Proem

[Site Editorial Note: This chapter covers Stephanus 17a–29d, corresponding to PDF pages 31–43 of the 1578 Estienne edition. The translation is made from Serrani’s Latin column, informed by the Greek. The interlocutors are Socrates (S O C.), Timaeus (T I M.), Critias (C R I T.), and Hermocrates (H E R M.). Serrani’s marginal scholia are omitted from the body; significant editorial notes are given in brackets.]

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The Opening: A Guest is Missing

S O C R A T E S. One, two, three — but where is the fourth, my dear Timaeus, of those who yesterday were our guests and are now our hosts?

T I M A E U S. Some illness has come upon him, Socrates; for he would by no means have willingly absented himself from this assembly.

S O C R A T E S. Then does it not fall to you and to these others here to supply also the part of the absent man?

T I M A E U S. By all means, and we will leave nothing wanting. For it would be unjust that those who were yesterday so hospitably received should in turn fail to repay the obligation as generously as lies in our power.

Socrates Requests a Recapitulation

S O C R A T E S. Do you call to mind, then, how many and what matters I laid before you as topics of discussion?

T I M A E U S. Some we remember; but whatever has escaped us, you who are present will recall. Or rather, if it is no trouble, take us through it again from the beginning briefly, so that it may be the more firmly established in our memory.

S O C R A T E S. So be it. The sum of what was said yesterday about the constitution was this: what kind of constitution, and what sort of men, would be most excellent?

The Recapitulation of the Ideal City

S O C R A T E S. We declared, first, that as for the farmers and all the rest who practise the various crafts, so as for those who are to defend the city — these guardians were separated from all other groups; and it was determined that they should possess nothing beyond what necessity demands, should regard themselves as the paid servants of the rest, having no function other than the guarding of the city, and should receive from the others nothing beyond their subsistence.

We said next that, as regards the natural character of such men, they must be at once spirited and philosophical — fierce toward enemies and gentle toward their own people. And that they ought to be so constituted by nature.

We declared, further, that they should receive an education in gymnastics and in music and in all the disciplines that properly form men of free character — and that those among them who proved to be of outstanding nature in soul and body should bear arms and govern.

We determined, moreover, that as for gold and silver and all such things, they should hold nothing as private property; that they should receive from the rest their sustenance as wages sufficient for a temperate life; that they should spend in common and dwell together and live as associates, always in one another’s company, trained continuously in virtue.

We said, furthermore, that women ought to share in all the same pursuits as men — military service and the rest alike — and to have no occupation apart from them.

As for marriages and the procreation of children, we said that they ought to be regulated in common: that as far as possible no man should recognize any child as his own, and that all should regard all as belonging in common, all being as though from one generation.

As for the selection of marriages — that they should be contrived through artificial lots, so that the worthy were always matched with the worthy, yet without causing resentment, attributing the result to fortune rather than to any deliberate design.

The children who were born well were to be entrusted to the guardians appointed for this purpose; those born of inferior stock were to be quietly distributed among the other citizens. All the while, as these children grew up, they were to be observed, and from among the rest those who proved worthy were to be raised again to their proper rank, while those of the guardians who fell short of the required standard were to descend to take the lower place.

The Desire to See the City in Action

S O C R A T E S. Now, is this not, in brief, the gist of what was said yesterday about the constitution? Or is something of greater importance still wanting?

T I M A E U S. No, Socrates; this is precisely it, and nothing is lacking.

S O C R A T E S. Then hear what feeling has come over me regarding this constitution as I have been describing it. My feeling is something like this: if a man should see beautiful animals depicted in painting, or truly alive yet standing still, he would feel a desire to see them in motion, doing those things that are proper to their bodies. Exactly the same feeling has come upon me with respect to the city we have described. I should take pleasure in hearing someone set forth in a narrative how this city contends with others in conflicts, how it wages war in a manner worthy of its training and education, how it comports itself both in action and in negotiation with other cities.

Now on this point, Critias and Hermocrates, I acknowledge to myself that I am incapable of giving worthy praise to such men and their city. And my incapacity is not to be wondered at. But I think the same might be said of the poets — both the old and the present — not that I have any contempt for the poetic race, but it is plain to all that the imitative tribe in general is best at imitating that in which each of them has been brought up, and finds it difficult to imitate well what lies outside the scope of their upbringing. As for the sophists, I think them well furnished with every sort of fine language, but I am afraid that, wandering from city to city and forming no settled habitation anywhere, they may have missed the mark as to what men who are both philosophers and statesmen do and say in times of war and battle — both in act and in argument — when dealing as befits them with each of the cities they encounter.

