Plato's Atlantis Story and The

8/2/2019 Plato's Atlantis Story and The

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CHRISTOPHER GILL

PLATO'S ATLANTIS STORY AND THEBIRTH OF FICTION

THERE IS A SENSE in which Plato's Atlantis story is the earliest exampleof narrative fiction in Greek literature; which is also to say it isthe earliest example in Western literature. IThis may seem a surprisingclaim. Plato's story is introduced in the Timaeus as the record of afactual event and as one which is "absolutely true." If the story isconceded, nonetheless, to be an invention, one might suppose thatearlier works of literature, such as Homer's epics, have an equal claimto be considered fictional. On the other hand, it might be objectedthat the genre of narrative fiction (what we call the romance or novel)did not emerge in Greece until considerably later, in or around thefirst century B.C. A better understanding both of fiction and of theAtlantis story will, however, show my claim to be justified.

If we describe a narrative as a fiction, we usually mean that it isan account of events which did not actually take place as they aredescribed but which have been invented by the author. This, however,does not distinguish between falsehood and fiction. And, indeed, fictionis distinguishable from falsehood only by the presumptions of authorand audience: the author of fiction does not intend to deceive (noris the audience generally deceived) about the status of the narrative,It is also true (though in a different sense) that it is the presumptionsof author and audience that distinguish fictional from factual accounts.For a fictional narrative in the past tense is not formally distinguishablefrom a narrative of past factual events; and it is only certain conventionaland extrinsic signals (like the title of a book) which denote the classof the narrative. Moreover, an audience follows a fictional narrativewith much the same kind of mental attention and emotional involvementas 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, theaudience is aware that the fictional events are not real in the ordinarysense of the word but invented by the author; this awareness underlies

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CHRISTOPHER GILL 65and characterizes the kind of attention, and involvement, elicited byfictional narrative. Fiction, one may say, is a kind of game, in whichboth participants share in a willed pretense, treating what is unrealas real, and what is invented as actual.

The rules of the game of fiction are not intuitively obvious, butpresuppose a degree of cultural sophistication in a society or individual:in particular, the capacity to draw a clear distinction between fact andfiction. This capacity cannot be reasonably attributed to the composersof Homeric epic, nor can the poems (which are a chemical fusionof legends about the past and creative invention) accurately be classifiedby either term. The genre of deliberately fictional narrative (that is,the romance) did not emerge until historiography, factual recordingof the past, was an established technique. Indeed, the romance seemsto have grown up as an imitation of history, in which the author playedthe game of recounting a sequence of past events. Xenophon's Educationof Cvrus (c. 360 R.C.), the first self-consciously semi-fictional history,served as a suggestive prototype for later, more cOInpletely fictionalnarratives. ~ It is perhaps not accidental that Thucydides' attempt inthe fifth century to lay down criteria for wholly factual historiography(with none of the romantic elaborations of the Homeric epics, 1.3,1.10, 1.22) was succeeded in thefourth century by the first philosophicalaccounts of the truth-status of literature; Aristotle, in fact, defines literarytruth through a contrast with historical truth iPoetics, 9). The clearerdelineation 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.

Plato may seem to be an enemy rather than an analyst of literature;and his discussions undeniably have a polemical tone. But, closelyexamined, his treatment of literature in the Republic, and of the kindsof truth and falsity it possesses, goes far towards analyzing the fictionalelement in literature." Furthermore, the analysis can bc seen to becontinued, in actual literary practice, in his intriguing Atlantis story;roughly contemporary with Xenophori's "biography" of Cyrus, it toocan be regarded as a pastiche of history used as a means of self-consciousexperiment in fiction. In fact, I think Plato deliberately frames hisstory 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 ofthe false as true.

