reforms became the mythicized origin point for Athens’s politeia and the primary ideal on which to base proposals for greater restrictions on political participation. As Mogens Herman Hansen explains, while Athenians in the fifth century believed it was Cleisthenes who founded the democracy, many of those in the fourth century proclaimed that he had “only restored the democracy initiated by Solon.”⁴

There has been considerable contention among scholars concerning Plato’s place in the debates over patrios politeia. Some, led by Moses Finley, have argued that Plato viewed the debates with “with magnificent contempt,” and that his philosophy never relied on “‘ancestral’ arguments.”⁵ As evidence, Finley points to the complete absence of references to either Cleisthenes or Draco in Plato’s dialogues. Moreover, while other figures, notably Solon, are discussed in some of the Platonic dialogues, Finley states that the references are “casual,” and not part of any “serious argument.”⁶ By contrast, others such as Kathryn A. Morgan have argued that many of Plato’s later writings parallel other revisionist histories advanced by orators during that time.⁷ The most striking similarity that Morgan finds between Plato and these other contemporary writings is in the Atlantis myth from the Timaeus-Critias, in which Plato uses Solon in a manner similar to those who invoked patrios politeia. In drawing this comparison, she counters Finley’s claim that Plato’s discussions of Solon are only “casual.” In fact, she argues, Plato’s use of Solon in Timaeus “is anything but.”⁸

In this essay, I reconsider how Plato uses the Atlantis myth from Timaeus-Critias to comment on both the fourth-century ancestral constitution debates and democracy more generally. I do this by examining the method in which the story is told and the setting in which it is discussed, showing how Plato applies the myth to both comment on the Athenian constitution and—at the same time—critique the elite-led debates surrounding it at that time. In this way, I counter the claims made by Finley and others about Plato’s lack of involvement in the patrios politeia debates. At the same time, I also go beyond the interpretation advanced by Morgan, who focuses almost solely on the role of Solon as the primary link between Plato and patrios politeia. Plato’s use of the great Athenian lawgiver is one of several aspects that connect the Atlantis myth with the patrios politeia arguments advanced by those such as Isocrates, Aeschines, or Demosthenes. But what distinguishes Plato from these other thinkers is that he attempts to move beyond Solon, reaching back much further into the past to make an even more important claim about Athens’s ancestral constitution—that it should not be seen as having been crafted by men, but should rather be understood as being rooted in the divine. In this way, I read Plato as not only participating in the patrios politeia debates but also contributing an original philosophical argument about Athens’s “true” politeia to them.

My argument builds upon recent analyses by scholars in political theory who have attempted to link Plato’s philosophy to the tumultuous democratic politics of his day, particularly the work of Sara Monoson and Malcom Schofield.⁹ In her analysis of Menexenus, Monoson notes that via Socrates’s funeral oration, Plato both advances “his well-known critique of rhetoric” and, simultaneously, “attacks his contemporaries’ veneration of Pericles.”¹⁰ In this way, Monoson reads Menexenus as illustrating “how much Plato’s thought is indebted to the practices of Athenian democracy even as it delivers a critique of Athenian politics.”¹¹ Similarly, I argue that in Timaeus-Critias, we see Plato commenting on and critiquing his contemporaries’ mythicized version of Solon and their rhetorical misrepresentations of Athens’s past. This aspect of my argument also links with Malcom Schofield’s reading of the Atlantis myth as “a vehicle of critical commentary on the actual history of Periclean and post-Periclean Athens.”¹² In all, both Monoson and Scholfield highlight the critical-yet-engaged position Plato’s philosophy took with respect to democracy.

My argument goes beyond these previous studies, though, by further complicating our understanding of how Plato viewed democracy as a politeia—both with respect to Athens and beyond. Plato’s Timaeus-Critias makes clear that Athens’s “true” politeia is not democratic. And, further, the myth highlights the problems associated with democratic freedom—namely, that people will always give way to immoderation. Yet, while democracy is not a proper politeia for either Athens or any human polis in general, the Atlantis myth makes clear that it is the constitution by which the gods govern themselves. Further, this democracy of the gods is not plagued by chaos or immoderation. In this way, Plato’s Atlantis myth presents—contra Hesiod’s Theogony—a more peaceful rendition of Greek theology. And, more importantly, it associates democracy with the divine. In this way, Plato’s Timaeus-Critias criticizes democracy as a politeia for governing men, but at the same time lauds it as the only politeia appropriate for the gods. In all, this article advances a new interpretation of a relatively under-analyzed text, which furthers our understanding of the multifaceted relationship between Plato’s philosophy and dēmokratia.¹³