So there remains the company you form — you who by nature and education alike partake of both pursuits. Timaeus here belongs to Locri in Italy, a city of the finest laws and constitution, second to none in Italy in wealth and family; he has held the highest magistracies and honours in his city, and has, in my judgment, attained the very summit of philosophy. Critias — all of us here know that he is no stranger to any of these matters. As for Hermocrates, the testimony of many gives us reason to trust that his nature and education make him competent to deal with all such questions.

It was with this in mind that, when yesterday you urged me to speak of the constitution, I was glad to comply; for I knew that, if you were willing to take up the argument in turn, no one was better qualified to continue it. For when you had given our city a fitting account of her conflicts, you alone of men now living could render her her due. Now therefore, having discharged what was mine to do, I in turn assign you the task I mentioned. And you agreed, in consultation among yourselves, to repay my hospitality today with a feast of words; so here I am, dressed for the festival and more ready than anyone to receive it.

Hermocrates Speaks; Critias Offers the Atlantis Account

H E R M O C R A T E S. Indeed, Socrates, as Timaeus says, there will be no want of zeal on our part; and we have no excuse for failing to do as you ask. For both yesterday, when we had returned to the house of Critias, where we were lodged as guests, and even earlier still on the way there, we were turning this matter over among ourselves. Critias told us an ancient account; set it out now, Critias, to Socrates, so that he may judge whether or not it is suited to the task he has set us.

C R I T I A S. It must be set out, if it also seems good to our third partner Timaeus.

T I M A E U S. It seems good.

C R I T I A S. Then hear this, Socrates, though the account is very strange. Yet it is entirely true, as Solon, the wisest of the Seven Sages, once declared. He was a kinsman and close friend of my great-grandfather Dropidas, as he himself says in many places in his poems. Dropidas told the story to Critias our grandfather, and the old man in turn, as he recalled it, recounted it to us. The account is this: that there were formerly great and admirable deeds done by our city, which have been lost through the lapse of time and the destruction of the human race, of which the greatest was one that it is fitting both to recite now and at the same time to offer to you as a fitting gift of gratitude, repaying your feast as it were with a hymn of praise.

The Account of Solon and the Egyptian Priests

S O C R A T E S. Well said. But what is this ancient deed that Critias, on the authority of Solon, did not merely report but declared to be truly ancient history?

C R I T I A S. I will tell it, an ancient account heard from an old man. For Critias was at the time, as he himself used to say, nearly ninety years old, and I was about ten. It was the day of the Apaturia which is called the registration of boys, and the customary ceremony of the festival was being performed; our fathers had set prizes for us boys for recitation of poetry, and many poems of many poets were recited, many of us children singing the verses of Solon, since they were at that time new. Then one of the members of the phratry, whether because this was indeed his opinion, or because he wished to say something agreeable to Critias, said that he thought Solon both the wisest of men in general and in his poetry the most free of spirit of all the poets. The old man — I remember it very well — was highly pleased and said with a smile: if only Solon, Hermocrates, had devoted himself to poetry and had not neglected it as a thing secondary to his other work, and had completed the story he had brought back from Egypt, he would have surpassed in fame neither Hesiod nor Homer nor any other poet. What was that story? we said. He answered: it was of the greatest deed ever performed by our city — a deed most worthy of memory — which, however, through lapse of time and the destruction of those who accomplished it, has not survived to our day.

Tell us from the beginning, we said; what was it, and where and from whom did Solon hear it as a true account?

There is, he said, in Egypt a region called the Delta, about whose apex the stream of the Nile divides, and in this region there is a nome called the Saitic nome. The greatest city of this nome is Sais, from which also the king Amasis was a native. The tutelary goddess of the city is one called in Egyptian Neith, and in Greek, as the inhabitants say, Athena; and they are great friends of the Athenians and claim some kinship with them. Now Solon came to this place, and was received there with great honour; and when he inquired of those priests who were most versed in such matters about ancient history, he discovered that neither he himself nor any other Greek knew almost anything about these things.

On one occasion, wishing to draw them into an account of ancient matters, he began to speak of the things most ancient in our tradition — of Phoroneus, said to be the first man, and Niobe, and the story of how Deucalion and Pyrrha survived the flood — tracing the genealogies after the flood and trying to calculate how many years ago the events he described had occurred.

Then one of the priests, very aged, said: O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children; there is no old man among you. Solon, hearing this, asked: What do you mean? And the priest replied: In mind you are all young; for you carry in your souls no ancient tradition, no knowledge whitened with age. And the reason is this.

