Plato's Atlantis Myth: "Timaeus" or "Critias"?

Abstract

IN recent attempts to date the Timaeus, comparatively little attention has been paid to its companion piece, the Critias.l The usual procedure is to study the Timaeus intensively, and to look at the Critias in passing, either to verify certain conclusions formed concerning the Timaeus, or to point to it as the unexpected vehicle of an even more surprising political novella, the Atlantis myth. This perfunctory treatment of the Critias, which will be found to prevail in practically all general works on Plato, is connected with the assumption, tacit and therefore, I believe, unchallenged, that the Critias was written after the completion of the Timaeus. And indeed, it is a most natural assumption. In the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Politicus we have a trilogy which apparently was planned in the order in which we print the dialogues today; just so the Timaeus, Critias, and a supposedly planned Hermocrates must have formed another trilogy. The guess appears to become a virtual certainty when we look at the introductory section of the Critias which clearly alludes to the Timaeus as the dialogue which preceded it. And yet, once we look a little more carefully at that introductory section, we find a detail that will disturb us. Timaeus ends his speech (106a) which, he says, dealt with the god who has long existed, i.e., the cosmos, the universe, the object of natural science and metaphysics. Now Critias takes over; and the first thing he says is that it is more difficult to talk about men than about gods, and that therefore he must ask his audience for more tolerance and forbearance than had been required in the case of Timaeus. Here is the gist of his words: It is easier to talk about the gods than about men. We are satisfied with an approximate portrayal of the earth and mountains and rivers and woods and the whole ouranos and the things which are and circulate around it. But if someone tries to portray our own bodies, then we sharply criticize omissions and mistakes in the picture (107a 7-d 5). The obvious implication of this passage is that human bodies, and men in general, have not been described in the Timaeus. But equally obviously, that just is not so; as much as a third of the Timaeus as we