Plato's first large-scale discussion of literature comes early in theRepublic. The subject is the role of literature in education, and themost relevant part is the first section (377-92). He begins with thechallenging claim: "The class of narratives (muthoi) is, as a whole, false,though it contains some truths" (377a). This sounds, excitingly, as though


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Plato is announcing the fictional nature of imaginative narrative, whileconceding it a capacity for, perhaps deeper-level, truth. Plato's viewin this section is in fact not far removed from this; but this is noteasily apparent. During much of the discussion, one may reasonablyform the impression that Plato is not explaining the sense in whichimaginative narrative, in general, is false, but is complaining aboutthe falsity of certain, specific, narratives. For Plato complains, repeatedly,that Homer and Hesiod have told "lies" about gods and semi-divineheroes, attributing to them actions they could not have committed (e.g.377e-381e, 391). Indeed, Plato may well seem to be falling into thesame (partial) error as Thucydides, that of treating Homer as a historianof the distant past, and faulting him for the inclusion of errors andimplausibilities in an account that has some pretensions to factual truth.But this is not so. In a brief but important aside, Plato makes it plainthat he does not believe there can be any factually accurate accountof the distant past. "In the kind of story-telling (muthologia) we havebeen discussing, we do not know the exact truth about events of thedistant past" (382dl-2). Therefore, all muthoi about the distant past(including those retailed by Homer, Hesiod, and the tragedians, tojudge from Plato's examples), are, on the literal level, "false"; theyare not the factual accounts they seem to be, However, this is notthe falsity of which Plato, primarily, complains. As Plato goes on tosay (382d2-3), although any muthos about the distant past is factuallyfalse, we can "assimilate our falsehood to the truth as far as possibleand so make it useful." In saying this, Plato does not mean that wecan modify our imaginative account to correspond with the knownfacts of the remote past; for he has just denied that we know thesefacts. The criterion of truth and falsehood in such muthoi is on anotherlevel. Our narrarivcs approximate to truth and falsehood insofar aswe give a more or less accurate representation of the entities aboutwhich we construct our narratives. The writer is like a portrait sculptoror painter, who achieves the "truth" by being faithful to the natureof his subject (377e), even if the narrative medium of his portraitureis imaginative or factually "false" (382d). Homer and Hesiod told"falsehoods" about the past because their imaginative narratives werenot faithful to the nature of their subjects (gods and semi-divine heroes);and it is by reference to the falsity of their underlying assumptionsabout the nature of these subjects that Plato isable to stigmatize individualepisodes as false (38De-383e).

Plato, then, is not really treating Homer and Hesiod as historiansand complaining that they arc bad ones. Indeed, his comment at 382dutterly rejects their claims to be treated as historians (a bold rejection,in view of the moral and theological weight traditionally given to their


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picture of the divine and heroic past). Instead, he provides criteriafor judging these writers which are quite different from those of historicalaccuracy: namely, the truth and falsity of their assumptions about thesubjects they present. For in this part of the Republic-though notin Book X-Plato treats literary composition as a process in whichtheoretical assumptions or concepts are clothed in narrative and dramaticform (379a ff., cf. 401-2); and he insists that these underlying assump-tions should be true ones. But on the literal, or surface, level, Platoaccepts that narratives, at least about the distant past (and the vastmajority of serious Greek literature waJ set in the distant past), arefalse; and with (his falsity Plato has no complaint. Indeed, he carefullydistinguishes conscious and unconscious falsity at 382a-c, and it isunconscious falsity, that is, ignorance, of which he is most critical.Conscious falsity is a less defective condition, and has its uses (382c-d,38gb). Indeed, Plato uses it himself, in the conscious construction ofa "noble falsehood" about the distant past, a foundation myth for hisimagined 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 socialand political concerns which underlie his whole Republic and not bya disinterested desire to analyze contemporary literary practice. Yethis picture of the writer as someone who, like a visual artist, giveshis own representation of his chosen subject, someone whose imaginativenarrative constitutes falsehood on the literal level but may stjl] conveya deeper-level truth, not only elucidates the character of the epic poetryhe has most in mind but also that of the creative writer in general.Indeed, we may well feel that Plato has gone some distance towardsdelineating the nature of fiction (more so, it would seem, than anyof his contemporaries). The one respect in which his account of the"falsity" of muthos is significantly not that of 'fiction is that he doesnot seem to envisage an audience which is also conscious of this falsity.Of course, his own readers (if they accept his view of Homer) willnow be able to return to the epic narrative with a new awareness ofits literal falsity. But Plat[)~-a( least in (he ideal slate he imaginativelyconstructs-does not seem interested in creating a class of readers whowill be trained to detect this falsity. He seems to accept the fact thataudiences (children and adults alike) genemlly accept such accountsas literally true, and thus absorb the underlying assumptions of thewriter. What Plato wants to do is to ensure that writers create theirfalsehoods on the basis of true assumptions; then, while the literalfalsity passes unnoticed, the deeper truths will be absorbed (379a ff.,40lb-d, 414b ff'.). Thus Plato here does not make the audience anaccomplice to the conscious lie. In (his respect Book X (though even


