CHRISTOPHER GILL

PLATO'S ATLANTIS STORY AND THE

BIRTH OF FICTION
T
HERE IS A ~ E N S E in which Plato's Atlantis story is the earliest example
of narrative fiction in Greek literature; which is also to say it is
the earliest example in Western literature. I This may seem a surprising
claim. Plato's story is introduced in the Timaeu5 as the record of a
factual event and as one which is "absolutely true." If the story is
conceded, nonetheless, to be an invention, one might suppose that
earlier works of literature, such as Homer's epics, have an equal claim
to be considered fictional. On the other hand, it might be objected
that the genre of narrative fiction (\vhat we call the romance or novel)
did not emerge in Greece until considerably later, in or around the
first century B.C. A better understanding both of fiction and of the
Atlantis story will, however, show my claim to be justified.
If we describe a narrative as a fiction, we usually mean that it is
an account of events which did not actually take place as they are
described but which have been invented by the author. This, however,
does not distinguish between falsehood and fiction. And, indeed, fiction
is distinguishable from falsehood only by the presumptions of author
and audience: the author of fiction does not intend to deceive (nor
is the audience generally deceived) about the status of the narrative.
It is also true (though in a different sense) that it is the presumptions
of author and audience that distinguish fictional from factual accounts.
For a fictional narrative in the past tense is not formally distinguishable
from a narrative of past factual events; and it is only certain conventional
and extrinsic signals (like the title of a book) which denote the class
of the narrative. Moreover, an audience follows a fictional narrative
with much the same kind of mental attention and emotional involvement
as it does a factual narrative: fictional events may seem, in a sense,
as real as, or more real than, factual events. Yet, at some level, the
audience is aware that the fictional events are not real in the ordinary
sense of the word but invented by the author; this awareness underlies
64
CHRISTOPHER GILL 65
and characterizes the kind of attention, and involvement, elicited by
fictional narrative. Fiction, one may say, is a kind of game, in which
both participants share in a willed pretense, treating what is unreal
as real, and what is invented as actual.
The rules of the game of fiction are not intuitively obvious, but
presuppose a degree of cultural sophistication in a society or individual:
in particular, the capacity to draw a dear distinction between fact and
fiction. This capacity cannot be reasonably attributed to the composers
of Homeric epic, nor can the poems (which are a chemical fusion
of legends about the past and creative invention) accurately be classified
by either term. The genre of deliberately fictional narrative (that is,
the romance) did not emerge until historiography, factual recording
of the past, was an established technique. Indeed, the romance seems
to have grown up as an imitation oC history, in which the author played
the game of recounting a sequence of past events. Xenophon's Education
of C)TUS (c. 360 R.C.), the first self-consciously semi-fictional history,
served as a suggestive prototype for later, more cOlnpletdy fictional
narratives.
2
It is perhaps not accidental that Thucydides' attempt in
the fifth century to lay down criteria for v,rholly factual historiography
(with none of the romantic elaborations of the Homeric epics, 1.3,
1.10, 1.22) was succeeded in the'fourth century by the first philosophical
accounts of the truthstatus of literature; Aristotle, in fact, defines literary
truth through a contrast with historical truth (Poetics" 9). The clearer
delineation of fact promoted the desire to define fiction (or, at least,
literary invention), as well as creating the preconditions for the self-con-
scious production of fiction.
PI .. ato may seem to be an enemy rather than an analyst of literature;
and his discussions undeniably have a polemical tone. But, closely
examined, his treatment of literature in the Repubhc, and of the kinds
of truth and falsity it possesses, goes far towards analyzing the fictional
element in Furthermore, the analysis can be seen to be
continued, in actual literary practice, in his intriguing Atlantis story;
roughly contemporary with Xenophon's "'biography" of Cyrus, it too
can be regarded as a pastiche of history used as a means of self-conscious
experiment in fiction. In fact, I think Plato deliberately frames his
story in such a way as to invite his readers to play the (still unfamiliar)
game of fiction, to share in the willing and conscious acceptance of
the false as true.
Plato's first large-scale discussion of literature comes early in the
Republic. The subject is the role of literature in education, and the
most relevant part is the first section (377-92). He begins with the
challenging claim: "The class of narratives (muthoi) is, as a \-\.Thole, false,
though it contains some truths" (377a). This sounds) excitingly, as though
66 PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE
Plato is announcing the fictional nature of imaginative narrative, while
conceding it a capacity for, perhaps deeper-level, truth. Plato's view
in this section is in fact not far removed from this; but this is not
easily apparent. During much of the discussion, one may reasonably
form the impression that Plato is not explaining the sense in which
imaginative narrative, in general, is false, but is complaining about
the falsity of certain, specific, narratives. For Plato complains, repeatedly,
that Homer and Hesiod have told "Ues" about gods and semi-divine
heroes, attributing to them actions they could not have committed (e.g.