In what follows, I consider the Atlantis myth within Timaeus-Critias. I discuss the content of the myth, the setting in which it is told, and the significance of the speakers involved. I then move to a discussion of it in the context of the patrios politeia debates of the fourth century. Here I turn primarily to the Aregopagiticus of Isocrates, which is representative of the general themes within these debates, particularly with regard to its emphasis on Solon’s reforms. I illustrate the ways in which Plato uses aspects of these debates, including the mythicized figure of Solon, and how he transforms them into a completely new and original plea for returning to the true ancestral Athenian constitution. Lastly, I discuss how this interpretation of the Atlantis myth advances a new perspective in the ongoing interpretive debate regarding Plato’s position on both democracy in Athens and, more generally, as a regime type.

Timaeus-Critias

Written sometime around 355 bce, Timaeus-Critias is thought to have originally been planned as part of a trilogy of dialogues. However, Critias comes to an abrupt halt in what seems like the middle of the story. It remains unclear exactly why Plato abandoned the text. Nevertheless, the Atlantis story in the Critias exists in an incomplete form. That said, the basic elements of the story are summarized at the beginning of Timaeus. And it is this summary, I argue, which provides the greatest support for the argument that Timaeus-Critias represents Plato’s commentary on and foray into debates about Athens’s ancestral constitution.

At the start of the text, it is quite clear that Timaeus-Critias is almost completely dependent on arguments made in the Republic. Set during the festival of Athena, the first dialogue begins when Socrates is asked by his three companions—Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates—to give “a brief summary” of the previous day’s discussion.¹⁴ The summary that follows is strikingly similar to Socrates’s description of the kallipolis in the Republic. Describing his view of “the best constitution and its citizens,” Socrates tells how these citizens should be separated into different classes and by “appropriate occupation or craft.”¹⁵ He singles out one of these classes as containing “those whose duty it was to fight on behalf of all . . . the city’s sole guards against threat of harm, whether external or internal.”¹⁶ As in the Republic, this constitution would also be aimed at bringing women’s nature closer to men’s, and the two sexes would “share the same occupations both in war and in the rest of life.”¹⁷ Further, children born in this ideal city would, like in the kallipolis, “be shared in common by all.”¹⁸

In contrast to the Republic, however, Socrates is not the central figure in Timaeus-Critias. Rather in these dialogues he acts as listener, while his three companions serve as storytellers. Socrates asks them to take on this role, telling them that he yearns to hear of his ideal city in motion, particularly in battle with other city-states.¹⁹ He describes his companions as being fitted to the task of discussing his ideal city, observing that the three are “by nature and upbringing imbued with philosophy and statesmanship.”²⁰ Timaeus, who “comes from the well-ordered city of Locris in Italy,” is “second to none in wealth and birth,” and has “reached the highest eminence in every kind of philosophy.”²¹ Critias is “no amateur in these matters” either.²² And Hemocrates is qualified “both by his natural gifts and by his education.”²³ It is to these three that Socrates has given the task of returning his hospitality “by way of speeches.”²⁴

Critias’s speech centers on a great struggle that occurred more than nine thousand years ago between the immensely powerful island city of Atlantis and Athens, which at that time was ordered in the same manner as Socrates’s ideal constitution. The story of this contest, Critias tells Socrates, was brought to Athens by Solon, who heard it during his trip around the Mediterranean after giving Athens its laws. Visiting the city of Saïs in Egypt, he engaged in conversations with its wisest priests concerning the ancient past.²⁵ During the conversation, a very old priest explained that while the Athenians had no record of the ancient past, because of the more recent development of writing in Greece, the Egyptian priests had “preserved from the earliest times a written record of any great or splendid achievement or notable event which has come to our ears.”²⁶ The priest went on to reveal that before the great deluge that traditionally marked Athens’s origins, “the city that is now Athens was pre-eminent in war and conspicuously the best governed in every way.”²⁷ In fact, this prehistoric Athens was said to have “the finest [constitution] of any in the world.”²⁸ It was at this time that Athens “checked a great power which arrogantly advanced from its base in the Atlantic Ocean to attack the cities of Europe and Asia.”²⁹ This great power was Atlantis.