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more fundamentally critical of the writer) makes a significant advance.For here Plato does not maintain that the audience is deceived aboutthe surface-level falsehood of literature (even if it is led to falseconclusions about the writer). But this development in his view isobscured by the fact that in Book X Plato adopts a different set ofterms: "what is" and "what appears" in place of truth and falsehood."Plato's main aim in Book X was to dispute the traditional status

of Greek literature as a means of acquiring knowledge of being,particularly knowledge of moral values (598e ff.). By contrast, Platoclaims that the writer, qua writer, has no knowledge of what is: neitherpractical skills (such as politics) which can be applied to actual situations,nor knowledge of the absolute values which can underpin and validatesuch practical skills. (Plato, for good historical reasons, always talksabout the "poet", but I shall continue to use the generic term "writer",meaning creative writer.) The skill of the writer goes no deeper thanthe surface of human life, its external appearance: the writer's distinctiveskill 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 observe.'as the world itself looks (598b-d). Homer, qua writer, knows nothingabout the real nature of human excellence (or "virtue"); what he knowshow to do is to produce through words the image of a man whoseems to most people to have something important and real to sayabout the nature of virtue (600c-60 1b). To use Plato's terms moreexactly, the poet, like the painter, is an imitator (mimite~-) of theappearance (phantasmai, not of what is (598b), and a maker of images,not of anything that is (600e). The audience's observation of this"phantasrn't-wor ld, and involvement in its simulated emotions, is in-herently pleasant (605c-d). This pleasure does not derive from anyintellectual apprehension so gained since literature neither appeals to,nor satisfies, the reason (602e ff.). The aesthetic experience, in fact,is a "closed" experience that discloses (0 us nothing about the worldof being, though our vicarious involvement with representations ofemotional self-abandonment may undermine our self-control in reallife (603c ff.).

Plato's account of literature in Book X is yet more negative thanthe previous discussion. He explicitly withdraws from the writer thecapacity he earlier granted him, of basing his "imitation" on an intellectualgrasp of the being he imitates (600e; contrast 379a ff'., 40lb fL). Platohas his polemical reasons for this restrictive, and, in some ways,implausible view of the writer; but his second description has distinctadvantages, notably in isolating the fictional qualities of the writer.Book X (unlike the earlier discussion) does not describe the writeras a maker of statements, a man in the same general category as the


