Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
TIMAEUS: How gladly, Socrates, I now find myself released from this long journey of argument, like a traveler resting at last. And to that god who existed long ago in deed, but has just now come into being in our speech, I offer this prayer: that for whatever we have said rightly he grant us the preservation of it, and if we have said anything about him unwillingly out of tune, that he impose the fitting penalty. And the right penalty for one who strikes a false note is to be brought back into harmony. So that we may henceforth speak correctly about the birth of the gods, we ask him to give us knowledge, the most complete and best of remedies. Having prayed, we now hand over the argument to Critias, as we agreed, to continue. CRITIAS: Well, Timaeus, I accept it, but the same plea you made at the outset, asking indulgence since you were about to speak of great matters, I now make again for myself, and indeed I think I deserve to receive it in even greater measure, given what I am about to say.
CRITIAS: And yet I know pretty well that what I am about to ask forgiveness for is rather too ambitious, even ill-mannered for the occasion, but it must be said all the same. Who in his right mind would try to argue that what you have said was not said well? But that what is about to be said needs even more indulgence, since it is more difficult, this I must try somehow to show. Speaking about the gods to human beings, Timaeus, seems easier to bring off convincingly than speaking about mortal things to us. For the inexperience and sheer ignorance of an audience about matters they know nothing of gives great freedom to anyone who means to speak about them, and we know exactly how we stand regarding the gods. But to make what I mean clearer, follow me this way. Everything said by any of us must, I suppose, amount to imitation and representation. Consider then the image-making of painters, when they represent divine and human bodies, how easy or difficult it is to satisfy viewers that they have imitated well enough. We will see that in the case of earth, mountains, rivers, forest, and the whole sky with everything moving in it, we are content, first, if someone is able to reproduce even a small resemblance of them, and further, since we have no exact knowledge of such things, we neither examine nor test what is painted, but make do with a vague and misleading sketch of them. But when someone attempts to depict our own human bodies, we notice sharply what is left out, because of our constant familiarity with them, and we become harsh critics of anyone who fails to render every last likeness. We must recognize the same thing happening in speeches: we are satisfied with accounts of heavenly and divine things even when only slightly plausible, but we scrutinize mortal and human things with precision. So if, speaking on the spur of the moment now, we cannot render everything fittingly, you must forgive us; for mortal things are not easy but difficult to represent to your satisfaction, and that is how you should think of it.
CRITIAS: Wanting to remind you of this, Socrates, and asking not less but more indulgence for what is about to be said, I have said all this. If it seems to you that I ask for this gift justly, grant it willingly. SOCRATES: Why should we not grant it, Critias? And let this same gift be given, as a third installment, by us to Hermocrates as well. For it's clear that shortly, when his turn comes to speak, he will ask the same indulgence you have. So that he may find a fresh opening and not be forced to repeat the same one, let him assume the forgiveness is already his when the time comes, and speak accordingly. I warn you now, dear Critias, of how the audience will take it: the poet who went before you was remarkably well received by them, so you will need a very great deal of indulgence if you are to be able to take up the subject after him. HERMOCRATES: You are giving me, Socrates, the very same warning you give him. But men who lose heart, Critias, have never yet raised a victory trophy. So you must go forward into your speech bravely, and calling upon Paian and the Muses, show forth and celebrate the ancient citizens as the good men they were. CRITIAS: Dear Hermocrates, stationed as you are in the rear rank with another before you, you can still afford courage. How this will actually go, the event itself will soon show you. Still, I must be persuaded by your comfort and encouragement, and besides the gods you named, I must call on the others, and especially Memory. For nearly everything of greatest importance in our account depends on this goddess. If we can recall and report adequately what was once told by the priests and brought here by Solon, I am fairly confident we will seem to this audience to have discharged our task reasonably well. So this must now be done, and no more delay. First of all, let us recall that the sum total was nine thousand years since the war was reported to have occurred between those who dwelt beyond the Pillars of Heracles and all who dwelt within, a war we must now trace through. Of the one side, this very city was said to have led and fought the whole war through; of the other side, the kings of the island of Atlantis, which we said was once larger than Libya and Asia together, but now, sunk by earthquakes, has left an impassable mud that blocks any who sail out from here into the open sea, so that no one can pass through any longer.