377e-381e, 391). Indeed, Plato may well seem to be falling into the
same (partial) error as Thucydides, that of treating Homer as a historian
of the distant past, and faulting him for the inclusion of errors and
implausibilities in an account that has some pretensions to factual truth,
But this is not so. In a brief but important aside, Plato makes it plain
that he does not believe there can be any factually accurate account
of the distant past. "In the kind of story-telling (muthologia) we have
been discussing, we do not know the exact truth about events of the
distant past" (382dl-2). Therefore, all muthoi about the distant past
(including those retailed by Homer, Hesiod, and the tragedians, to
judge from Plato's examples), are, on the literal level, "false"; they
are not the factual accounts they seem to be. However, this is not
the falsity of which Plato, primarily, complains. As Plato goes on to
say (382d2-3), although any muthos about the distant past is factually
false, we can "assimilate our falsehood to the truth as far as possible
and so make it useful." In saying this, Plato does not mean that we
can modify our imaginative account to correspond with the known
facts of the remote past; for he has just denied that we know these
facts. The criterion of truth and falsehood in such muthoi is on another
level. OUf narratives approximate to truth and falsehood insofar as
we give a more or less accurate representation of the entities about
which we construct our narratives. The writer is like a portrait sculptor
or painter, who achieves the "truth" by being faithful to the nature
of his subject (377e), even if the narrative medium of his portraiture
is imaginative or factually "false" (382d). Homer and Hesiod told
"falsehoods" about the past because their imaginative narratives were
not faithful to the nature of their subjects (gods and semi-divine heroes);
and it is by reference to the falsity of their underlying assumptions
about the nature of these subjects that Plato is able to stigmatize individual
episodes as false (380e-383c).
Plato, then, is not really treating Homer and Hesiod as historians
and complaining that they arc bad ones. Indeed, his comment at 382d
utterly rejects their claims to be treated as historians (a bold rejection,
in view of the moral and theological weight traditionally given to their
CHRISTOPHER GILL 67
picture of the divine and heroic past). Instead, he provides criteria
for judging these writers which arc quite different from those of historical
accuracy: namely, the truth and falsity of their assumptions about the
subjects they present. For in this part of the Republic-though not
in Book X-Plato treats literary composition as a process in which
theoretical assumptions or concepts are clothed in narrative and dramatic
form (379a ff., cf. 401-2); and he insists that these underlying assump-
tions should be true ones. But on the literal, or surface, level, Plato
accepts that narratives, at least about the distant past (and the vast
majority of serious Greek literature xu set in the distant past), are
false; and with this falsity Plato has no complaint. Indeed, he carefully
distinguishes conscious and unconscious falsity at 382a-c, and it is
unconscious falsity, that is, ignorance, of which he is most critical.
Conscious falsity is a less defective condition, and has its uses (382c-d,
389b). Indeed, Plato uses it himself, in the conscious construction of
a "noble falsehood" about the distant past, a foundation myth for his
imagined ideal state (414b--c).
Now, in the conscious construction of a "noble falsehood," and, indeed,
in this whole section on literature, Plato is motivated by the social
and political concerns which underlie his whole Repubhc and not by
a disinterested desire to analyze contemporary literary practice. Yet
his picture of the writer as someone who, like a visual artist, gives
his own representation of his chosen subject, someone whose imaginative
narrative constitutes falsehood on the literal level but illay still convey
a deeper-level truth, not only elucidates the character of the epic poetry
he has most in mind but also that of the creative writer in general.
Indeed, we may well feel that Plato has gone some distance towards
delineating the nature of fiction (more so, it would seem, than any
of his contemporaries). The one respect in which his account of the
"falsity" of muthos is significantly not that of "fiction is that he docs
not seem to envisage an audience which is also conscious of this falsity.
Of course, his own readers (if they accept his view of Homer) ,,,ill
now be able to return to the epic narrative with a neVI.' awareness of
its literal falsity. But Plato--at least in the ideal state he imaginatively
constructs-does not seem interested in creating a class of readers who
will be trained to detect this falsity. He seems to accept the fact that
audiences (children and adults alike) generally accept such accounts
as literally true, and thus absorb the underlying assumptions of the
writer. What Plato wants to do is to ensure that writers create their
falsehoods on the basis of true assumptions; then, \vhile the literal
falsity passes unnoticed, the deeper truths VI.'ill be absorbed (379a ff.,
40lh-d, 414b ff.). Thus Plato here does not make the audience an
accomplice to the conscious lie. In this respect Book X (though even
68 PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE
more fundamentally critical of the writer) makes a significant advance.