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historian or theologian. It describes him as a maker of images, whichin two senses, "are not" (596-8), but are not, for that reason, trueor false in the way factual statements about reality must be. This sec-ond description brings out the important idea of someone who createsa fantasy world which is distinct from the real world but recognizablysimilar 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 actuallybelieve the falsehoods Homer tells, in a quite literal way; that theyactually believed that events happened in the way they were describedby him (377e ff.). In Book X, Plato thinks that literature presentsso plausible an image of what is that audiences will suppose the authorunderstands what he seems to represent (598b ff., 601a ff.). But hedoes not maintain that they think that what is represented (in thetheatre, for instance) is actually happening, in the ordinary sense ofthe word, or (in the case of epic), that it actually happened. Thephantasm-world of literature has a certain emotionally powerful realityfor us, but we are still, at some level, aware that this world is notidentical with the one that "really is," "The best of us, when we listento Homer or one of the tragedians representing a hero in distress,stretching out a long speech of lamentation or chanting and beatinghis breast-you know that we enjoy the experience, give ourselves upto it, follow it in close sympathy and seriousness, and praise as a goodpoet the one who most affects us in this way" (605d). In this description,the surrender to the fictional experience is a chosen involvement ina pleasurable sensation; subsequently, if not at the time, we are fullyaware of the nature of the experience and commend the poet whomost 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 mutualinconsistency and their polemical tone, they constitute a remarkableexploration of the fictional qualities of literature, At a time when factualand fictional writing were not generally distinguished, Plato's accountof the surface-level falsity of muthoi, and of the phantasm-world ofthe poet, went far to isolate the notion of fiction; and it did so inadvance of the creation of any wholly fictional genre of literature.Plato's account of the writer is markedly negative; there are only oneor two indications (401-2, 414b ff.) that what he describes is somethinghe might himself undertake. Yet, in the prefaces to the Atlantis 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


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had analyzed. Indeed, even before this, in the presentation of the othernarratives periodically inserted into his dialogues (usually called Plato's"myths"), we can see signs of the reflections about narrative explicitlypursued in the Republic.

A number of Plato's myths concern the life of the soul after deathor 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 theexact truth of what we describe, but make up what are, on thesurface-level, falsehoods, even if they are molded in the light ofdeeper-level truths. In the presentation of Plato's myths, written aroundthe time of the Republic, we can see an increasing awareness on Plato'spart of the ambiguity of their truth-status. Let us consider, first, thethree after-life myths, in their order of composition: Gorgias, Phaedo.Republic. These narratives are similar in their content, but differ inthe progressively greater detachment with which they are presented.In the Gorgias, Socrates offers what he knows Callicles will regard asonly a story (muthos)-indeed, an old wives' tale (527a)-but whichhe maintains is a true account (alethe5 logos, 523a). A similar accountis introduced into the Phaedo much more (en(atively~ "This is howthe story goes" (107d)-and it is concluded in similar terms. Whathas been told is a story (muthos) , indeed a kind of charm for Socratesto sing to himself; belief in it is a "risk," and a risk only worth takingbecause of the connection of the surface-details of the story with anunderlying theory of whose truth Socrates is independently convinced(114d). In the Republic, the concluding myth is cast in the form ofa story attributed to an obscure narrator (Er, the son of Armenius),who claimed to have died and then returned to life (614b ff.). Inthe story itself, the sustained form of indirect discourse is a syntacticalreminder that Socrates, the reporter of the story, is not its author.All Socrates says is that "the story has been prese rved, and wouldpreserve us if we believed it," though to the truth of its message (theimmortality of the soul) he is more personally committed (621b-c).

In these three stories, we can see an increasing acknowledgementof the fictionality of the narrative, even if its underlying truth ismaintained. This distinction is made explicitly in the Phaedrus (probablywritten shortly after the Republic). Socrates introduces a story as "atradition handed down from our forefathers; though they alone knowwhether it is true" (274e). When Phaedrus accuses him of making upthis allegedly "Egyptian" story, Socrates points out that what is importantis not the source of the story but the truth of its message (27Sb-c);which is, virtually, to concede its surface-level fictionality. In anotherstory, in the Statesman, probably written after the Phaedrus but beforethe Atlantis story, Plato's approach is more ambiguous, as though he