CRITIAS: The many barbarian peoples, and whatever Greek nations existed then, our account will reveal each in turn as the story unwinds and comes upon them. But the Athenians of that time and their opponents, whom they fought, we must first go through at the outset, describing the power and constitution of each. Of these it is right to give precedence to our own side. Long ago the gods divided up the whole earth among themselves by region, not through strife, for it would not be reasonable to suppose the gods ignorant of what was fitting for each of them, or that, knowing what was more properly another's, they would try to seize it for themselves through quarreling. Receiving their fair portions by the allotments of justice, they settled the various lands, and having settled them, they reared us, their own possessions and creatures, as a shepherd tends his flock, though not by forcing bodies with bodies as herdsmen drive their cattle with blows, but guiding the most tractable part of the living creature from the stern, as with a rudder, laying hold of the soul by persuasion according to their own purpose, and so steering and guiding the whole mortal race. Different gods, then, took charge and ordered their own regions in different places; but Hephaestus and Athena, sharing a common nature, both as sister and brother from the same father and as united in their love of wisdom and love of craft, both received this land as their single common portion, since it was naturally suited to virtue and wisdom, and being their own. Making good men to spring from its very soil, they set in their minds the order of a constitution. Of these men the names have been preserved, but their deeds have vanished, owing to the destructions suffered by those who came after and the length of the ages. For the race that always survived was left, as was said before, in the mountains, illiterate, having heard only the names of the rulers in the land and a little of their deeds besides. So they gave these names fondly to their children, but knew nothing of the virtues and laws of those who came before, except for some dim and scattered reports about each, and being themselves in want of life's necessities for many generations, and their children after them, having their minds fixed on what they lacked, they made their conversation about these needs, and neglected what had happened long before, in earlier times.
CRITIAS: For storytelling about the past and inquiry into antiquity come to cities together with leisure, and only once people see that the necessities of life have already been secured for some, not before. This is how the names of the ancients, without their deeds, have been preserved. I say this, inferring it from the fact that Solon said the priests, in recounting that war, mentioned most of the names we still remember from before the time of Theseus, such as Cecrops, Erechtheus, Erichthonius, Erysichthon, and the rest, applying these names mostly to the deeds of those ancient men, and likewise with the names of the women. And indeed the figure and image of the goddess, since warfare was then a shared practice for both women and men alike, shows that in accordance with that custom the goddess was dedicated armed, as a sign to those of that time that every kind of creature living together, whether female or male, is naturally capable of practicing in common the excellence proper to its kind. Now at that time the other classes of citizens in this land were occupied with crafts and with the produce of the earth, but the warrior class had been set apart from the beginning by godlike men and lived separately, having everything needed for their upbringing and education, none of them possessing anything private, but considering everything common to all of them, and claiming nothing beyond sufficient sustenance from the rest of the citizens, and practicing all the customs described yesterday concerning our proposed guardians. And indeed what was said about our land was plausible and true: first, that its boundaries at that time reached to the Isthmus, and on the mainland side extended as far as the heights of Cithaeron and Parnes, the boundary descending with Oropia on the right and marking off the Asopus on the left toward the sea; and that in excellence it surpassed every other land, so that it was able at that time to support a great army, exempt from the labors of the soil.
