1. P L A T O   and   S O L O N

Plato wrote his dialogues Timaeus and unfinished Critias some time after 362 B.C. after the bloodiest clash of the Greek history, the battle of Mantinea between the coalition of Sparta and Athens and the Theban army. In the years following the battle of Mantinea, changes in the constitution start to be discussed in Athens, possibly also under the pressure of outer threat from Macedonia. The constitution of Athens, derived from the Solon's first constitution of 593 B.C. and reformed by the Alcmenian Cleisthenes in 509-507 B.C., was considered one of the reasons for the loss of hegemony of Athens in Greece. For example Isocrates, the most popular Athenian orator, proposed for the Athens to revert to the constitution of the ancestors and idealized the original constitutions of Solon and Cleisthenes in his speech Areopaggitikos of 554 B.C. According to his belief, "we may avert the perils of the future and prevent the disasters of the present only if we are willing to restore that democracy which was instated by Solon, the biggest popular benefactor (démotikótatos), and later re-installed by Cleisthenes after he ousted the tyrants and brought the demos back."20) He was opposed by Plato who was trying his whole life to describe and establish an ideal state with an ideal constitution run by the philosophers, protected by the guards, where only the class of producers could have their private possession. Nevertheless, he never succeeded in bringing his vision of an ideal state to life in Athens and Syracuse. In his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, Plato therefore resolved to oppose two nations with different constitutions to each other in a war conflict. One side was represented by the Atlanteans, who were gifted a constitution and the establishment based on some principles of the constitution of Solon and Cleisthenes by Plato. The Atlantean society was divided into ten tribes - the same division was introduced by Cleisthenes in his reforms. Ten tribe representatives, Atlantean kings, were regularly meeting - according to the model of the constitution of Solon and Cleisthenes - in the aristocratic council (areopag) in the Poseidon temple on the island of Atlantis. Cleisthenes further subdivided the tribes into demes represented by the individual Attic communities and Athenian districts. The tribes and the demes were established on purely geographical basis and grouped population of the same area.22) Very similar to the above cited Cleisthenes' subdivision of tribes into demes is the subdivision of the island of Atlantis into lots and attribution of the individuals to the lots according to their address and village on geographical basis. The model of the military duty and the internal structure of the Atlantean army mentioned in the Critias dialogue also follow the constitution of Solon and Cleisthenes. The immense military power of the Atlanteans, faced by the nations of the Mediterranean, was finally opposed only by Ancient Athens with its professional soldiers-guards and its constitution elaborated according to the best Plato's principles expressed in his Republic and Laws. And what was the foregone conclusion of this confrontation between two states with different constitutions in a war conflict as given by Plato? The Athenians, righteously defending themselves and relying on their professional army of guards, could not but win their big fight. They beat the Atlanteans thus proving the viability of the idealistic constitution of Plato at war. In the end, the island of Atlantis - after it served its purpose well - got sunken under the sea and the Athenian guards got fallen through to the earth at the very same moment. The Greek-written legend of Atlantis has its roots in Egypt, where it was learned by Solon, Plato's forerunner, from priests in the town of Sais. Solon was traditionally considered one of the seven Greek wise men. He was elected an archon with a privilege of a judge by the Athenians in 594 B.C. During his one-year's office at the position of an archon, Solon elaborated the first constitution of Athens, replacing the hitherto effective Dracon's code, he redeemed the citizens of Athens from slavery, established a unified system of measures and weights and possibly also introduced the first mintage. In Egypt, Solon visited Sais, the seat town of the monarchs of the 26th dynasty, after 593 B.C., in the time of the so-called Sais renaissance under the rule of the monarch Psametik II., the son of Necho II. Cultural life in the Nile delta was becoming to follow old Egyptian traditions. Copies of old papyrus scrolls were being made. This was also when a more simple Egyptian demotic script originated. Solon used his poetry to support his political and statesman ambitions, no matter what the tools were: provoking the attack of Salamis, warning against the tyrany of Peisistratos, or giving moralizing lessons to the Athenian people. It is possible that he was really looking for inspiration for a new epic poem during his visit to Egypt, in which he would explain and justify his first constitution of Athens. Immediately after Solon left Athens in 593 B.C., riots appeared in Athens and most of the Athenian citizens were rather disappointed about the new constitution. So, there was a subject for Solon to defend. He could not find a more convenient theme for his plans than an old Egyptian narration about a mysterious island with advanced civilisation and its destruction distant in space as well as in time. In this respect, Solon could really put down notes which finally got to the hands of Plato. As a result, the narration combines Greek and Egyptian motifs, but also motifs of another culture called Atlantis by Plato. The dialogue of Plato is with all certainty of Greek origin. Also the large part of the Timaeus dialogue dealing with the origin of man, written according to the best ideas of Plato and Pythagoreans, is definitely of Greek origin. Descriptions of the social establishment of the island of Atlantis including the composition of the Atlantean troops, of the social establishment of the Ancient Athens and Attic landscape are derived from Greek models. Neither the motif of the pre-Athenian soldiers falling through to the earth due to the earthquake was too distant for Plato: in 464-463 B.C., a huge earthquake occurred in Sparta, during which more than one-half of Spartan troops fell through to the earth, according to the sources of that time. Greek philosopher and historian Plutarchos bore the following testimony to this earthquake: "In the fourth year of the rule of Spartan king Archidamus, the Spartan land collapsed at many places owing to the biggest earthquake ever recorded. Tremor tore down some of the peaks of the Tayphet mountain range, the town itself was destroyed and all houses with the exception of five were ruined..."25) Other motifs may really be of Egyptian origin or possibly adopted from the mythology of another civilisation. The motifs of dividing the rule over the world among gods with no wars and violence and of attribution by drawing lots of the island of Atlantis to Poseidon and of Athens to Athene and Hephaestus indisputably, as given in the dialogues by Plato, is in complete contradiction to the Egyptian and Greek myths on gods' rule over the world and their bloody conflicts about the power. On the other hand, the world was righteously divided by drawing lots among the gods in Sumerian myths, for example. Also some earlier translations of the Plato's Critias from Greek into English state more correctly that gods divided their rule over the world by drawing lots, not by quarrelling (see the Oxford edition by Burnet or the translation by Dr. František Novotný of 1919, Prague). If the obvious Greek elements are removed from the Plato's narration, his dialogues can be used for assembling a text based on Egyptian or other sources, as it could be heard from Egyptian priests and noted by Solon in the town of Sais (see Table 1, p. 26A)). An adapted text about Atlantis is provided in Annex 2. Each passage is marked by the name of the dialogue from which it was taken. The text is arranged in chronological order.