Plato's Statlantis: The Lost City Of Atlantis

The fabled city of Atlantis has captured both the souls and hearts of millions everywhere. It has the world begging if the depiction of such an advanced city in Plato’s Timaeus where a character, Kritias, tells of the lost city of Atlantis and how it was destroyed after a war with Athens. The story goes that Poseidon, Greek God of the sea, fathered five sets of twins and gave them each a sliver of land. One of the kids, Atlas, was given the land of Atlantis and the surrounding sea. “About 9000 years before the time of Plato, after the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, the gods decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake shook the land, giant waves rolled over the shores, and the island sank into the sea, never to be seen again.”

Plato was a well-known scholar and ended up being true on many accounts which gave him credibility. On numerous accounts, Plato stated the story is based on true events, but again, this is sketchy at best. One of the biggest speculations of Atlantis is its location. Plato writes that the empire was located to the west of the “Pillars of Hercules” of which we know today as the Strait of Gibraltar. This places Atlantis’ potential location in a vast array of places. Some have tried to suggest that Atlantis existed around Cyprus, which couldn’t be true based on the accounts of Plato. Some suggest that Atlantis was a large almost continent to the west of Spain. All of these run counter to a very popular running theory that the Greek island of Thera, which was destroyed in 1500 B.C, was potentially what was thought to be Atlantis or around there. Either way, even the location of Atlantis cannot be determined

As renowned as Plato was, he couldn’t have always been right. As much as many of us want the land of Atlantis to be truth, it most likely is nothing but a fable. It still does not defeat the absolute incredible creativity that has centered on Atlantis for the past few thousand years. Art, music, poems, stories and more all utilize the lost land as a focal point. Some even believe that is Atlantis existed, it still exists as a civilization today that is the homeland of merpeople. Its speculations have risen bountiful movies such as Disney’s Atlantis which focused around a society that, without social interaction with the rest of the world, descended from being a superpower to a society torn to the brink of extinction especially after a catastrophe. If one thing isn’t certain, it’s a united myth that has been in the hands of many to attempt to prove, prophesize, or