CRITIAS: And here is great evidence of its excellence: what remains of it now can rival any land for yielding every kind of produce and abundant grazing for all creatures. But then, besides its beauty, it bore these things in vast quantity. How can this be believed, and in what sense could what remains rightly be called a remnant of that land? The whole of it juts out from the rest of the continent far into the sea like a headland, and the basin of the sea around it happens to be everywhere deep close to shore. Since then many great floods have occurred in the nine thousand years, for that is the number of years since that time to now, the soil in these times and disasters, flowing down from the heights, has not built up any noteworthy deposit as in other places, but has been carried around in a circle and disappeared into the depths. What is left, then, as happens on small islands, is like the bones of a body wasted by disease compared to what was there before, the rich soft earth having all washed away and only the thin frame of the land remaining. But at that time, being undamaged, it had high hills where there is now bare rock, and what are now called stony plains were then full of rich soil, and it had abundant timber in its mountains, of which clear evidence remains even now. For there are mountains that today provide sustenance for nothing but bees, but it is not so very long ago that timbers cut from trees there, grown for roofing the largest buildings, still stand sound. And there were many other tall cultivated trees as well, and the land bore boundless pasture for cattle. And moreover it enjoyed the yearly rainfall from Zeus, not lost as now by running off the bare earth into the sea, but received in abundance into the soil itself, stored up in a layer of clay that held it, releasing the water absorbed from the heights into the hollows, and so supplying every region with generous springs and rivers, of which even now, at what were once their sources, sacred shrines remain as evidence that what is now said about the land is true. This, then, is how the rest of the country naturally stood, and it had been arranged as one would expect by farmers who were true to their calling and devoted to it alone, lovers of beauty and naturally gifted, possessing the best soil, the most abundant water, and above the land the most temperate climate. And the city was settled in that time in the following way.
CRITIAS: First, the Acropolis was not then as it is now. As things stand today, a single night of extraordinary rain has stripped it bare, washing away its soil, when earthquakes struck together with a monstrous flood of water — the third such disaster before the one in Deucalion's time. But in that earlier age, in a different time altogether, it was large, reaching out to the Eridanus and the Ilissus, and enclosing within itself the Pnyx, with Lycabettus as its boundary on the side opposite the Pnyx; the whole of it was covered in soil and, apart from a small part, flat on top. The outer slopes, just below its edges, were inhabited by the craftsmen and by those farmers who worked the neighboring land; but the upper part was occupied by the warrior class alone, settled by itself around the sanctuary of Athena and Hephaestus, as if it were the single garden of a single house, all enclosed within one wall. On the northern side they had built common dwellings and winter mess-halls, along with everything else needed for their communal way of life in the way of buildings and temples — but none of it in gold or silver, for they made no use of those metals anywhere; instead, aiming for a mean between extravagance and meanness, they built themselves modest houses, in which they and their children's children grew old together and handed the same houses down, generation after generation, to others just like themselves. On the southern side, they gave up their gardens, gymnasia, and mess-halls for summer use, and made use of the space for those purposes instead. There was a single spring where the Acropolis now stands; it was quenched by the earthquakes, and only small trickles remain scattered around it today, but back then it supplied all of them with abundant water, being well-tempered for both winter and summer. In this fashion they lived, guardians of their own citizens and, by the citizens' willing consent, leaders of the rest of the Greeks, always taking the greatest care to keep their numbers — men and women alike, those still fit to bear arms and those not yet — constant across time, at around twenty thousand in all. Such, then, were these people, and in some such manner did they govern, with justice, both their own land and the whole of Greece; and throughout Europe and Asia they were renowned and celebrated above all others of that time for the beauty of their bodies and for every kind of excellence of soul. As for those who made war against them, and how that war began — provided our memory does not fail us of what we heard as children — we will now set it out in full and share it with all of you, our friends, as common property.
