The Project Gutenberg EBook of Critias, by Plato

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Title: Critias

Author: Plato

Translator: Benjamin Jowett

Posting Date: August 15, 2008 [EBook #1571]
Release Date: December, 1998

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Sue Asscher

CRITIAS

by Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The Critias is a fragment which breaks off in the middle of a sentence.
It was designed to be the second part of a trilogy, which, like the
other great Platonic trilogy of the Sophist, Statesman, Philosopher, was
never completed. Timaeus had brought down the origin of the world to
the creation of man, and the dawn of history was now to succeed the
philosophy of nature. The Critias is also connected with the Republic.
Plato, as he has already told us (Tim.), intended to represent the
ideal state engaged in a patriotic conflict. This mythical conflict is
prophetic or symbolical of the struggle of Athens and Persia, perhaps
in some degree also of the wars of the Greeks and Carthaginians, in the
same way that the Persian is prefigured by the Trojan war to the mind
of Herodotus, or as the narrative of the first part of the Aeneid is
intended by Virgil to foreshadow the wars of Carthage and Rome. The
small number of the primitive Athenian citizens (20,000), 'which is
about their present number' (Crit.), is evidently designed to contrast
with the myriads and barbaric array of the Atlantic hosts. The passing
remark in the Timaeus that Athens was left alone in the struggle, in
which she conquered and became the liberator of Greece, is also an
allusion to the later history. Hence we may safely conclude that the
entire narrative is due to the imagination of Plato, who has used the
name of Solon and introduced the Egyptian priests to give verisimilitude
to his story. To the Greek such a tale, like that of the earth-born
men, would have seemed perfectly accordant with the character of his
mythology, and not more marvellous than the wonders of the East narrated
by Herodotus and others: he might have been deceived into believing it.
But it appears strange that l