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is playing with the reader's credulity. At first his account is introducedas a story (muthos) , indeed, a "game" for his young interlocutor toplay (268d-e); and it is associated with traditional muthot about thedistant past (268e ff.). But then the narrator claims \0 be disclosingactual facts (about cosmic events) which underlie and explain thesemuthoi (269b ff.}; and the interlocutor finds his account very plausible(270b), But, as it proceeds, this allegedly scientific explanation takeson much of the fantastic and supernatural character of traditional muthot(270d ff.). And it is gradually made plain that the whole account isitself a functional rnuthos, designed to illustrate a point in the argument(274b, 274e). In this story, which anticipates the Atlantis story at anumber of points, Plato disposes us to expect a fiction, and then, asit were, plays with the reader, offering an account which might seemauthentically historical (or pre-historical), but which is gradually revealedas a functional Fable." The game with the reader (played out muchmore fully in the Atlantis story) is a minor feature in the Statesman,But in both cases it is as though Plato, having explained the distinctionbetween surface fiction and deeper-level truth, deliberately blurs thedistinction, if only temporarily, in order to sting his reader intorecognizing it f'or himself.The ambiguity in the presentation of the Atlantis story is greater

than that in the Statesman, or in any previous myth. There are twointroductions to the story, in the Timaeus and the Cruias, and bothof them in different ways predispose us initially to expect an inventedstory. But in both cases this expectation is contradicted when the storyis described as a historical report. Thus, at the start of the Timaeus,Socrates summarizes the institutions of the ideal state delineated inthe Republic, and says he would like to hear a story which would bringout the character of his state, by representing it in a major war' (I9b-d).This prepares us for an invented fable, the narrative presentation ofa philosophical theme. Surprisingly, however, Cririas pr-oposes to satisfySocrates' request with what he claims is a historical report of a factualevent. This report, he says, was preserved in his family: it was orallymemorized by successive generations (20e-21a, 26b-c). Solon, a distantrelative of his, obtained this report from certain Egyptian priests, whoserecords of the past contain accurate information about events knownto the Greeks (if at all) only through myths (21e ff.}. 9000 years before,primaeval Athens defended itself heroically against the aggression ofa great maritime empire, Atlantis; and the institutions and characterof primaeval Athens are sufficiently close to those of Socrates' idealstate for the report of this war to be used as the illustrative storySocrates requires. Nonetheless, suitable though it is, Critias insists (andSocrates accepts) that his narrative is not a made-up story (plaslheis


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muthos) but a true account (ale/hinos logos, 20d-21e, 26e).The Timaeus simply introduces a story which was to be told fullyin the Critics (though in fact the project was never fully carried through)."At the start of the Critias, Critias seems preoccupied, not with theproblem of recalling accurately the details of his account (as he wasat Timaeus 26b-c), but with the problem of giving his narrative theillusory realism which he says audiences require (107). This concernseems more appropriate to a story-teller than a historian, and, in fact,Critias now describes himself as someone who is improvising a verbalperformance (107d-e). Correspondingly, Socrates compares him, alongwith Timaeus, to a poet-playwright competing before an audience ina theatre; and Hermocrates urges Critias to call (like an epic poet)on the Muses for help (108a-c). Critias accedes to this urging; buthe also calls 'on the mother of the Muses, Memory, and by this neatswitch reassu mes his role as the reporter of a memorized history (108d),one later said to be based on a text transmitted from Solon (Ll Sa-b):This presentation of the story is ambiguous. Indeed, it is so ambiguous