CRITIAS: There is one more thing I should explain before I go on, so that you won't be puzzled at hearing so many Greek names attached to foreign men — you'll learn the reason for it. Solon, since he intended to make use of the story in his own poetry, inquired carefully into the meaning of the names, and found that the Egyptians who first wrote them down had translated them into their own language; he in turn took the sense of each name and rendered it into our language as he wrote it out. These very writings were kept by my grandfather, and are still in my possession today, and I studied them closely as a boy. So if you hear names of the sort used here, let there be no wonder in it — you now know the reason. The long story, as it was told then, began roughly as follows. As was said earlier concerning the allotment of the gods, how they divided the whole earth among themselves, some receiving larger portions and others smaller, and set up temples and sacrifices for themselves — in just this way Poseidon, having received the island of Atlantis as his portion, settled there the children he had fathered on a mortal woman, in a certain part of the island of the following kind. Facing the sea, but at the center of the whole island, there lay a plain said to be the most beautiful and fertile of all plains; and near the middle of that plain, about fifty stades inland, stood a low hill. On this hill lived one of the men born there in the earliest days from the earth itself, named Evenor, who dwelt there with his wife Leucippe; they had a single daughter, Cleito. When the girl had reached marriageable age, her mother and father died, and Poseidon, falling in love with her, had union with her. He took the hill where she had lived and fortified it, cutting it off all around, forming alternating rings of sea and land encircling one another, smaller and larger by turns — two of land and three of sea — as if turning them on a lathe from the center of the island, each ring equally distant from the next, so that no man could reach it, for ships and sailing did not yet exist. He himself, being a god, readily adorned the island at its center, bringing up two springs of water from below the earth — one warm, and a separate cold one flowing from a spring — and bringing forth from the earth every kind of nourishment, abundant and various.
CRITIAS: He fathered five pairs of male twins and raised them, and having divided the whole island of Atlantis into ten parts, he gave to the firstborn of the eldest pair his mother's dwelling and the surrounding allotment, the largest and best of all, and made him king over the rest; the others he made rulers as well, giving each one authority over many people and a large territory to govern. He gave names to them all: to the eldest, the king, he gave the name from which the whole island and the surrounding sea took their title — called Atlantic — because the first king's name at that time was Atlas. To the twin born next after him, who received as his portion the outer end of the island toward the Pillars of Heracles, facing the region now called the land of Gadeira, named after that place, he gave the name Eumelus in Greek, and in the native tongue Gadeirus, which is presumably the origin of that region's name. Of the second pair, he named one Ampheres and the other Evaemon; of the third pair, the elder was named Mneseus, and the one after him Autochthon; of the fourth pair, the elder was Elasippus, the younger Mestor; and of the fifth pair, the elder was named Azaes, and the younger Diaprepes. All these men, and their descendants after them, ruled for many generations, holding power over many other islands throughout that sea, and also, as was said before, over the peoples within the strait as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. Now Atlas fathered a great and honored line, and the eldest king always passed the kingship down to the eldest of his descendants, preserving it through many generations, having amassed wealth so vast that no dynasty of kings had ever possessed the like before, nor is it likely that any ever will again; and they had everything prepared for them that it was possible to provide, both in the city and throughout the rest of the land. Much flowed to them from abroad because of their power, but the island itself supplied most of what was needed for daily life — first, all the solid and fusible materials that can be dug from mines, including that metal which is now only a name but was then something more, the ore called orichalcum, dug up in many parts of the island, and at that time valued above everything except gold. It also provided, in abundance, all the timber needed for the work of carpenters, and pastured a sufficient number of tame and wild animals of every kind.