According to Critias, Solon had planned to write an epic poem describing this war upon his return to Athens. Critias claims that it would have been a poem which would have rivaled “even Homer or Hesiod.”³⁰ However, because of his advanced age and the turmoil in Athens surrounding Pisistratus’s attempts to establish his tyranny, Solon could not finish the work. Nevertheless, he related the story to Critias’s grandfather (Elder Critias), who in turn told it to his grandson. Critias tells Socrates: “I was reminded of this story and noticed with astonishment how closely, by some miraculous luck, with no intention, your account coincided with Solon’s.”³¹ He then states that his speech, recounting the war with Atlantis, “will transfer to reality [epi talēthes]” both the citizens and the city that Socrates “described yesterday as in myth.”³² Socrates is eager to hear the story, since it “is particularly well suited to the present festival” of the goddess Athena and “is not a fabricated myth but a true account [logos].”³³

In the account of Critias, Athens is given a completely new origin story. At the beginning of the world, the gods divided up the entire earth by casting lots. Attica was given jointly to Hephaestus and Athena, who both “produced a native race of good men and gave them suitable political arrangements.”³⁴ These arrangements were similar to those in Socrates’s ideal constitution in several respects, with men and women serving as guardians, a separate class set aside for artisans, and an absence of private property. The account contrasts sharply with the traditional account of Athens’s origins, in which Athena competed with and defeated Poseidon in a contest to become the patron deity of the city, after which Poseidon punished Athens with a great deluge.³⁵ While in the Atlantis myth there is also a great deluge sent by Poseidon, it is reimagined as being the direct result of a conflict between humans—the battle between the Atlanteans and the Athenians.

Atlantis has a similar origin. Allotted to Poseidon, the island city is divided into ten parts, each ruled by a king. These ten kings are Poseidon’s offspring, whom he fathered with a mortal inhabitant of Atlantis. In addition to giving the city its rulers, Poseidon also gave it its laws. While the kings are said to have ruled with absolute power in their separate districts, they would meet “every fifth or sixth year (thereby showing equal respect to both odd and even numbers)” in the temple of Poseidon where the laws were inscribed, to consult “on matters of mutual interest” and inquire into and give judgment “on any wrong committed by any of them.”³⁶ During their meetings, they also paid tribute to Poseidon.

Unlike the ideally constituted Athenians, the Atlanteans quickly degenerated. This breakdown began with the leadership. In discussing the successive generations of Atlantis’s kings, Critias states that “the divine portion in them became weakened by frequent admixture of a large quantity of mortal stock, and their human traits became predominant, they ceased to be able to carry their prosperity with moderation.”³⁷ As Atlantis’s ruling hierarchy broke down, and the human qualities of its citizens overshadowed their divine qualities, the Atlanteans became greedy, leading them into conflict with “various barbarian and Greek nations of the day,” including of course Athens.³⁸ As a result, Atlantis was punished by the gods, who subsequently unleashed catastrophic earthquakes that sent the island into the depths of the sea.

The Atlantis Myth and the Ancestral Constitution

There are a lot of moving parts to this story. In fact, there are numerous stories going on within it. There is Critias’s story about the tale he heard from his grandfather, who got it from Solon, who was told it by an old Egyptian priest, who learned it from an ancient record written some eight thousand years ago (a thousand years after the conflict between Atlantis and Athens). Further, the story contains a revisionist religious-historical narrative about Athens—its origins, its population, and its place within Greek cosmology. And then there is the role of Solon. As the original Athenian “source” of the story, Solon—in contrast to Finley’s argument—clearly plays more than a casual role. However, his role is also more nuanced than Morgan’s discussion allows. And this particular rendering of Solon differs in many respects from the ways in which other fourth century commentators used him. Further, Plato’s use of Solon is not the only aspect that connects Timaeus-Critias to the patrios politeia debates. To compare Plato with other commentators of the time, let me briefly turn to a representative patrios politeia work composed prior to Plato’s Timaeus-Critias.

In Areopagiticus—written around 358/7 bce—Isocrates invokes Solon as the founder of Athenian democracy and appeals to his fellow citizens to return to Solon’s original constitutional ordering of the polis.³⁹ With this work, Isocrates can be seen as a “chief spokesman,” as Finley calls him, for a mixed-constitutional government rather than the newly restored democracy.⁴⁰ Further, while it invokes the past, Areopagiticus is not meant to be a history lesson. Instead, in it, Isocrates is making what Finley calls “a political argument based on the past and tradition.”⁴¹ Specifically, it is a critique of the contemporary dēmos, which he finds “indifferent to the fact that our polity has been corrupted.”⁴² For Isocrates, the dēmos is rife with moral delinquency—gambling, promiscuity, and laziness.⁴³ Yet he makes clear that his fellow citizens are not to blame for the city’s moral decline. Rather, he insists that the blame falls squarely “on those who directed the city a little before our time.”⁴⁴ Isocrates here is clearly referring to the radical democratic reformers of the mid-fifth century. Even so, he believes that Athens “may redeem” its polity and its greatness.⁴⁵ He writes:

I find that the one way—the only possible way—which can avert future perils from us and deliver us from our present ills is that we should be willing to restore that earlier democracy which was instituted by Solon, who proved himself above all other the friend of the people, and which was re-established by Cleisthenes, who drove out the tyrants and brought the people back into power—a government than which we could find none more favourable to the populace or more advantageous to the whole city.⁴⁶

The two historical moments that Isocrates sees as being a model for contemporary Athens are those of Solon’s reforms (594/3 bce) and Cleisthenes’s re-establishment of a more inclusive government following the Pisistratidae tyranny (508/7 bce). For Isocrates, there is no political discontinuity between Solon and Cleisthenes, since both advocated a sustained ideal of an ordered and hierarchical democracy. Although a century earlier Herodotus had presented Cleisthenes as the founder of democracy, Isocrates argues that Cleisthenes simply “re-established” the democracy that Solon had founded.⁴⁷ This is not to say that Cleisthenes plays an insignificant role. While not the founder of Athens’s democracy, he is described as the one who “drove out the tyrants and brought the people back into power.”⁴⁸ Yet the reforms that Cleisthenes instituted that differed from those of Solon matter little to Isocrates. What is important to him is that both figures instituted a democracy that was “the most impartial and mildest of governments” in both theory and in practice.⁴⁹

By invoking Solon, Isocrates also creates a comparison between the civil tumult of the early sixth century, which Solon’s reforms were designed to solve, and the “moral” tumult in the Athens of his own day. In the early sixth century, Athens faced a conflict between its wealthy elite and the majority of its lower-class citizens.⁵⁰ In an attempt to end the conflict, Solon implemented reforms aimed at satisfying both groups. By evoking Solon, Isocrates is thus envisioning a similar kind of “moderate” reform. But instead of financial and class cleavages, he sees Athens as suffering from moral collapse. That is to say, while he feels that the inclusion of the lower classes has been problematic for Athens, he believes that all members of the dēmos exist in a state of corruption.⁵¹ Hence he proposes Solon-like reforms, specifically the reformation of the aristocratic Council of the Areopagus, the institution that he believes kept Athens and its dēmos virtuous. Isocrates describes it as follows:

For our forefathers placed such strong emphasis upon sobriety that they put supervision of decorum in charge of the Council of the Areopagus—a body which was composed exclusively of men who were of noble birth and had exemplified in their lives exceptional virtue and sobriety, and which, therefore, naturally excelled all the other council of Hellas.⁵²

The Council did not accomplish moderation through laws; rather, it established “manners and morals,” serving as examples of everyday virtue.⁵³ It is in this vein that Isocrates calls for the people of Athens to “imitate our ancestors” by bringing back the Council and moderating the democracy.⁵⁴

Given the arguments made by Isocrates, which center on Solon as “founder” of democracy during the fourth-century constitutional debates, Plato’s use of Solon as the original Athenian source of the Atlantis story can be seen as more than a casual casting decision. By the time Timaeus-Critias was composed, Solon had become an intensely debated and mythicized political figure. In these two dialogues, Solon is cast in stark political terms, as attempting to control the civil and moral tumult of Athens. In the Atlantis myth, Critias references the story—discussed in part by Herodotus—of Solon leaving Athens due to the problems that developed as a result of his laws.⁵⁵ Further, according to Critias, Solon was unable to transmit the Atlantis story to the people once he returned to Athens because the city has fallen into further chaos with the rise of Pisistratus. Hence both Solon’s departure and his homecoming are marked by civil tumult. In contrast to these struggles, Critias’s Solon stands as a symbol of moderation, similar to the way Isocrates paints him.

