Atlantis was not Crete

I'm writing this blog entry as I watch a BBC Timewatch programme on the Minoans and their fate. The programme is pushing a 'new' theory about the destruction of Minoan society, that a volcanic eruption at Thera caused a tidal wave that swept away settlements across the Aegean. So far, so good, though this theory has, quite literally, been around at least since I were a lad, and all that seems actually new is improved scientific understanding of the power of the explosion of Thera and knowledge of the destructive power of tidal waves gained in the wake (if you'll forgive the pun) of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, allied to more and better archaeological evidence.

What is really getting me shouting at the television, however, is that the bloated, rotting, stinking cadaver of Atlantis has been dragged out again. Was Plato's tale of Atlantis a folk memory of the destruction of Minoan civilization, the programme asks.

No.

The tale of Atlantis is only known from Plato's Timaeus and Critias. It is not independently attested in Greek literature, unlike other myths, such as that of the Minotaur. Plutarch mentions it in his Life of Solon, but he explicitly cites Plato, so is not an independent witness. Secondly, the tale is given in great detail. For some, this is evidence that Plato can't have made it up. It is precisely the opposite. Plato wrote the Timaeus in about 360 BC. The conversation that it allegedly reports must have a dramatic date of about 425 BC. The tale of Atantis is told by one of the speakers, Critias, who heard it when he was a boy of ten. We know Critias was born in 460, so that dates Critias getting the tale to 450. He got the tale from his grandfather, who was about 90 at the time - the grandfather allegedly got it from the Athenian statesman Solon, but since he died about 558, one must start to question that detail. Solon himself was told by Egyptian priests. That the story is then told in such clear detail by Plato suggests large-scale embroidery. Without independent evidence, which does not exist, one cannot get anywhere in finding a historical core to the legend.

But why should we look for one in the first place? The trouble with the way Plato's account of Atlantis is used by those who believe in a historical Atlantis is that it ignores the genre that Plato writes it in. Contrary to what this programme has said (and I cannot forgive them for this), Plato was not a historian. He was a philosopher. That difference is very important. He is not interested in recording history or folklore - he is interested in making philosophical points, and uses a number of devices to do so. He is quite prepared to make things up to do so. Atlantis is surely another example of this. It is no more sensible to search for Atlantis than it is to try to find More's Utopia, or Swift's Liliput, or Orwell's Animal Farm.

Notably, not one of the experts they have on screen have mentioned Atlantis once - this appears to be entirely the imposition of the narration, presumably the idea of the producer, slipped in to get people to sit up and pay attention. And so more people will be encouraged to take a postivistic view of the Atlantis tale.

In the olden days, programmes like Timewatch and Horizon used to debunk nonsense like this, not contribute to it.

"No he didn't! He made it up!"

I shouted this at the television a lot yesterday.

I was watching a programme on The History Channel about Atlantis. It was trying to be quite sensible about the whole thing, but managed to blow it from the very beginning. The legend of Atlantis, we were told, is first found in the works of Plato, who, many years after the event, recorded a dinner party he had, as a boy, sneaked into, in which the story was told by his uncle (actually his mother's cousin) Critias.

Well, no. This over-literal reading of the two Platonic dialogues, the Timaeus and Critias, is one of the things that has bedevilled writings on Atlantis for centuries. Though these dialogues, written perhaps in the 350s BC or may be a little earlier, purport to record a dinner party that, given the attendees, must have taken place in Plato's childhood, in the 420s BC, Plato never says that they are an eyewitness report, and you don't have to read much to realize that the detailed and philosophically-complicated conversation cannot possibly represent Plato's seventy-year-old memories. The dialogues, as with almost all of Plato's work, are dramatic fictions to allow Plato to explore and explain his philosophical ideas. The most likely conclusion to be drawn is that Atlantis is a myth Plato invented to make a philosophic point, a device he used elsewhere.

Even if he didn't invent the tale, and it was recounted by his cousin, there's no real reason to believe that Critias didn't invent the story. He claims that the story was told by Egyptian priest to the Athenian statesman Solon, who lived in the early sixth century BC. Yet no trace of the story is to be found in Greek literature between Solon's time and Plato's. The attachment of Solon's name to the legend is merely to give it authority. And even if the story does go back to Solon, it could well have been made by him for some political purpose, or made up by the Egyptian priests. The automatic assumption that Plato's account is a historical document of any sort is simply unfounded and untenable. There really is no reason to search for the 'true' Atlantis, either in some non-existent worldwide civilization previously unknown to science, or in Minoan Crete, or Thera, or Troy, or Helike, or to see any specific historical resonances beyond an understanding of what destruction earthquakes could wreak.

Unfortunately, many people seem unable to distinguish between the factual and the fictional. It's the same thing that sends people in search of a historical precedent for every single detail of the Arthurian romances, or treats the Book of Genesis as a literal account of the creation of the planet, or probably thinks that Sherlock Holmes was a real person.