For here Plato does not maintain that the audience is deceived about
the surface-level falsehood of literature (even if it is led to false
conclusions about the writer). But this development in his view is
obscured by the fact that in Book X Plato adopts a different set of
terms: "what and "what in place of truth and falsehood.
4
Plato's main aim in Book X was to dispute the traditional status
of Greek literature as a means of acquiring knowJedge of being,
particularly knowledge of moral values (598e ff.). By contrast, Plato
claims that the writer, qua writer, has no knowledge of what is: neither
practical skills (such as politics) which can be applied to actual situations,
nor knowledge of the absolute values which can underpin and validate
such practical skills. (Plato, for good historical reasons, always talks
about the "poet". but I shall continue to use the generic term "writer",
meaning creative writeL) The skill of the writer goes no deeper than
the surface of human life, its external appearance: the writer's distinctive
skill is the ability to reproduce this appearance (as though with a mirror,
596d-e), by creating an image which looks to the eye of the observer
as the world itself looks (598b-d). Homer, qua writer, knows nothing
about the real nature of human excellence (or "virtue"); what he knows
how to do is to produce through words the image of a man who
seems to most people to have something important and real to say
about the nature of virtue (600c-601b). To use Plato's terms more
exactly, the poet, like the painter, is an imitator of the
appearance (phantasma) , not of what is (598b), and a maker of images,
not of anything that is (600e). The audience's observation of this
"phantasm"-world, and involvement in its simulated emotions, is in-
herently pleasant (605c-d). This pleasure does not derive from any
intellectual apprehension so gained since literature neither appeals to,
nor satisfies, the reason (602e fL). The aesthetic experience, in fact,
is a "c1osed
l
' experience that discloses to us nothing about the world
of being, though our vicarious involvement with representations of
emotional self-abandonment may undermine our self-control in real
life (603c ff.).
Plato's account of literature in Book X is yet more negative than
the previous discussion. He explicitly withdraws from the writer the
capacity he earlier granted him, of basing his "imitation" on an intellectual
grasp of the being he imitates (600e; contrast 379a ff., 40lb ff.). Plato
has his polemical reasons for this restrictive, and, in some \val's,
implausible view of the writer; but his second description has distinct
advantages, notably in isolating the fictional qualities of the writer.
Book X (unlike the earlier discussion) does not describe the writer
as a maker of statements, a man in the same general category as the
CHRISTOPHER GILL 69
historian or theologian. It describes him as a maker of images. which
in two senses, "are not" (596-8), but are not, for that reason, true
or false in the way factual statements about reality must be. This sec-
ond description brings out the important idea of someone who creates
a fantasy world 'which is distinct from the real world but recognizably
similar to it (even if this creation is described, with some simplification,
as imitation).
It is worth noting, also, that Book X does not attribute to writers
the same kind of deception as does the earlier part of the Republic.
In the earlier discussion, Plato seems to presume that audiences actually
believe the falsehoods Homer tells. in a quite literal way; that they
actually believed that events happened in the vvay they were described
by him (377e ff.). In Book X, Plato thinks that literature presents
so plausible an image of what is that audiences will suppose the author
understands what he seems to represent (598b ff., 601a ff.). But he
does not maintain that they think that what is represented (in the
theatre, for instance) is actually happening, in the ordinary sense of
the word, or (in the case of epic). that it actually happened. The
phantasmworld of literature has a certain emotionally powerful reality
for us, but we are still. at some level, aware that this world is not
identical with the one that "really is." "The best of us, when we listen
to Homer or one of the tragedians representing a hero in distress,
stretching out a long speech of lamentation or chanting and beating
his breast-you know that we enjoy the experience, give ourselves up
to it, follow it in close sympathy and seriousness, and praise as a good
poet the one who most affects us in this way" (605d). In this description,
the surrender to the fictional experience is a chosen involvement in
a pleasurable sensation; subsequently, if not at the time, we arc fully
aware of the nature of the experience and commend the poet who
most successfully induces it.
Plato's two descriptions of the writer in the Republic are distinct and
not easily reconcilable with each other. But despite their mutual
inconsistency and their polemical tone, they constitute a remarkable
exploration of the fictional qualities of literature. At a time whcn factual
and fictional writing were not generally distinguished, Plato's account
of the surfacelevel falsity of muthoi, and of the of
the poet, went far to isolate the notion of fiction; and it did so in
advance of the creation of any wholly fictional genre of literature.