The Atlantis myth goes even further in characterizing Solon. At the beginning of Timaeus, Socrates discusses the rare quality of those who combine philosophy with statesmanship. According to Socrates, this is what distinguishes Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates. Further, it is also what distinguishes Solon. His failure to write the Atlantis story as an epic poem is actually evidence of this statesmanship, since poets “imitate best and most easily what they were brought up with,” but find it difficult to imitate “what lies outside [their] experience.”⁵⁶ This is comparable to the question Socrates poses to Glaucon in Book X of the Republic.⁵⁷ There he asks, “shall we conclude that all poetic imitators, beginning with Homer, imitate images of virtue and all the other things they write about and have no grasp of truth [alētheia]?”⁵⁸ When comparing this discussion with what Socrates says in Timaeus, it is clear that Solon is no mere imitator. While he has failed as a poet in committing the Atlantis story to print, he stands as a successful statesman.⁵⁹ In this way, Solon is a more “reliable” source than even the greatest poet because he has a “grasp of truth [alētheia].”⁶⁰

That the Atlantis story also contains alētheia is confirmed by those who pass it down after Solon’s initial re-telling. Critias explains that Solon told the story to his grandfather, Elder Critias, who in turn passed it down to him. While little is said of Elder Critias, Socrates makes it clear that Critias himself is “by nature and upbringing imbued with philosophy and statesmanship.”⁶¹ In other words, similar to Solon, Critias is one of those rare individuals whose storytelling—his “imitation”—is permeated with experience. And while we can only infer that Elder Critias also was “imbued” with this rare ability, we know for sure that Critias has it, since like Solon, he is one of those with a “grasp of truth [alētheia].”⁶²

In this way, the Atlantis myth is presented as a true story. Of course, it is not “true” in the way many modern readers might think.⁶³ Critias states that his tale of the war with Atlantis will “transfer to reality [talēthes]” both the city and its citizens that Socrates had described yesterday “as in myth.”⁶⁴ He does not mean that the Atlantis story stands as historical proof that such a war actually happened, and that such a prehistoric Athens actually existed. For while the story does not contain truth “in a literal historical sense,” as Johansen writes, it still contains “an illustration of a general truth.”⁶⁵ It is both plastheis mythos (a fabricated story) and alēthinos logos (a true account).⁶⁶ And, in the end, Critias is doing precisely what Socrates asks, giving life to the ideal constitution he had described earlier by transforming it from pure myth into an imitation—a story—with truth (alētheia).

Remembering the Politeia of Athena

Plato’s revisionist account of the origins of Athens also produces a similarly revisionist notion of its politeia, one that extends well beyond the mythicized vision of Solon. For Plato, politeia concerns both the composition and character of a polity, broadly encompassing both the organization of legislative, judicial, and administrative authority and what Sara Monoson calls “the patterns of life and ideology that distinguish its civic culture.”⁶⁷ In the Atlantis myth, Plato situates Athens’s politeia within a revisionist origin story of the universe, the world, and the city-state itself. In contrast to the chaotic origins chronicled in Hesiod’s Theogony, Plato’s beginning of the world and its relation to the gods is peaceful, with the earth given to the gods by lot. “Each gladly received his just allocation,” Critias says, “and settled his territories; and having done so they proceeded to look after us, their creatures and children, as shepherds look after their flocks.”⁶⁸ This last aspect, concerning the relationship between gods and their human “children,” is perhaps the most important part of the story.⁶⁹ For Critias makes clear that not only was Athens ordered similarly to Socrates’s ideal constitution, but it had been ordered that way by its patron goddess, Athena, in concert with Hephaestus: “They produced a native race of good men and gave them suitable political arrangements.”⁷⁰

In describing the origin of the Athenian dēmos, Plato applies the concept of autochthony—the idea that a people was and had always been part of the land it occupies.⁷¹ Unlike other classical treatments of Athenian autochthony, such as Herodotus’s History, Plato does not argue that the Athenians are actually born from the very soil they now occupy.⁷² Rather, he contends that these prehistoric Athenians have a politeia that is autochthonous. This idea of an autochthonous politeia is first discussed in the Republic when Socrates asks Glaucon if he thinks that polities emerge “out of oak and stone” instead of “from the character of the people in the cities.”⁷³ Plato’s point, Arlene Saxonhouse writes, is that “contrary to Athenian autochthony myths, citizens do not spring forth from the earth,” but rather the regime “grows naturally from the inhabitants of a place and takes the form of those living there.”⁷⁴ In the same way, Plato uses the Atlantis myth in Timaeus-Critias to portray Athens’s politeia as autochthonous, inherently Athenian, and directly tied to its patron goddess.