There have been and will be many and diverse destructions of mankind, of which the greatest are by fire and by water, and lesser ones by countless other means. For what is told among you — that Phaethon, the son of Helios, once yoked his father’s horses and, unable to drive them along his father’s track, burned the surface of the earth and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt — this tale has the form of a myth, but the truth behind it is the deviation of the heavenly bodies that move around the earth, and the destruction by a great conflagration at long intervals of what lives upon the earth. On such occasions those who dwell upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places perish more than those who dwell by rivers and by the sea. As for us, the Nile, which saves us in other ways, also delivers us from this calamity whenever it flows freely. Whenever, on the other hand, the gods send floods upon the earth to purge it, the herdsmen and shepherds on the mountains survive, while those of you who live in cities are carried down by the rivers into the sea. But in our country on those occasions the water descends upon us neither then nor at any other time from above, but naturally always rises from below. This is why the traditions preserved here are said to be the oldest. In truth, in all regions where neither excessive cold nor excessive heat prevents it, there is sometimes more and sometimes less of the human race; but whatever has come to pass among you or here or in any other place of which we have tidings, all fine and great and remarkable things have been recorded here in our temples and preserved from ancient times. In your country and in others, letters and the other requirements of civilization have only just been developed when after the usual interval the gods send their flood from above and leave only those of you who are without letters and without education, so that you become as young as children once more, with no knowledge of what happened in ancient times — whether here or among yourselves.

Now as for the genealogies you recounted just now, Solon, they differ very little from the tales of children. For you know only one flood, though there have been many before now; and you do not know that there lived in your land the fairest and noblest race of men that ever existed, of whom you and your whole city are a fragment and a remnant — for it was scattered and destroyed when only a small seed of it survived.

This was unknown to you because the survivors for many generations died without writing, not speaking. For there was a time, Solon, before the greatest destruction by water, when the city that is now Athens was preeminent in war and distinguished above all other cities in its excellent laws; it is said to have achieved the noblest deeds and to have had the finest constitution of any city of which we have knowledge under heaven.

The Ancient City of Athens and Atlantis

Solon was amazed at what he heard, and with great eagerness requested the priests to recount all the details of that ancient Athens from beginning to end.

The priest replied: Willingly, Solon, and for your sake and your city’s sake, but chiefly for the sake of the goddess who both fostered and educated both your city and ours — yours first, taking a thousand years’ worth of your seed from Gaia and Hephaestus, then ours. The founding of our city is 8,000 years ago by our reckoning. Of your citizens, then, of 9,000 years ago, I will describe the laws briefly; and the finest of their deeds we will go through in detail another time, at leisure, with the actual records before us.

Look at their laws in comparison with ours here: you will find many parallels existing among us today as examples of what held among you then. First there was the class of priests, set apart from the rest; then the class of craftsmen, each practising their own craft separately and mingling with no other; then the classes of shepherds, hunters, and farmers. The warrior class too, as you may notice, was separated from all the others by the founding legislation, being required to have to do with nothing but warfare. Their equipment was spears and shields, which we were the first among the peoples of Asia to adopt, as Athena taught us first, as she had taught you.

As for wisdom — you see how much care the law devotes here from the very beginning to the cosmic order, deriving from the divine realm all arts pertaining to health and all other human arts, and applying all other learning consequent upon the divine. This entire ordering and system the goddess first established for your city, choosing the place of its birth, having recognized that the temperate quality of the seasons would bring forth men of the most balanced judgment, and so she founded your city first.

You were therefore equipped with good laws and surpassed all other men in every virtue, as befits the offspring and nurslings of the gods. Many and great were the deeds of your city set down here in our records, admirable above all others; but there is one in particular that surpasses them all in greatness and excellence.

For the records tell of a vast power that your city once brought to a halt as it marched in force against all of Europe and Asia alike, issuing from the Atlantic Ocean. For at that time the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island before the strait which you call the Pillars of Hercules; and this island was larger than Libya and Asia together. From this island travellers of that time could cross to the other islands, and from the islands to all the continent that lay on the opposite shore of that truly oceanic sea. For everything within the strait we are speaking of seems merely a harbour with a narrow entrance, whereas what lies outside is truly a sea, and the land surrounding it truly deserves the name of continent.

On this Atlantis island there had come together a great and remarkable confederation of kings, who held the whole island and many of the other islands and parts of the continent, and who in addition controlled the parts of Libya as far as Egypt and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This entire power gathered itself together and attempted at one blow to enslave both your country and ours and all the territory within the strait. It was then, Solon, that the power of your city was made manifest to all men through its courage and might. For it stood out preeminent above all others in the nobility of its spirit and in the full range of warlike skills, at first leading the Greeks, then through the defection of the rest being left alone and forced to depend upon its own resources, and so coming into the direct path of the greatest dangers. Yet it overcame those who were attacking it and set up its trophies of victory, preserving from slavery those who had not yet been enslaved and freely liberating all the rest of us who dwell inside the Pillars of Hercules. Afterward, at a later time, violent earthquakes and floods occurred, and in a single dreadful day and night all of your warriors were swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis likewise sank into the sea and vanished. This is why to this day that sea cannot be navigated or explored, being blocked up by the great depths of mud which the island left behind as it subsided.

