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The demise of Atlantis.
The way Plato saw it.
According to Plato the island of Atlantis was a virtual paradise of a land without comparison in any other age. Yet this tender idyll was not to last. The island became
steadily corrupt until Zeus was so horrified by its degenerate nature that he vowed to destroy it. Below is Plato’s own version of events leading up to its destruction, or at least as much of it as we
are permitted to know. For reasons known only to himself Plato’s account finishes abruptly in mid sentence and it is left to other writers to fill in the missing narrative.
This then is Plato’s account of the demise of Atlantis.
Divine element
For many generations, so long as the divine element in their (the Atlanteans) nature survived , they obeyed the laws and loved the divine to which they were akin. They
retained a certain greatness of mind, and treated the vagaries of fortune and one another with wisdom and forbearance, as they reckoned that qualities of character were far more important than their
present prosperity.
So they bore the burden of their wealth and possessions lightly, and did not let their high standard of living intoxicate them or make them lose self control but saw
soberly and clearly that all these things flourish only on the soil of common good will and individual character, and if pursued too eagerly and overvalued destroy themselves and morality with them. So
long as these principles and their divine nature remained unimpaired the prosperity which we have described continued to grow.
Unbridled ambition.
But when the divine element in them (the Atlanteans) became weakened with frequent admixture with mortal stock , and their human traits became predominant, they ceased to be
able to carry their prosperity with moderation. To the perceptive eye the depth of
their degeneration was clear enough, but to those whose judgement of true happiness is defective they seemed in their pursuit of unbridled ambition and power to be at the height of their fame and fortune. And the god of gods, Zeus, who reigns by law and whose eye can see such things, when he perceived the wretched state of this admirable stock decided to punish them and reduce them to order by discipline.
Summoning of the gods.
Accordingly Zeus summoned all the gods to his own most glorious abode, which stands at the centre of the universe and looks out over the whole realm of change, and when they
had assembled addressed them as follows...
Sudden end.
It is at this crucial juncture that Plato’s account halts in mid sentence. Quite why this should be is impossible to be sure of. However the outcome of this meeting of the
gods is beyond doubt. Atlantis was to be destroyed along with most of the habited world of that era.
Alternative account.
An alternative account that mirrors Plato’s incomplete narrative can be found in Ovids Metamorphoses. For more on this please click on the link below.
The council of the gods.
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