In fact, Athena is a principal figure throughout Timaeus-Critias. It is not just a coincidence that this dialogue is set during her festival. As Critias tells Socrates, the story is meant to “offer the Goddess on her festival day a just and truthful hymn of praise.”⁷⁵ Nicole Loraux says that with this setting, Plato can be seen as “replacing Pericles’ ‘hymn to the city’ with a hymn to the goddess.”⁷⁶ Tom Garvey makes a similar point, discussing the importance of the Atlantis story as a hymn to Athena.⁷⁷ Garvey writes, “The Atlantis story qua hymn to Athena is thus a means of reclaiming for Athens its patron goddess, a reenactment of the original chariot race for the city in a manner more amenable to Plato’s idiosyncratic conception of the gods.”⁷⁸ In other words, Plato is attempting here to turn the conversation on Athens’s politeia away from its singular focus on the contested historical human figures of Solon and Cleisthenes, and back to the uncontested transcendent figure of Athena. Unlike Isocrates, he is not calling for a return to the politeia of either Solon or Cleisthenes; what he seeks is a return to the politeia handed down by the city’s patron goddess herself.

His call for a return is further emphasized in the story’s treatment of Atlantis and its relationship with its patron god, Poseidon. That Atlantis serves as a contrast with prehistoric Athens is quite clear. Unlike the well-ordered, self-contained, and religiously devout prehistoric Athens, Atlantis eventually strays from its divine laws. As Critias states, Atlantis was ordered originally according to the laws passed down by Poseidon.⁷⁹ Each of the kings, when assembled together, always “exchanged mutual pledges,” providing tribute and sacrifice to Poseidon before conducting their joint business.⁸⁰ Thus, Atlantis paid respect to its own divinely ordered politeia. However, as Critias explains, when Atlantis’s politeia strayed from its divine origins, its population paid the ultimate price, as their “pursuit of unbridled ambition and power” led them into conflict with other nations, including prehistoric Athens.⁸¹ Hence, in addition to serving as a point of contrast, Atlantis is analogous to contemporary Athens.⁸²

All told, it is clear that Plato’s depiction of Atlantis contains an argument about the Athenian politeia. Although the story exists in an unfinished form, it can be read as commenting on political content that was very much a part of the fourth-century patrios politeia debates. At the same time, Plato’s argument is distinctive in that he advances a unique version of Athens’s origins, tying its original constitution to its patron goddess. In this sense, Plato’s Atlantis myth contains similar themes to that of Isocrates’s Areopagiticus, which also argues that the only way for a city-state to regain its morality is to return to the politeia of its ancestors. Unlike Isocrates, however, Plato does not argue for a return to the politeia of Solon. Instead, he uses Solon, the wisest statesman, who has a “grasp of truth [alētheia],” to transmit a story about a much more ancient and divine politeia.⁸³ And, while this story may not be historically “true,” it is presented as containing a larger general truth (alētheia) meant squarely for Athens’s dēmos. That truth is that Athens must return to its divine origins, to the politeia ordered by Athena herself. If it does not, the Athenian dēmos, like the Atlanteans, will risk apocalyptic consequences. But if it can return to its well-ordered politeia—which is Socrates’s ideal constitution—it will, like Critias in the dialogue, “transfer to reality [epi talēthes]” what exists only “in myth.”⁸⁴ The dēmos can become moral and virtuous. But it can only happen if, like Solon, it learns to grasp the truth (alētheia).

The Atlantis Myth and the Democracy of the Gods

As noted in the introduction, the patrios politeia debates during the fourth century were primarily set within a democratic framework. After the return of the democracy in 403 bce, oligarchy was no longer a viable option. Because the dēmos had become opposed to any reform remotely hinting of oligarchy, those elites pushing for limits on democratic participation had to vocally claim their opposition to oligarchy. Isocrates does so explicitly in Areopagiticus: “I am not in favour of oligarchy or special privilege but of a just and orderly government of the people.”⁸⁵ As Hansen explains, by asserting that their ancestral constitution had always been a democracy and that it originated solely from their ancestors, “the Athenians at once narrowed the range of patrios politeia.”⁸⁶ Thus, patrios politeia became limited to patrios demokratia—the ancestral democracy.

