The Unlikely Story - An Investigation of the Myth of Atlantis and the Ideal Athens in the Timaeus: Part II.

As we have discussed in class, the recapitulation of the Republic in the dialogue of the Timaeus ends at the beginning of what would be book V, just after the group decides that the guardian women shall have everything in common, just like the men, and shall have the same education as the men as well. It is then in the Republic that Socrates suggests to his companions that the system they have created for the guardians of the city in words will “look ridiculous if our words are to be realized in fact.” Again, it is here that the recapitulation of the conversation of the Republic stops in the Timaeus. Here, Socrates describes himself as a kind of creator, someone who, in seeing his creation, wants to see it in some kind of struggle. Instead of continuing the discussion in the manner that the Republic takes, talking about the philosopher-king, the divided line, the cave, or the various diseased states, Socrates wishes to “hear someone tell of our own city carrying on a struggle against her neighbors, and how she went out to war in a becoming manner, and when at war showed by the greatness of her actions and the magnanimity of her words in dealing with other cities a result worthy of her training and education.” Why this is the case for Socrates will be addressed later.

In light of this, it seems likely that, in light of the “ridiculous” nature of the conversation in books V-VII, Plato, rather than continuing the conversation of the Republic, which used complicated and abstract analogies, at the beginning of Timaeus, instead chose to give justification for his ideas in the form of a myth: the myth of the Ideal Athens. If Plato can somehow show that this perfectly just city, along with its strange, but virtuous guardians, is good enough to defeat the greatest military power on earth, then he really has defeated the arguments and ideals held by Thracymachus, and the just city/man really is better than the unjust city/man. Seeing the two cities in action would get rid of the need to theorize about them any longer. Under this view, the myth of Ideal Athens vs. Atlantis is simply meant to functionally replace books VI – X as a kind of case study. Ideal Athens would be acting as the perfectly just city/man (the philosopher-king), while Atlantis would be acting as the perfectly unjust city/man (the tyrant). This comparison would possibly give a muthos to the perfection of the perfectly just city/man, as well as to the various stages of diseased cities, ending in the tyrannical city/man of book IX.

If this view of the myth were true, the fate of Atlantis as recounted in this myth would mirror the account of the tyrannical man, as he destroys himself from the inside out due to the disordered state of his soul. It is here that problems begin to arise for this view: first, this state of affairs does not seem to be the case in the myth of Atlantis. The Atlantean Empire advances on the Ideal Athens, the last great haven of free men, and after being beaten back by this Athens, is destroyed by a tsunami created by a great earthquake. This fate was, it seems, a punishment by the gods, as is assumed in the Critias, and Atlantis is most certainly not destroyed from within due to a disordered soul, but from without by divine intervention. A second, related problem with this comparison arises in the character of the tyrant, who has a fundamentally disordered soul. The internal state of Atlantis is not treated within the Timaeus, and is left for the Critias, but even in that dialogue, this does not seem to be the case. In fact, as Critias describes Atlantis in detail, one gets the sense that there is almost a kind of hyper-order to the Atlantean society, to the extent that the empire begins to look less like a polis made of men, and more like a beehive: a very tightly-knit collective. Still, in my reading of Critias, I see almost nothing other than this that would cause me to really not want to be an Atlantean, but, of course, I am not an Athenian, as Plato’s intended audience most likely would have been.

But again, the text claims that Atlantis was not destroyed by its own injustice. Atlantis was not so tyrannical that it sunk itself into the sea. Rather, the kingdom of Atlantis was destroyed by the gods when the Atlanteans became too proud of the power and wealth that they had come to accumulate. Unfortunately, the dialogue of the Critias ends before Zeus can pronounce his judgment upon them, and as such, we don’t really know the actual state of affairs, as Plato would have told them. However, from what we textually know of both the anterior circumstances (that the Atlanteans were guilty of great hubris) and the end of the story (that Atlantis is engulfed by the sea, never to be seen again), it seems highly plausible that Zeus really would have pronounced some kind of judgment upon Atlantis, thereby causing their destruction.