Plato's account of the writer is markedly negative; there arc only one
or two indications (401-2, 414b ff.) that what he describes is something
he might himself undertake. Yet, in the prefaces to the Adantis story,
as I shall explain) there are unmistakable echoes of his own discussions;
and this implies that he did, in away) set out to undertake what he
70 PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE
had analyzed. Indeed, even before this, in the presentation of the other
narratives periodically inserted into his dialogues (usually called Plato's
"myths"), \ve can see signs of the reflections about narrative explicitly
pursued in the Republc.
A number of Plato's myths concern the life of the soul after death
or events in the remote past; that is, they are the type of story-telling
(muthologia) described at Republic 382d, in which we do not know the
exact truth of what we describe, but make up what are, on the
surface-level, falsehoods, even if they are molded in the light of
deeper-level truths. In the presentation of Plato's myths, written around
the time of the Republic, we can see an increasing awareness on Plato's
part of the ambiguity of their truthstatus. Let us consider, first, the
three after-life myths, in their order of composition: GorgiaJ, Phaedo,
Republic. These narratives are similar in their content, but differ in
the progressively greater detachment \O'ith which they are presented.
In the Gorgias, Socrates offers what he knows Callicles will regard as
only a story (muthos)-indeed, an old wives' tale (527a)-but \\'hich
he maintains is a true account (alithes logos, 523a). A similar account
is introduced into the Phaedo much more tentatively-"This is how
the story goes" (107d)-and it is concluded in similar terms. What
has been told is a story (muthos) , indeed a kind of charm for Socrates
to sing to himself; belief in it is a "risk," and a risk only worth taking
because of the connection of the surfacedetails of the story with an
underlying theory of whose truth Socrates is independently convinced
(114d). In the Republic, the concluding myth is cast in the form of
a story attributed to an dbscure narrator (Er, the son of Armenius),
who claimed to have died and then returned to life (614b ff.). In
the story itself, the sustained form of indirect discourse is a syntactical
reminder that Socrates, the reporter of the story, is not its author.
All Socrates says is that "the story has been preserved, and would
preserve us if we believed it," though to the truth of its message (the
immortality of the soul) he is more personally committed (621b-c).
In these three stories, we can see an increasing acknowledgement
of the fictionality of the narrative) even if its underlying truth is
maintained. This distinction is made explicitly in the Phaedrus (probably
written shortly after the Republic). Socrates introduces a story as "a
tradition handed down from our forefathers; though they alone know
whether it is true" (274c). When Phaedrus accuses him of making up
this allegedly "Egyptian" story, Socrates points out that what is important
is not the source of the story but the truth of its message (275b-c);
which is, virtually, to concede its surface-level fictionality. In another
story, in the Statesman, probably written after the Phaedrus but before
the Atlantis story, Plato's approach is more ambiguous, as though he
CHRISTOPHER GII,t, 71
is playing with the reader's credulity. At first his account is introduced
as a story (muthos), indeed, a "game" for his young interlocutor to
play (268d-e); and it is associated with traditional muthoi about the
distant past (268e ff.). But then the narrator claims to be disclosing
actual facts (about cosmic events) which underlie and explain these
muthoi (26gb ff.); and the interlocutor finds his account vcry plausible
(270b). But, as it proceeds, this allegedly scientific explanation takes
on much of the fantastic and supernatural character of traditional muthoi
(270d ff.). And it is gradually made plain that the whole account is
itself a functional Tnuthos. designed to illustrate a point in the argument
(274b, 274e). In this story, which anticipates the Atlantis story at a
nunl.ber of points, Plato disposes us to expect a fiction. and then, as
it were, plays with the reader, offering an account which might seem
authentically historical (or pre-historical), but which is gradually revealed
as a functional fable.
5
The game \ .. ith the reader (played out much
more fully in the Atlantis story) is a minor feature in the Statesman.
But in both cases it is as though Plato. having explained the distinction
between surface fiction and deeper-Ie ..... el truth, deliberately blurs the
distinction) if only temporarily, in order to sting his reader into
recognizing it for himself.
The ambiguity in the presentation of the Atlantis story is greater
than that in the Statesman. or in any previous myth. There are two
introductions to the story, in the Timaeus and the Cri/ias, and both
of them in different ways predispose us initially to expect an invented
story. But in both cases this expectation is contradicted when the story
is described as a historical report. Thus, at the start of the Timaeus,
Socrates summarizes the institutions of the ideal state delineated in
the and says he would like to hear a story which would bring
out the character of his state, by representing it in a major war (I9b-d).