CRITIAS: And indeed there was on it a very great number of elephants; for there was ample grazing land for all the other creatures too, whether they lived in marshes, lakes, and rivers, or roamed the mountains and the plains, and likewise for this animal, the largest and hungriest of all. Besides this, whatever fragrant things the earth produces even today — roots, grasses, trees, or oozing saps, whether from flowers or fruits — the island bore all these and nourished them well; and also the cultivated crop, the dry grain that serves us for food, and those other plants we use alongside grain, all of whose kinds we call by the single name pulses; and the tree-fruit, which provides drink and food and oils; the fruit of the orchard trees, hard to store, grown for pleasure and amusement; and all the after-dinner treats we set out as welcome relief for a person who has had enough — all of these that island, then lying beneath the sun, brought forth in sacred, beautiful, and wondrous abundance without limit. Taking all these things from the earth, they built their temples, royal dwellings, harbors, and shipyards, and furnished the whole rest of the country, arranging it in the following order. First they bridged over the rings of sea that surrounded the ancient mother-city, building a road out from the palace and toward it. They had built the palace, right from the beginning, within this very dwelling place of the god and their ancestors; and each ruler, receiving it from the one before, added his own adornments to what was already adorned, always trying to outdo his predecessor as far as he could, until they had made the dwelling a thing to marvel at for the size and beauty of its work. Beginning from the sea, they cut a canal three hundred feet wide, one hundred feet deep, and fifty stades long, all the way through to the outermost ring, so as to make it into a harbor by allowing ships to sail up from the sea to that ring, and they cut its mouth wide enough for the largest ships to sail through. And they also cut passages through the rings of land that separated the rings of sea, at the points of the bridges, wide enough for a single trireme to pass from one to the next, and roofed these passages over so that the water flowed beneath; for the banks of the land-rings rose well above the level of the sea. The largest of the rings, into which the sea had been cut through, was three stades wide, and the land-ring next to it was equal to it in width; of the second pair, the ring of water was two stades wide, and the ring of land again equal to the water-ring before it; and the ring running around the central island itself was one stade wide.
CRITIAS: The island on which the palace stood had a diameter of five stades. This island, together with the rings of water and land and the bridge — which was a plethron wide — they enclosed all around with a stone wall, setting towers and gates at every point where the bridges crossed the water. They quarried the stone from beneath the central island itself and from the outer and inner sides of the rings — some white, some black, and some red — and as they quarried, they hollowed out at the same time double docks roofed over with the living rock. Of their buildings, some were plain, but in others they wove together stones of different colors for pleasure's sake, giving themselves an enjoyment that came naturally with the work. The entire circuit of the wall around the outermost ring they overlaid with bronze, applying it like a coat of paint; the wall of the inner ring they coated with tin; and the wall around the Acropolis itself with orichalcum, which flashed with a fiery gleam. The palace within the Acropolis was arranged as follows. At its center stood a holy sanctuary, forbidden to enter, dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, enclosed by a wall of gold — this was the very place where the race of the ten royal lines had first been conceived and born; and here, every year, from all ten territories they brought offerings in their season for each of those ancestors. There was also a temple of Poseidon himself, a stade in length, three hundred feet wide, and proportionate in height to match, though with something of a foreign look to it. The whole exterior of the temple they coated with silver, except for the figures at its peaks, which were of gold. Inside, the ceiling was entirely of ivory, adorned throughout with gold, silver, and orichalcum, while all the rest — the walls, columns, and floor — they covered with orichalcum. They set up golden statues: the god himself standing on a chariot, driving six winged horses, so large that his head touched the ceiling above; and around him a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for that was thought to be their number in those days; and many other statues stood within as well, offerings from private citizens. Around the outside of the temple stood golden images of all the kings and their wives, descended from the ten original rulers, along with many other great offerings from kings and private citizens alike, both from the city itself and from all the lands under its rule.