In Timaeus-Critias, Plato’s Atlantis myth both comments on and, at the same time, critiques this idea of patrios dēmokratia. This is primarily seen in the myth’s revisionist cosmological origin story. As Critias explains, the gods used the drawing of lots to divide up the world.⁸⁷ This use of allotment is noteworthy because it harkens back to Socrates’s discussion of democracy in the Republic, with the drawing of lots being the only explicit institutional feature he mentions with regard to that particular regime type.⁸⁸ In Timaeus-Critias, Plato is thus asserting that the constitution of the gods is democratic. Further, he is asserting that their divine democratic arrangement provides the foundation upon which Athens’s ancestral constitutional is formed. Both assertions counter the prevailing fourth-century belief that the democracy originated from Athens’s human ancestors.⁸⁹ In Plato’s Atlantis myth, the original democratic politeia did not originate from Solon or Cleisthenes; rather it began with the gods. This is not to say that Athens’s true politeia is itself democratic. It is anything but, and for good reason. Unlike Athens’s democratic constitution, which is based upon “freedom [eleutheria] and freedom of speech [parrhêsia],”⁹⁰ the ideal constitution of the prehistoric Athenians is defined by “order [syntaxis].”⁹¹ For Plato, the problem with democratic freedom is that it allows immoderation to reign supreme, which in turn diminish the capacity for the dēmos to grasp the truth (alētheia).

It is here where Atlantis serves as the ultimate cautionary tale. Critias explains that Atlantis only prospered and its citizens only thrived when they paid respect to their divine constitution. As soon as they lost their grasp of the truth, “their human traits became predominant, and they ceased to be able to carry their prosperity with moderation.”⁹² The reason for this degeneration was due to the Atlanteans’s prizing of excess over knowledge of their true selves. “To the perceptive eye, they appeared shameful,” Critias states, “but to those whose judgement of true happiness is defective they seemed, in their pursuit of unbridled ambition and power, to be supremely fine and blessed.”⁹³ The Atlanteans’s eyes had become blinded to the truth, for they had turned their backs upon their divine past in favor of decadence.

In many ways, Atlantis’s downfall is similar to the discussion of the deficiencies of the democratic man in Book VIII of Republic. The democratic man, whose soul is “empty of knowledge, fine ways of living, and words of truth (which are the watchmen and guardians of the thoughts of those men whom the gods love),” is drawn to and ultimately guided by “false and boastful words and beliefs.”⁹⁴ The democratic man—like the citizens of Atlantis—lives without the “perceptive eye” that recognizes this adherence to false truths. Yet the absence of this perceptive eye is not completely the democratic man’s fault. He is but one part in a longer, ongoing story of excess and violent regime change. As Glaucon and Socrates discuss, democracy always follows the establishment and eventual downfall of oligarchy.⁹⁵ During the time of oligarchy, a polis is ruled by “neglect,” encouragement of “bad discipline,” and a policy of reducing “people of no common stamps to poverty.”⁹⁶ In other words, the oligarchical polis—like Atlantis—comes to see the “pursuit of unbridled ambition and power” as being an endeavor that is “supremely fine and blessed.”⁹⁷ As a result, its citizens lose their “perceptive eye.” Eventually, democracy comes to be instituted “when the poor are victorious” in “killing some of their opponents and expelling others.”⁹⁸ In all, this violent transition to democracy was and always is precipitated by an obfuscation of the truth and the complete absence of proper guardianship.⁹⁹

While Atlantis does not degenerate into a democracy in Critias, it does represent the problems associated with improper guardianship, as well as immoderation and the abuse of freedom. Again, Book VIII of Republic is helpful for understanding the critique here. Socrates suggests that the degradation of democracy is similar to that of oligarchy. While the latter is brought down by its “insatiable desire for wealth and its neglect of other things for the sake of money-making,” the former—Socrates proposes—is ultimately brought down by its “insatiable desire for what it defines as the good,” which is freedom.¹⁰⁰ Hence, oligarchy’s insatiable desire for unbridled power comes to be replaced by democracy’s unquenchable thirst for more freedom.¹⁰¹ In the myth, Atlantis only reaches the stage where it is inundated by a desire for power and wealth. At this point, the dialogue comes to an abrupt end. Yet, in consultation with Book VIII of Republic, it is clear that further changes in its constitution would have been inevitable, namely, a violent transition to democracy. And this would have happened because its citizens had lost their ability to perceive the truth. They were no longer guided by the island city’s initial constitution and an adherence to moderation. Instead, the rulers of Atlantis allowed its desire for wealth to “make them drunk with conceit” and, in turn, “lose their self-control and falter.”¹⁰² In other words, in Critias, Atlantis is led by the improper guardian of immoderation, much like the democratic city, which combines drunken immoderation with absolute freedom.

In Plato’s view, the only beings capable of functioning democratically are the gods, precisely because they are not prone to immoderation and always maintain a perceptive eye. As Critias states, “it would be quite wrong to think the gods do not know what is appropriate to them, or that, knowing it, they would want to annex what properly belongs to others.”¹⁰³ Their human children, though, are not so perfect. They require a different kind of constitutional arrangement, one that is based upon syntaxis and that curtails their dysfunctional inclinations.

