I have heard many myths and rumors and even seen “proof” of the lost city of Atlantis. So I wanted to know, does anyone have the truth about this subject?
Here is what Cecil has to say about Atlantis.
Like there is “proof” of magic?
::rolleyes
IIRC, Atlantis was a civilization that Socrates used to cite an example. He used it as a vauge reference, and stated it as spurious and that it had come down by word of mouth to him. I do not know why it has exploded, and how people have gotten away with making up so much information on it. But, no, Atlantis doesnt exist. (Not in the sense of what the common definition is)
[nitpick]
Plato.
[/nitpick]
I saw that, My mistake. Actually I think I heard it was Plato, but since the book about Socrates is named Plato, I think I confused that cite. My bad.
Atlantis is located in Florida, and is being prepared for another launch in June.
You just have to fly there on Trans-Love Airways, my antediluvian baby. Ask the Hurdy-Gurdy man.
According to Graham Hancock, under the Antarctic ice since 10,500 BC (or was it 12,500 BC?)
No, no, no… Everyone knows that it was located in the ocean to the west of the Grey Havens, within sight (from the top of its highest mountain) of Tol Eressea. It’s usually known as Numenor, though.
Well, sonshine, don’t come running to ME on 23 Dec 2012, cuz you bin warned…
Anyway, Numenor is really only a race-memory of the real thing under a thin veil of fictionalisation - honest…
In his column on Atlantis, Cecil said that one theory holds that"
[disclaimer] not that I believe the following, but… [/disclaimer] I saw a television special recently on TLC about Atlantis, not that this is by any means a definitive source on the subject. The final, and least ludicrous theory they offered was that Atlantis may have been Thera (ie. modern Santorini). This is explained as a mistranslation of the original Plato, in which it is commonly translated that Atlantis is “larger than Africa and Asia”. This is one reason why some people believe that Atlantis was in the Atlantic, because it wouldn’t fit in the Mediterranean. However, some people say that it should have been translated as being “between Africa and Asia”. Hence the island of Thera, northwest of Crete, fits this description. There is also archeological evidence to suggest that a civilization on Thera was destroyed by a volcanic eruption, around the 1500BC time mentioned in Cecil’s article. The position of the TLC show was basically that Atlantis was probably Thera instead of Crete because Thera was completely destroyed by the eruption (in keeping with the Atlantis myth), and while Crete did suffer damage, it was still fit for human habitation.
So, uh, who actually said it then. According to the article brother rat linked us to it was Socrates. Plato, as I understand it, was Socrates’ student of some sort of commited to put his teachings to paper. I could be wrong in this, but when I interview somebody, and they say something, the original quote is attributed to the person saying it, not the inverviewer/journalist. So is Cecil wrong in this? Or is there some hush hush theory that I havn’t heard about that states that Plato is really Socrates?
Or…perhaps Crit, who appears to say something about it first is really a pen name for Plato.??
But it is the High elves that named it Atalante, that is the downfall of the Men of the West, in the Qenya tongue.
In a sense, yes. Socrates himself did not leave any writings. The only way we know he existed is that people who knew him (and studied under him) wrote about him. So, Plato wrote what Socrates supposedly said, but IIRC, Platonic descriptions of the philosophies of Socrates differ from his contemporaries.
There are two explanations that I can see for this.
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Socrates never existed. He was the ‘teacher’ Archetype which Plato and his buddies tossed around whenever they needed that sort of figure.
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Plato (or his friends) used Socrates’ name to spout their own philosophies. IMO, a much more likely theory.
Socrates’ existence certainly has more credibility to it than Homer’s or even Jesus’ simply because the accounts about him are written by people who knew him while he was alive. (Before you argue that New Testament accounts were too, it’s pretty firmly established that the books of the New Testament were oral tradition for some time after the death of Jesus and his contemporaries before they were committed to paper. I am not saying that Jesus did or did not exist.)
Plato was a student of Socrates who allegedly recorded the dialogues Socrates had with various people in his (Socrates) attempts to discover Truth.
Socrates was executed.
Plato continued to write up Dialogues by Socrates. There is some debate over which specific Dialogues were the ones where Plato’s purported position as recorder gave way to the Dialogues actually being a vehicle for Plato to express his own ideas. However, the Kritias is usually and the Republic is always seen as Plato using the character Socrates as a mouthpiece for his own opinions. Atlantis appears to be Plato’s invention without any help from Socrates.