that it has led readers, ancient and modern, to draw two contradictoryconclusions: that the story is either a philosophical fable (a pureinvention), or an authentic piece of historical reportage. Some of thesereactions we shall look at later; but first it is worth studying moreclosely the actual wording of Plato's introductions, and the implicationsof this wording. The prefaces of Timaeus and Critics are stronglyreminiscent, in different ways, of the discussions of literature in theRepublic. The Timaeus particularly recalls the earlier discussion in theRepublic; the Critias recalls Book X. Socrates in the Timaeus (as inthe first discussion of the Republic) treats poets as people who givea 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, Iwuim), and, in fact, compareshis 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, heasks for artists who can, as it were, make his sculptures move (or inducemotion in the creatures he has brought to life); he asks for a narratorwho can illustrate the characters of his state in an imagined action(19b). Socrates needs a poet who has the capacity he desiderates forartists in the ideal state (at least, in the first part of the Republic):that of representing a purely conceptual, and moral, subject (401b-d).But he has clearly in mind the complaints he makes in the seconddiscussion in the Republic, that poets are merely imitators of perceptibleappearances: "The class of poets, being generically imitators, will imitatemost easily and best the circumstances of their own upbringing; butthat which falls outside each individual's native environment is difficult


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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 whollynegative way in which he makes similar statements in Republic X. Forhe has provided in the Timaeus a class of interlocutors whose uniquecombination of philosophical wisdom and political experience enablethem to represent "how philosopher-statesmen would act and speakin each situation, while they engaged in war and battle, as well asnegotiation and consultation" (1ge). It must be their special knowledgewhich enables Socrates to entrust to them a role similar to that finallyreserved for literature in Republic X, that is, the creation of "hymnsto the gods and eulogies of good men" (Republic 607a; cf. Timaeus19d, 21a, Critias 108c). Indeed, it enables Socrates to permit themalso to engage in the limited "acting" role allowed in the earlier discussionin the Republic (though forbidden in Book X)~-the impersonation, indialogue form, of good men (Republic 395c-396e, Timaeus 1ge).These sustained echoes of the Republic naturally lead us to the following

conclusions, Plato seems to be indicating that he is about to experimentwith the kind of consciously invented narrative that he envisages but(with the exception of the noble falsehood) does not actually attemptin the Republic (382c-d, 389b). This narrative will be a representationof a morally good subject by an author who knows the real natureof his subject (ef. 377e and 40lb-d), This narrative will be "true" toits 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 hisintroduction, with its allusions to his earlier discussions, Plato indicates,from the start, that his story is an invention.In his preface to the Timaeus, Socrates makes it plain that he wantsa man who possesses the art of representation (a mimetis); he wantssomeone who can thus bring out the true nature of a subject mostpeople do not understand. But, as is stressed again and again in RepublicX, writers generally have a different aim in their mimesis: that ofproviding a plausible simulacrum of human life, which will correspond,only too closely, to his audience's ignorant preconceptions about thenature of the subject represented (598b-c, 60la-b, 602a-b), Critias,before he begins his narrative, shares this concern. He points out thatlanguage "is a means of representation (mimesis) and likeness-making,like the image-making of 'visual artists" (107b). And he is afraid thathis own representation of human phenomena will be less plausiblethan Tirnaeus representation of celestial phenomena because the stan-dards of the audience (based on their' familiarity with the subject) arehigher. In the case of celestial phenomena, we are content with "indistinctand deceptive techniques of shading," but "whenever anyone tries to


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represent human bodies, we are quick to perceive any deficienciesbecause of our close acquaintance with the subject, and are harsh criticsof 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),nor, 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 surfacerealism that narrators of human action are expected to provide. Touse slightly different terms (those of Plato's Sophist, 235-56), Socratesasks for the kind of imitator who reproduces the true lineaments ofhis subject regardless of whether or not its appearance correspondswith our usual impressions; whereas Cririas is the kind of imitatorwho is concerned, above all, with whether or not his simulated worldcorresponds in appearance to conventional expectations.Thus, the introductions of Socrates in the Timaeus and Critias inthe Critias both evoke literary discussions of the Republic; but theyevoke different discussions, with very different implications about therole of the writer. What does this indicate? That Plato set out to createa fictional narrative.jrut one stimulated by distinct-indeed, opposed-conceptions of the function of fiction? We can, perhaps, see the productsof this two-fold 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 other-woddly)-is givenwith remarkably graphic and detailed realism. These details may allhave relevance to Plato's underlying themes; 7 but their significanceis by no means on the surface. In the final paragraph of the work,by contrast, Plato-it seems, rather hastily-reminds us of the moralskeleton 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, seePlato's two-fold literary motives at work (the philosophico-moral andthe more purely fictional). It is possible that an unreconcilable tensionbetween them explains why Plato breaks off his story in mid-sentenceimmediately after the moralizing paragraph. Yet the two motives neednot have seemed irreconcilable when Plato conceived his story. Indeed,the attempt to combine them, to create a philosophical fable whichwas more realistic than any of his previous myths, which went furthertowards creating its own phantasm-world (like the literature Platoanalyzed in the Republic), may have been the guiding conception behindthe 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, claimthat the story is not an invention but an authentic historical record?