This prepares us for an invented fable, the narrative presentation of
a philosophical theme. Surprisingly, however, Crilias proposes to satisfy
Socrates' request with what he claims is a historical report of a factual
event. This report, he says, was preserved in his family: it was orally
memorized by successive generations (20e-21a, 26b-c). Solon, a distant
relative of his, obtained this report from certain Egyptian priests, whose
records of the past contain accurate information about events known
to the Greeks (if at all) only through myths (21e ff.). 9000 years before,
primaeval Athens defended itself heroically against the aggression of
a great maritime empire, Atlantis; and the institutions and character
of primaeval Athens are sufficiently close to those of Socrates' ideal
state for the report of this war to be used as the illustrative story
Socrates requires. Nonetheless, suitable though it is, Crilias insists (and
Socrates accepts) that his narrative is not a made-up story (plaslhds
72 PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE
muthos) but a true account (alahinos logos, 20d-2le, 26e).
The Timaeus simply introduces a story which was to be told fully
in the Critias (though in fact the project was never fully carried through).';
At the start of the Critias, Critias seems preoccupied, not with the
problem of recalling accurately the details of his account (as he was
at Timaeus 2 6 b ~ c ) , but with the problem of giving his narrative the
illusory realism which he says audiences require (107). This concern
seems more appropriate to a story-teller than a historian, and, in fact,
Critias now describes himself as someone who is improvising a verbal
performance (107d-e). Correspondingly, Socrates compares him, along
with Timaeus, to a poet-playwright competing before an audience in
a theatre; and Hermocrates urges Critias to call Gike an epic poet)
on the Muses for help (lOSa-c). Critias accedes to this urging; but
he also calls 'on the mother of the Muses, Memory, and by this neat
switch reassumes his role as the reporter of a memorized history (108d),
one later said to be based on a text transmitted from Solon (l13a-b).
This presentation of the story is ambiguous. Indeed, it is so ambiguous
that it has led readers, ancient and Inodern, to draw two contradictory
conclusions: that the story is either a philosophical fable (a pure
invention), or an authentic piece of historical reportage. Some of these
reactions we shall look at later; but first it is worth studying more
c10sely the actual wording of Plato's introductions, and the implications
of this wording. The prefaces of Timaeus and Critias are strongly
reminiscent, in different ways, of the discussions of literature in the
Republic. The Timaeus particularly recalls the earlier discussion in the
Republic; the Critias recalls Book X. Socrates in the Timaeus (as in
the first discussion of the Republic) treats poets as people who give
a more or less faithful representation (mimesis) of their subject (1gb-d).
In the Republic, he commonly compares verbal representation to sculp-
ture or painting (377e, cf. Book X, /wHim), and, in fact, compares
his own delineation of the ideal state to the work of such an artist
(472c-e). In the Timaeus, in an apparent extension of this image, he
asks for artists who can, as it were, make his sculptures move (or induce
motion in the creatures he has brought to life); he asks for a narrator
who can illustrate the characters of his state in an imagined action
(1gb). Socrates needs a poet who has the capacity he desiderates for
artists in the ideal state (at least, in the first part of the Republic):
that of representing a purely conceptual, and moral, subject (40Ib-d).
But he has clearly in mind the complaints he makes in the second
discussion in the Republic, that poets are merely imitators of perceptible
appearances: "The class of poets, being generically imitators, will imitate
most easily and best the circumstances of their own upbringing; but
that which falls outside each individual's native environment is difficult
CHRISTOPHER GILL 73
for him to imitate well in action, and yet more difficult in words"
(Timaeus 19d-e). But Plato does not make this remark in the wholly
negative way in which he makes similar statements in Republic X. For
he has provided in the Timaeus a class of interlocutors whose unique
combination of philosophical wisdom and political experience enable
them to represent "how philosopherstatesmen would act and speak
in each situation, while they engaged in war and battle, as well as
negotiation and consultation" (1ge). It must be their special knowledge
which enables Socrates to entrust to them a role similar to that finally
reserved for literature in Republic X, that is, the creation of "hymns
to the gods and eulogies of good men" (Republic 607a; cf. Timaeus
19d, 2la, Critzas lOBe). Indeed, it enables Socrates to permit them
also to engage in the limited "acting" role allowed in the earlier discussion
in the Republic (though forbidden in Book impersonation, in
dialogue form, of good men (Republic 395c-396e, Tlmaeus 1ge).
These sustained echoes of the Republic naturally lead us to the following
conclusions. Plato seems to be indicating that he is about to experiment
with the kind of consciously invented narrative that he envisages but
(with the exception of the noble falsehood) does not actually attempt
in the Republic (382c-d, 38gb). This narrative will be a representation
of a morally good subject by an author who knows the real nature
of his subject (cf. 377e and 40lb-d), This narrative will be "true" to
its good subject, and hence "usefuL" morally educative, for its audience,
even if, judged by factual standards, this story will be a "falsehood"
(cf. 382d). But the falsehood is not intended to deceive; for, by his
introduction, with its allusions to his earlier discussions, Plato indicates,
from the start, that his story is an invention.