The Connection with the Republic; Critias’s Commitment

S O C R A T E S. What you have just recounted, Critias, I find truly wonderful, and how well it fits in every respect with the very things that Socrates discussed.

C R I T I A S. Just so, Socrates; and I thought of it as soon as I heard your account. Socrates had seemed to me to be describing, in some fashion, those very ancient Athenians of ours. And I was glad both that the former story matched the account we had given and that it agreed with what he said. But so as not to speak about it then and there, since a great deal of time had passed and my recollection was not perfectly clear, I decided I would first go through it all at leisure in my own mind, and only then give an account. And so I was glad to undertake what you asked yesterday, thinking that in any account of this kind I should be sufficiently equipped — as the most important thing in all such discussions is a story that fits, and this one, drawn from the ancient records, I could set out to you without risk of error.

Now, Socrates, as Hermocrates has just told you, as soon as I left this company I began at once to recall the account and recovered nearly all of it even during the night. How true the saying is that what we learn as children is preserved in the memory in a truly amazing way. I am not certain that I could recall all of what I heard yesterday; but this account, absorbed so many years ago — I should be astonished if any part of it had escaped me. I heard it then as a kind of amusement, and the old man expounded it to me with pleasure, and I questioned him repeatedly, so that it was literally stamped upon me as though with the indelible impression of a painter’s art.

And so the story is yours — I was reciting it to Hermocrates already this morning and he knows it. Now, Socrates, we will tell the story not as a fable but as a true account; you shall hear it this very day when with the most cheerful of minds I repay your hospitality with a discourse. Timaeus will speak first — he will begin from the generation of the cosmos and end with the nature of man — and then I shall take up the ancient Athenians as described by the records, as though inheriting their estate from him, and set them before this court as your fellow citizens and compatriots, those men of Solon’s time; and then will recite everything the sacred records testify.

The Invocation; Timaeus Proposes the Framework

S O C R A T E S. Splendid, it seems — a rich and copious feast of words with which you have furnished me. It remains for Timaeus to speak.

T I M A E U S. Atqui, Socrates, all who have even the smallest share of prudence always invoke God at the beginning of every enterprise, whether small or great. We especially, who are about to make a discourse concerning the Universe itself, must call upon God; and unless we are utterly out of our minds, we must pray that above all things our account may be pleasing to Him, and then also suited to ourselves. Let this, then, be our invocation of the gods. As for men — you I exhort to remember what I said, and to cooperate with me if in some things I seem to say things perhaps adequate to the purpose; and in those things where I inadvertently fall short, to set them right. This, then, is the proper ordinance in these matters.

We must now state what is my settled judgment about the following distinction, which is fundamental.

The Two Kinds of Being: An Introduction to What Follows

What is that which is always real, having no generation? And what is that which is always being generated but never is real? The former is grasped by the intellect through reasoning, always remaining the same; the latter is apprehended by opinion through irrational sensation, coming into being and passing away, never truly existing.

Furthermore: everything that comes to be must come to be from some cause; for it is impossible for anything to come into being without a cause. When the maker of anything looks to that which is always uniform and uses it as his model, using a work of that kind as a pattern, everything he accomplishes will of necessity be beautiful. But if he looks to something that has come into being, using a generated thing as his model, his work will not be beautiful.

Now the whole heaven — or the cosmos, or whatever else one might wish to call it, taking as its title that by which it is most fittingly named — we must first inquire about it, which of the two questions we ought to raise about it at the very beginning: did it always exist, having no beginning of generation, or was it generated, beginning from some beginning? It was generated. For it is both visible and tangible and possessed of a body; and all such things are perceptible to the senses, and what is perceptible, grasped by opinion along with sensation, was shown to be something that is generated and subject to generation. And we said that what is generated must necessarily be generated by some cause.

To discover the maker and father of this Universe is a matter of great importance, and even if we found him it would be impossible to speak of him to all men. Let us ask instead this: looking to which of the two models did the maker fashion it — to that which is always the same and uniform, or to that which has come to be? If this cosmos is beautiful and its maker good, it is plain that he looked toward the eternal; but if otherwise — which it is not lawful even to say — toward that which has come to be. For it is entirely clear to everyone that he looked toward the eternal; for the cosmos is the most beautiful of all things that have come to be, and its maker the best of all causes.

[At this point the second section of the discourse begins — Timaeus’s account of the creation of the Universe and Man — which opens the translation of Chapter 2.]