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Should we suppose that the account is, in fact, a historical record;and that the preceding, misleading introductions are only devices toheighten the surprise-value of Critias' claims to historicity? This is theview taken by those who think Plato's story is based on fact; eventhough none of these scholars (including the proponents of the fashion-able Minoan theory) has been able to discover a factual origin whichconvincingly matches Plato's story." But, before embracing this view,it is worth studying more closely the way Critias presents his allegedhistory. His prcscrrtation is highly evocative of previous Greek histories.The picture of Solon interrogating Egyptian priests about the distantpast is highly evocative of Herodotus' Egyptian investigations (Timaeus,21-22; cf. Herodotus, 2, 99 If.), just as his account of prirnaeval 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) evokeThucydides' introduction to his history (Timaeus, 20-22, 23c, 24c; cf.T'hucydides, 1, 22-23). The overall impression of these allusions isnot that Plato's narrative is actual historiography but rather a pasticheof historiography, almost a parody (since the claims to exact authenticityare combined with an implausibly vast time-scale). The historiographicalstyle is oddly blended with an almost epic use of gods as agents inhuman affairs (notably, as patrons and punishers of cities). Solon'sstory, we may note, was seen as a suitable basis for an epic poemto rival Homer and Hesiod tTimaeus, 2lc). The more one reads Critias'summary of his story, the more it seems not the unique factual documentit purports to be, but an elaborate literary collagc-c--Plato's own reworkingof the theme of war, with significant allusions to previous treatmentsof the theme in the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides (with Homer'sIliad and Hesiod's Theogony 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? Theclaim 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 wecan tell, not only from his speculative reconstruction of prehistoricAttica tCritias, lOge ff.), but also from the straightforwardly historicalsurvey of Laws, III (which discusses explicitly the historical events alludedto 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 gameis signalled by the overt claim to historical truth in a context in whichwe are not disposed to accept the claim."Plato, perhaps, also had a second, literary, reason for couching his

narrative as a history, and as a "true" history. Critias' opening remarks


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in the Critias (107) seem to proclaim Plato's interest in wnung a storythat has something of the same effect on a reader as conventionalliterature; one that constitutes a plausible simulacrum of human behavior.As we have seen, parts of his work have precisely this quality, andseem intended to be gratuitously interesting, independent of any moralmessage. In Plato's day, history was the genre of writing in whichthe events themselves, the surface action, were put forward as intrinsicallyinteresting and important. It was natural, then, for Plato to choosehistory as his formal model (as well as the primary source of his buildingmaterials); and to proclaim his model by using its distinctive claimof 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 areunlikely to believe him. I have suggested that, in the Republic, Platoexplored, with penetrating originality, certain crucial elements of fie-tioriality in literature; and I think his own story has the self-consciousnessof its status which is essential for a work of fiction] as distinct frommyth 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, acopy of reality (though it is one whose creative originality belies thenarrow limitations of Plato's own description of the writer as a mere"imitator"). And he is not, despite appearances, trying to deceive hisreader into accepting his false story as true; he has given the readerenough hints for him to be able to gauge the real character of thework. Why, then, does he say his story is true? I think the reasonis that he is not only writing fiction but, consciously, playing the gameof fiction, the game, that is, of presenting the false as true, the unrealas reaL And in his preface, he is inviting his reader to take part inthe same game, to pretend (to himself) to be deceived when he isnot, to take as true what he knows is false. The reader may, in fact,be deceived; but what Plato wants is a willed self-deception, a chosensuspension of incredulity for the duration of (he story. The game offiction was not a familiar one in Plato's day, as it is to us. In fact,the complicity of the audience was the one element of fiction notexplicated by Plato in the Republic (though it is not incompatible withthe willed self-surrender to illusion described at 605c-d). One mightsuppose that Plato was, in fact, exploring this element in fiction bymeans of this experiment in obtaining the reader's complicity. Thisnew element of intended complicity in the fictional game makes hiswork the first piece of deliberately fictional narrative in Greek literature.No doubt this was not Plato's only reason for writing his story, andfor couching it in the form he did; but it was, in many ways, themost striking of his motives.