In his preface to the Tmaeus, Socrates makes it plain that he wan ts
a man who possesses the art of representation (a mim{te-s); he wants
someone who can thus bring out the true nature of a subject most
people do not understand. But, as is stressed again and again in Republic
X, writers generally have a different aim in their that of
providing a plausible simulacrum of human life, which will correspond,
only too closely, to his audience's ignorant preconceptions about the
nature of the subject represented (59Bb-c, 601a-b, 602a-b). Critias,
before he begins his narrative, shares this concern. He points out that
language "is a means of representation (mimesis) and likeness making,
like the image-making of 'visual artists" (107b). And he is afraid that
his own representation of human phenomena will be less plausible
than Timaeus' representation of celestial phenomena because the stan-
dards of the audience (based on their familiarity with the subject) are
higher. In the case of celestial phenomena, we are content with "indistinct
and deceptive techniques of shading," but "whenever anyone tries to
74 PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE
represent human bodies, we are quick to perceive any deficiencies
because of our close acquaintance with the subject, and are harsh critics
of the man who does not achieve an absolutely convincing likeness'!
(107d). It is not fidelity to his theoretical subject that bothers Critias
(that is, whether he can express the true nature of the ideal state),
nOf, it should be noted, fidelity to the details of his "historical" account.
What concerns him is whether he can give his story the kind of surface
realism that narrators of human action are expected to provide. To
use slightly different terms (those of Plato's Sophist, 235-56), Socrates
asks for the kind of imitator who reproduces the true lineaments of
his subject regardless of whether or not its appearance corresponds
with our usual impressions; whereas Critias is the kind of imitator
who is concerned, above all, with whether or not his simulated world
corresponds in appearance to conventional expectations.
Thus, the introductions of Socrates in the Timaeus and Critias in
the Critias both evoke literary discussions of the Republic; but they
evoke different discussions, with very different implications about the
role of the writer. What does this indicate? That Plato set out to create
a fictional narrative,.but one stimulated by distinct-indeed, opposed-
conceptions of the function of fiction? We can, perhaps, see the products
of this conception in the closing pages of the Critias (113-21).
The description of Atlantis-its topography, flora and fauna, engineer-
ing and architecture (all of them fabulous and given
with remarkably graphic and detailed realism. These details may all
have relevance to Plato's underlying themes; 7 but their significance
is by no means on the surface. In the final paragraph of the work,
by contrast, Plato-it seems, rather hastily-reminds us of the moral
skeleton of his story (the conflict between the just and the unjust state),
by outlining the moral corruption and inchoate punishment of Atlantis.
In the divergent tones of these two sections we may, perhaps, see
Plato's two-fold literary motives at work (the philosophico-moral and
the more purely fictional). It is possible that an unreconcilable tension
between them explains why Plato breaks off his story in mid-sentence
immediately after the moralizing paragraph. Yet the two motives need
not have seemed irreconcilable when Plato conceived his story. Indeed,
the attempt to combine them, to create a philosophical fable which
was more realistic than any of his previous myths, which went further
towards creating its own phantasm-world (like the literature Plato
analyzed in the Republic), may have been the guiding conception behind
the work, and one adumbrated in its two introductions.
But if this is what Plato wishes to convey in his introductions, why
does he combine these hints with the emphatic, and repeated, claim
that the story is not an invention but an authentic historical record?
CHRISTOPHER GILL 75
Should we suppose that the account is, in fact, a historical record;
and that the preceding, misleading introductions are only devices to
heighten the surprise-value of Critias' claims to historicity? This is the
view taken by those who ihink Plato's story is based on fact; even
though none of these scholars (including the proponents of the fashion-
able Minoan theory) has been able to discover a factual origin which
convincingly matches Plato's story.H But, before embracing this view.
it is worth studying more closely the way Critias presents his alleged
history. His presentation is highly evocative of previous Creek histories.
The picture of Solon interrogating Egyptian priests about the distant
past is highly evocative of Herodotus' Egyptian investigations (Timaeus,
21-22; cf. Herodotus, 2, 99 ff.l, just as his account of primaeval Athens'
repulse of Atlantis recalls Athens' repulse of Persia at Marathon
(Timaeus, 25b--c, Herodotus, 7, 139). Further, Critias' claims of authen-
ticity for his account (and of the scale of the war he describes) evoke
Thucydides' introduction to his history (Tmaeus, 20-22, 23c, 24c; cf.