Hence, the Atlantis myth offers a unique critique of the idea that Athens’s patrios politeia is or ever was democratic. For Plato, the assertion that Athens’s politeia has somehow always been democratic is not only incorrect, it is also extremely problematic. Such a belief turns a blind eye to the ultimate truth (alētheia) about human nature. For Plato, people are prone to acting immoderately. It takes a unique combination of proper guardianship and an understanding of one’s true politeia to avoid giving way to the drunken desire for those things that are inappropriate. To then take this argument in consultation with what we know about the patrios politeia debates of the fourth century, we can read this myth as criticizing this ongoing practice of obfuscating the truth. Those elites engaged in these debates are not only rewriting the city’s history with their various assertions regarding its “true” past, but they are also pushing the dēmos further and further from the guiding ideals necessary to avoid immoderate action. In other words, they are employing “false and boastful words” in the place of “knowledge, fine ways of living, and words of truth.”¹⁰⁴

But within this critique of patrios politeia and patrios dēmokratia emerges a unique perspective on Plato’s view of democracy. That the gods govern themselves democratically is quite important. In this assertion, the Atlantis myth gives some credence to the idea of patrios dēmokratia. Instead of saying that Athens’s politeia is democratic, though, the myth stresses that the only ancestral democracy is the democracy of the gods. The true politeia of Athens is different. It is one that is based on order [syntaxis], which emphasizes moderation and curtails the unbridled desire for excess. Still, Athens’s politeia emerged from the divine democracy. And, thus, while we can read Plato in Timaeus-Critias as critiquing the idea that democracy is appropriate for Athens, we cannot read him as completely dismissing democracy as a regime type. For this is the politeia of the gods. And, as Critias explains, “it would be quite wrong to think the gods do not know what is appropriate to them.”¹⁰⁵

Conclusion

For this article, I have attempted to show that a consideration of the Atlantis myth is important for scholars interested in Plato as a political thinker who was very much involved in the politics of his own time. In this way, I have sought to contribute to a growing body of literature that refutes both the idea that Plato was somehow a distant or removed critic when it came to Athenian politics and that he did not take seriously democracy as a regimetype. In particular, my argument builds on the previous works by Monoson and Schofield, which have analyzed the complex and seemingly ambivalent relationship between Plato’s philosophy and democracy. In returning to the Atlantis myth in Timaeus-Critias, political theorists will find Plato commenting on and contributing to both his previous work in the Republic and to a specific set of debates that defined much of Athens’s internal political struggles in his own time. In particular, they will find him reinterpreting contested ideas and mythicized figures in an entirely new way and as a means to convey a more complex notion of politeia.

They will also find that within this discussion, Plato takes seriously dēmokratia as a regime type. In his view, it is far too tenuous a political organization for Athens, particularly because it is founded upon absolute freedom, which will inevitably come to be abused by the dēmos. This claim is nothing new with respect to Plato. In many ways, this understanding of Plato’s complex-yet-critical view of democracy aligns with the arguments made in Book VIII of the Republic. But the Atlantis myth adds a new perspective on Plato’s intricate relationship with democracy.

While it is unsuitable for Athens, dēmokratia is the politeia of the gods. The reason for this is that the gods will not abuse their freedom. Hence, instead of rejecting democracy as an entirely unsuitable regime type, Plato elevates it to the most divine politeia. Further, he situates Socrates’s ideal constitution—which is not democratic, and emphasizes moderation and order [syntaxis] over freedom—as stemming from this democracy of the gods. For Socrates’s ideal constitution is the same constitution that Athena gave to her human progeny, which allowed them to defeat the great island of Atlantis. Thus, the Atlantis myth should be read as Plato urging the Athenians to turn away from democracy by recognizing the truth that it is a far too hallowed a politeia for their fallible nature. In other words, Plato’s treatment of democracy in the Atlantis myth is not a complete denigration of the regime-type, but rather a unique veneration of it.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Michael Lienesch, Susan Bickford, and Jeff Spinner-Halev for their guidance and encouragement. I would also like to thank Thomas Buck, Martin Caver, Andrew Tyner, Nolan Bennett, as well as Jane Bennett, the staff at Political Theory, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Casey Stegman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studies ancient and modern views on the relationship between history and democratic politics. The subject of his dissertation is the influence of the Roman constitution on revolutionary republican thought in early nineteenth-century Latin America.