Timaeus

​Critias: As for the precise details about all these things, we shall go through them in order later at our leisure, taking up the records themselves. Now, consider your laws in comparison with those here; for you will find here now many examples of the laws that then existed among you. First, the class of priests, set apart from the others; and after this, that of the craftsmen, because each class performs its craft by itself without mingling with any other; and also that of the shepherds, and of the hunters, and of the husbandmen. And indeed, you must have noticed that the warrior class here is separated from all other classes, to whom nothing else has been assigned by the law to care for except the things concerning war. Furthermore, there is the fashion of their armor, shields and spears, with which we were the first of those in Asia to be armed, since the goddess showed it to us first, just as she did to you first in those regions. Again, as regards wisdom, you see what care the law here has bestowed from the very beginning upon the cosmic order, discovering from these divine things all that applies to human affairs, down to divination and medicine for health, and acquiring all the other branches of learning that follow from these. Therefore, the goddess, having first established all this order and system for you, settled you, selecting the place in which you were born because she saw that the temperate climate of its seasons would produce the wisest men. Since the goddess is a lover of war and a lover of wisdom, she selected the place that would produce men most like herself, and there she settled you first. You dwelt there, then, using such laws and being even better governed, surpassing all men in every virtue, as was natural for those who were the offspring and pupils of gods. Now, many and great are the deeds of your city written down here which are admired, but among them all one surpasses the rest in magnitude and virtue. For the records tell how great a power your city once stayed, which was insolently advancing against all Europe and Asia together, having set forth from the Atlantic Ocean without.

​Critias: For at that time that ocean was navigable; for in front of the mouth which you, as you say, call the Pillars of Heracles, there lay an island, and the island was larger than Libya and Asia together, from which it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross over to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole opposite continent which surrounds that true ocean. For these things here, as many as are within the mouth of which we speak, appear to be a harbor with a narrow entrance; but that other is really an ocean, and the land that surrounds it completely may most truly and rightly be called a continent. Now, in this island of Atlantis there arose a great and wonderful power of kings, ruling over the whole island and many other islands and parts of the continent; and besides these, of the regions within here, they ruled over Libya as far as Egypt, and over Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This whole power, gathered into one, once attempted to enslave with a single onslaught both your region and ours and the whole territory within the mouth. Then, Solon, the power of your city became manifest to all mankind in its virtue and strength. For, standing at the head of all in courage and all the arts of war, at one time leading the Greeks, at another forced to stand alone when the others revolted, and having reached the extreme of danger, she overcame the invaders and set up a trophy, and prevented those who were not yet enslaved from being enslaved, and generously set free all the rest of us who dwell within the boundaries of Heracles. But at a later time, when there occurred extraordinary earthquakes and floods, in a single grievous day and night, all your warrior class sank into the earth in a body, and the island of Atlantis likewise sank into the sea and disappeared. Wherefore even now that ocean there is impassable and unsearchable, being blocked by the very shallow mud which the sinking island produced. You have now heard, Socrates, a brief summary of what was told by the elder Critias from the report of Solon. And indeed, when you were speaking yesterday about the constitution and the men you described, I was amazed as I recalled these very things I am now telling, noting how wondrously, by some chance, you coincided in most respects not far from the mark with what Solon said.