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CHRI~TOPHER GILL 77

That Plato's exact intentions in his composition were not fullyunderstood in antiquity is not surprising, given the ambiguity integralto its presentation, as well as the precocious originality of the conception.Ancient COmmentators regarded it either as an authentic history oras an invented philosophical fable; that is, they took notice of Socrates'request in the Timaeus, or of Critias' response, but did not questionPlato's moti ves in combining these divergent indications about the natureof his story. Thus, in the later fourth century or e


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lOne might argue further that Plato's story is the first example of self-conscious fictionin any form in Greek literature; but this would require a fuller discussion of, for instance,fifth-century drama than I can usefully atrernpr here.2. See further B. E, Perry, The Allcient Romances (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1967):: L Of recent discussions of Plato', treatment of literature, I have found most stimulatingN. Gulley, "Plato on Poetry," Greece and Rome 24 (1977): 154-69. Sec also G. F. Else,The Structure and Date of Book 10 of Plato's Rcpubli (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1972),a suggestive though perverse book, and Iris Murdoch, The Fire and th Sun (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1977). For placing Plato's discussion in its historical context, E. A.Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1963) remainsvaluable.4. Of course, it is unwise to distinguish too sharply between discussion of truth anddiscussion of being in Plato, since "what is" can often mean "what is the case" or "whatis true." Nonetheless, the terminological difference here is worth noting, since it is anindex of a general difference of approach between the two sections of the Republic.5. For a sustained comparison of the two srories, see C. Gill, "Plato and Politics-theCritias and the Politicus" forthcoming in Phronesis, 1979.B. Despite the recent claims of W. Welliver, Charucter, Plot and Thought in Plato'sTimaeus-Critias (Leiden: Brill, 1977), there is no evidence that Plato intended his storyto have an unfinished appearance.7. For a convincing analysis of their significance. see P. Vidal-Naqucr, "Athencs ctl'Atlantide," Revue des Etudes Grecques 77 (1964): 420-44; c r . L. Brisson, "De la philosophicpolitique it l'epopee. Le 'Critias' de Platon," Revue de Mhaph),sique et de Morale 75 (1970):402-38.8. See, particularly, .J . V. Luce, The End of Atlunlis (London: Thames and Hudson,1969; published in U.S.A. as LOJ t A t la n ti s, New York: McGraw-Hili, 1969). Luce's viewsarc criticized by' Rhys Carpenter, American Journal of Archaeolog_~ 74 (1970): 302-303;J. M. Cook, Classical Reuieu. 84, n.s, 20 (1970): 224-25; C, Gill, "The Origin of theAtlantis Myth," Trivium 11 (1976): 1-11.9. See further R. Weil, L' "Archeologie" de Platen (Paris: t.'lude" e! Commentaires, no. 32,1959) and C. Gill, "The Genre of the Atlantis Story," Classical Phdolng~ 72 (1977): 287-304.10. See). Ferguson, Utopias ufthe Classical Wurld (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975),chap. 14.

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Plato's Atlantis Story and The

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