CRITIAS: The altar matched this scale and workmanship in its size, and the palace too was fitted both to the greatness of the empire and to the splendor fitting for the temples. As for the springs — the cold one and the warm one — they had an inexhaustible supply, and the water of each was wonderfully suited by its pleasantness and its quality to its particular use. They built around them, setting up structures and plantings of trees suited to the waters, and also basins, some open to the sky, others roofed over for warm baths in winter — separate ones for the kings, separate ones for private citizens, and still others for the women, and others again for the horses and other beasts of burden, each fitted out appropriately for its use. The overflow they channeled to the grove of Poseidon, where trees of every kind grew to a marvelous height and beauty because of the richness of the soil, and from there they led it through conduits to the outer rings, crossing the bridges. There many temples had been built for many gods, and many gardens and many gymnasiums — some for men, some for horses, laid out separately on each of the two ring-islands — and in particular, at the center of the larger island, a racetrack had been set aside for them, a stadium wide, and its whole length ran around the circle, left open for the horses to race in. On either side of it stood barracks for the great number of the royal guard; the more trusted of them were stationed on garrison duty on the smaller ring, which lay closer to the acropolis, while those judged most trustworthy of all had dwellings assigned to them within the acropolis itself, around the persons of the kings. The dockyards were full of triremes and all the equipment triremes need, all of it well supplied. Such, then, was the arrangement around the dwelling of the kings. Crossing the three outer harbors, beginning from the sea, one came upon a wall running in a circle, everywhere fifty stadia distant from the largest ring and harbor, and it closed in upon itself at the mouth of the canal that opened to the sea. The whole of this space was thickly settled with many dwellings, and the channel and the great harbor teemed with ships and merchants arriving from every quarter, so many that by day and by night there rose from their multitude a great confusion of voices, noise, and clatter.
CRITIAS: So much, then, for the city and the region around the ancient dwelling, recalled now much as it was described then. As for the rest of the country, I must try to recall what its natural character was and how it was arranged. To begin with, the whole region was said to be very high and to fall steeply to the sea, but the area around the city was all plain, itself enclosed in a ring by mountains that ran down all the way to the sea — smooth and level, and oblong altogether, three thousand stadia long on one side, and two thousand from the sea up to the middle on the other. This whole area faced south, on that side of the island, and was sheltered from the north winds. The mountains surrounding it were celebrated in those days as surpassing in number, size, and beauty all that exist now, containing within them many wealthy villages of country folk, and rivers, lakes, and meadows providing ample fodder for every kind of animal, tame and wild, and timber abundant and varied both in quantity and in kind, sufficient for every use and every need. Such was the plain, shaped as it was by nature and worked further over a long time by many kings. It was, to begin with, four-sided, mostly straight-edged and oblong, and where it fell short of this a ditch had been dug around it to correct the shape. As for the depth, width, and length of this ditch, they seem past believing for a work made by hand, on top of all the other labors — but I must tell what we were told. It had been dug to a depth of a plethron, and its width was uniformly one stadium, and since it was dug around the whole plain, it worked out to a length of ten thousand stadia. It received the streams flowing down from the mountains, and circling around the plain and reaching the city from both directions, it was there let out to flow into the sea. From its upper part canals about a hundred feet wide were cut straight through the plain and led back again into the ditch on the seaward side, each one spaced a hundred stadia from the next. Through these they brought down the timber from the mountains to the city, and carried other seasonal produce by boat as well, cutting cross-channels from one canal to another and toward the city. And they harvested the land twice a year, using the rains from Zeus in winter, and in summer drawing on the water brought in from the canals to nourish whatever the earth produces.
CRITIAS: As for numbers — the men in the plain fit for war were organized so that each allotment supplied one man as a commanding officer, the size of each allotment being ten by ten stadia, and the allotments together numbered sixty thousand. As for those from the mountains and the rest of the country, their number was said to be beyond counting, and all of them were assigned, by district and village, to these allotments under their respective commanders. Each commander was required to furnish for war a sixth part of a war chariot, so as to make up ten thousand chariots in all, plus two horses and their riders, and in addition a pair of horses without a chariot, along with a combat rider bearing a small shield and a charioteer to manage the pair mounted behind the two riders; also two hoplites, and two archers and two slingers each; three light-armed stone-throwers and three javelin-throwers each; and four sailors, to help crew twelve hundred ships. Such was the war-organization of the royal city; the other nine cities were organized differently, each in its own way, which would take too long to tell. As for the offices and honors, they had been arranged from the beginning as follows. Each of the ten kings ruled, within his own portion and over his own city, the men and most of the laws, punishing and putting to death whomever he wished. But their rule over one another and their partnership followed the instructions of Poseidon, as the law had handed down to them and as was inscribed by the first kings on a pillar of orichalc, which stood at the center of the island in the temple of Poseidon. There they gathered every fifth year, and alternately every sixth, giving equal weight to the even and the odd, and when they were gathered they deliberated on matters of common concern, examined whether anyone had transgressed, and passed judgment. And whenever they were about to pass judgment, they first gave one another pledges of the following kind. With bulls running loose in the temple of Poseidon, the ten kings, left alone together, prayed to the god to help them catch the victim pleasing to him, and hunted the bulls with clubs and nooses alone, without iron; and whichever bull they caught, they led up to the pillar and slaughtered over its top, upon the inscription. And on the pillar, besides the laws, there was an oath calling down great curses upon those who disobeyed.