Thucydides, 1, 22-23). The overall impression of these allusions is
not that Plato's narrative is actual historiography but rather a pastiche
of historiography, almost a parody (since the claims to exact authenticity
are combined with an implausibly vast time-scale). The historiographical
style is oddly blended with an almost epic use of gods as agents in
human affairs (notably, as patrons and punishers of cities). Solon's
story, we may note, was seen as a suitable basis for an epic poem
to rival Homer and Hesiod (Tz"maeus, 2lc). The more one reads Critias'
summary of his story, the rnore it seems not the unique factual document
it purports to be, but an elaborate literary collage-Plato's own reworking
of the theme of war, with significant allusions to previous treatments
of the theme in the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides (with Homer's
Iliad and Hesiod's T/ieogon)J in the background).
But if, as this suggests, Plato's story is not the authentic history Critias
says it is, why should Plato put this claim into Critias' mouth? The
claim to veracity might be seen as part of Plato's pastiche of historiogra-
phy, setting the tone, as it were, for the pastiche. That Plato was,
in his later years, genuinely interested in history and prehistory we
can tell, not only from his speculative reconstruction of prehistoric
Attica (entias, 10ge ff.), but also from the straightforwardly historical
survey of Lau).j'. III (which discusses explicitly the historical events alluded
to in the Atlantis story). In the Atlantis story, Plato is, one may say,
playing the game of being a historian; and the fact that it is a game
is signalled by the overt claim to historical truth in a context in which
we are not disposed to accept the claim.
9
Plato, perhaps, also had a second, literary. reason for couching his
narrative as a history, and as a "true" history. Critias' opening remarks
76 PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATL'RE
in the Crilias (107) seem to proclaim Plato's interest in writing a story
that has something of the same effect on a reader as conventional
literature; one that constitutes a plausible simulacrum of human behavior.
As we have seen, parts of his work have precisely this quality, and
seem intended to be gratuitously interesting, independent of any moral
message. In Plato's day, history was the genre of writing in which
the events themselves, the surface action, were put forward as intrinsicaHy
interesting and important. It was natural, then, for Plato to choose
history as his formal model (as well as the primary source of his building
materials); and to proclaim his model by using its distinctive claim
of factual truth.
There is one further literary reason (and that the most interesting)
for Plato to present his work as a history, in a context where we are
unlikely to believe him. I have suggested that, in the Republlc, Plato
explored, with penetrating originality, certain crucial elements of fic-
tionality in literature; and I think his own story has the self-consciousness
of its status which is essential for a work of fiction, as distinct from
myth or folk-tale. Plato knows the story he presents as true is false,
and that its apparent reality is only that of a plausible simulacrum, a
copy of reality (though it is one whose creative originality beJies the
narrow limitations of Plato's own description of the writer as a mere
I'imitator"). And he is not, despite appearances, trying to deceive his
reader into accepting his false story as true; he has given the reader
enough hints for him to be able to gauge the real character of the
work. Why, then, does he say his story is true? I think the reason
is that he is not only writing fiction but, consciously, playing the game
of fiction, the game, that is, of presenting the false as true, the unreal
as real. And in his preface, he is inviting his reader to take part in
the same game, to pretend (to himself) to be deceived when he is
not, to take as true ",",'hat he knows is false. The reader may, in fact,
be deceived; but what Plato wants is a willed a chosen
suspension of incredulity for the duration of the story. The game of
fiction was not a familiar one in Plato's day, as it is 10 US. In fact,
the complicity of the audience was the one element of fiction not
explicated by Plato in the Republic (though it is not incompatible with
the willed self-surrender to illusion described at 605c-d). One might
suppose that Plato was, in fact, exploring this element in fiction by
means of this experiment in obtaining the reader's complicity. This
new element of intended complicity in the fictional game makes his
work the first piece of deliberately fictional narrative in Greek literature.
No doubt this was not Plato's only reason for writing his story, and
for couching it in the form he did; but it was, in many ways, the
most striking of his motives.
GILL 77
That Plato's exact intentions in his composition were not fully
understood in antiquity is not surprising, given the ambiguity integral
to its presentation, as well as the precocious originality of the conception.