CRITIAS: So then, when they had sacrificed according to their own laws and were consecrating all the limbs of the bull, they mixed a bowl of wine and cast in a clot of blood for each king, and carried the rest to the fire, after first cleansing the pillar all around. Then, drawing wine from the bowl in golden cups, they poured a libation over the fire and swore an oath to give judgment according to the laws written on the pillar, and to punish anyone found to have transgressed them before, and thereafter never willingly to transgress any of the writings themselves, nor to rule or to obey a ruler except in accordance with the laws of their father. Each of them, having made this prayer for himself and his line, drank, and dedicated his cup in the temple of the god, then spent the time until dinner and other necessities. When darkness had come and the fire around the sacrifice had cooled, all of them put on the most beautiful dark-blue robes they had and sat on the ground by the embers of the oath-sacrifices, by night, extinguishing every fire around the temple, and there they were judged and gave judgment on any charge one might bring against another for transgression. And when judgment had been given, at daybreak they wrote the verdicts on a golden tablet and set it up as a memorial along with their robes. There were many other laws particular to the privileges of each of the kings, but the greatest were these: never to take up arms against one another, and all to come to the aid of any one of them if someone in any of the cities attempted to overthrow the royal line; and to deliberate in common, as their forefathers had, on matters of war and other undertakings, granting the leadership to the line of Atlas. And no king was to have power of death over any of his kinsmen unless more than half of the ten agreed. Such was the great power that existed then in that region, which the god arranged and brought to bear upon these regions here, for some such reason as the following, so the story goes. For many generations, so long as the god's nature was enough to sustain them, they were obedient to the laws and kindly disposed toward the divine to which they were akin.
CRITIAS: For they possessed true and, in every way, great-souled thoughts, using gentleness joined with wisdom both toward the fortunes that continually befell them and toward one another, and so, judging everything except virtue to be of little account, they thought lightly of their present prosperity and bore the weight of gold and their other possessions as a mere burden — they were not intoxicated by luxury, nor did they lose mastery of themselves through wealth and stumble because of it, but soberly and clearly they saw that all these things too grow through common friendship joined with virtue, while by eager pursuit of possessions and by honoring them, both these very things and the friendship perish along with them. By reasoning of this kind, and while their divine nature remained undiminished, everything grew for them as we have already described. But when the portion of the god within them began to grow faint, worn thin by repeated mixture with much that was mortal, and the human temperament gained mastery, then, no longer able to bear their prosperity, they began to behave shamefully, and to one who could see clearly they appeared base, since they were destroying what was most admirable among the things they held most precious; while to those unable to see what a truly happy life is, they seemed at that very time to be supremely beautiful and blessed, filled as they were with unjust greed and power. And Zeus, god of gods, ruling by law, since he could discern such things clearly, took note of this once-decent race now wretchedly disposed, and, wishing to inflict punishment on them so that, chastened, they might become more measured, gathered all the gods together into their most honored dwelling, which stands at the center of the whole universe and looks down upon all things that share in becoming, and having assembled them, he said—