Ancient commentators regarded it either as an authentic history or
as an invented philosophical fable; that is, they took notice of Socrates'
request in the Timaeus, or of Critias' responsc) but did not question
Plato's motives in combining these divergent indications about the nature
of his story. Thus, in the later fourth century or early third century,
Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus and the contcm'porary Platonist Crantor
accepted the historicity of the story. Crantor, in fact, sent it to Egyptian
priests for verification (according to Proclus' commentary on the Timaeus,
76b). Later geographers, like Posidonius (c. 115 to 50 B.C.) and Strabo
(c. 64 B.C, to 21 A.D.), were disposed to accept its truth (Strabo, 2,
102), though the elder Pliny (.:.Vatural ]-liJtor)" 11,92) was more scepti-
cal. On the other hand, neo-Platonist commentators like Porphyry and
lamblichus (third to fourth century A.D.) regarded it as a spiritual and
metaphysical allegory (Proclus, ibid., 76c ff.). None of these commenta-
tors, it should be noted, seems to have any access to Plato's intentions
except through the texts we also possess.
On the other hand, I think Plato's fictional intentions were not entirely
rnisunderstood in antiquity. Two writers of the fourth and third centuries
B.C., Euhemerus and Theopompus, created stories that are, roughly,
in the same genre as the Atlantis story: that is, stories of fantastic
constitutions and climates set in remote and undiscoverable places.
1o
Both stories allude to the Atlantis story, and both seern to have been
more or less overt fictions. These stories may be regarded, on the
one hand, (like the Atlantis story) as elaborations of the philosophico-
political fable in the direction of fiction; and on the other, as early
examples of the genre of travellers' tales, a fictional genre whose only
extant instance is Lucian's avowedly false "True Story" (second century
A.D.). Euhemerus and Theopompus took further steps in the experi-
mentation with conscious and virtually explicit fiction, a class of writing
which was gradually being recognized by readers. In alluding to the
Atlantis story, and, to some degree, taking it as their prototype, these
writers seem to acknowledge its status as an early experiment in fiction;
and the recognition of these practicing writers is a partial compensation
for the impercipience of Platds other ancient readers.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES, ABERYST\VYTH
/ am for Iht slimulus, critiCIsm and help I hmx rutiveri from Julia A rmaJ, and from
ffl)' wlit agufJ in the UnivtrJi{)I of lValtJ, l\'oTman Gulley and ET)'an Reardon, in writing this
artic/t.
78 PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE
lOne might argue further that Plato's story is the first example of self-conscious fiction
in any form in Gree k literature; but this would require a fuller discussion of, for instance,
fifth-century drama than I can usefully attempt here
2. See further B. E, Perry, The Ancimt RomanaJ (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1967)
3, Of recent discussions of Plato's treatment of literature, I have found most stimulating
N. Guliey, "Plato on Poetry," Grua and Rome 24 (1977): IS4-69. Sec also G. F. Else,
Structure and Date of Book 10 of Plato's Rtpub/c (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1972),
a suggestive though perverse book, and Iris Murdoch, The Fire and Ihe S!m (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977). For placing Plato's discussion in its hislDrical context, E. l\.
Havdock, Prefau to Plato (Cambridge, Mass; Harvard University Press, 1963) remains
valuable.
4. Of course, it is unwise to distinguish too sharply between discussion of truth and
discussion of being in PlaID, since "what is" can often mean "what is the case" or "what
is true." Nonetheless, the terminological difference here is worth noting, since it is an
index of a general difference of approach between the two sections of the Republic.
5. For a sustained comparison of the two slOries, see C. Gill, "Plato and Politics-the
Cniias and the Pofilicus," forthcoming in Phronesi.s, 1979.
6. Despite the recent claims of W. \Velliver, Character, Plot and Thought in
Timaeus-C.,ilias (Leiden: BrilL 1977), there is no evidence that Plato intended his story
to have an unfinished appearance.
7. For a convincing analysis of their significance, see P. Vidal-NaquCl, "Athencs ct
I'Atlantide," Rtuue des Etudts Cruques 77 (1964): 420-44; cf. L. Brisson, "De la philosophic
politique a l'epopce. Le 'Critias' de Platon," Revue de Mi/aph)'sique et dt. Moralt. 75 (1970):
402-38.
8. See, particularly, J. V. Luce, Tht End oj Atlantis (London: Thames and Hudson,
1969; published in U.S.A. as Los/ Atlantis, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969). Luce's
arc criticized by Rhys Carpenter, American Journal oj Archaeology 74 (1970): 302-303:
J. M. Cook, Clossical 84, n.s. 20 (1970): 224-25; C. Gill, "The Origin of the
Atlantis Myth," Trivium 11 (1976): 1-1l.
9. See further R. Weil, L' "Arch/ologie" de Plalon (Paris: f'ludes tI CommenlnirtJ, no. 32,
1959) and C. Gill, "The Genre of the Atlantis Story," ClaJJical Phdolngjl 7'2 (1977): 287-304.
to. SeeJ. Ferguson, Utopias ufthe ClaSSical Wurid (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975},
chap. 14.