Then the ten provinces, as offerings to each of the ten sons. there was the Temple of Poseidon himself, in length a stade, in breadth three plethra, and of proportionate height, on the outside coated all over with silver except the pinnacles, which were coated with gold—a spectacle of barbaric splendour ; and within, the roof of ivory inlaid with gold and silver and orichalcum, and all other parts-walls, pillars, and floorcovered over with orichalcum-and images all golden; the God himself mounted on a chariot driving six winged horses, his head towering up to the roof of the temple, and round him in a ring a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins; and there were other images too, which had been put up by private persons within the temple; and outside, golden statues of the Kings and their wives, and many other statues presented by persons at home and in foreign countries belonging to the Atlantic Empire. There was also an altar in keeping with the temple, and there were magnificent palaces hard by. The numerous fountains of cold and hot water which Poseidon had caused to spring in his island-mountain were housed and made to serve as baths for the Kings, for private persons, for women, and for horses and other beasts of burden; and the water not used in this way was conducted, some of it to the beautiful grove of Poseidon in the island-mountain, some of it by aqueducts across the bridges to the two rings of land, where also there were temples and gardens and gymnasia and race-courses for horses-especially in the outermost of the two rings, where there was a race-course a stade wide running right round the ring. Along this grand course were the quarters of the main body of the troops; a smaller number of trusted troops was quartered in the inner ring of land, and the most trusted of all in the Acropolis itself as bodyguard to the Kings. The docks close under the island-mountain and the two rings of land were full of war-ships and stores; and when you crossed these two rings and came to the outermost ring of sea, or harbour, you found it and the canal leading to the ocean full of merchant shipping. At the ocean-mouth of this canal the two semicircles met of a wall which ran always at a distance of fifty stades from the outermost ring of sea, and enclosed a densely-populated area. So much for the royal city. Atlantis itself was a mountainous island, save for the plain in which the royal city stood. This plain was oblong, extending 3000 stades in one direction, and 2000 inland through the centre of the island. The mountains which enclosed it were great and beautiful, and sheltered it from the north wind. A fosse 10,000 stades long, one stade broad, and a hundred feet deep-a work, it may be thought, of superhuman magnitude-was carried round the whole oblong of the plain. The streams from the mountains poured into it, and it had an outlet into the ocean. From the furthest inland part of it parallel canals were cut through the plain at intervals of one hundred stades, and these were connected by cross canals. By means of this system of canals, timber and fruits were brought down to the city. There were two harvests, one after the winter rains, the other in summer, raised by irrigation from the canals. The plain was divided into 60,000 lots, each lot being a square with sides measuring ten stades. Over those fit for military service in each lot was set a Leader; and there were likewise Leaders of those who dwelt in the mountains and other parts of the country-a vast population-according to their settlements and villages. Each Leader was bound to supply a sixth part of the cost of a chariot of war-in this way 10,000 chariots were furnished; he was also bound to supply two horses with riders, and a light chariot for a pair of horses, with a shield-bearer to go on foot with it, and a driver to ride in it and drive the horses; each Leader was also bound to supply two heavy-armed soldiers, two archers, two slingers, and, as skirmishers, three stone-throwers and three men armed with javelins, also four sailors to help to man the fleet of 1200 war-ships. Such was the armament of the capital; and the nine provinces had also their own different armaments, but it would be tedious to describe these. In each of the nine provinces, as well as in the capital, its own King was supreme over the lives of the citizens and the administration of the laws; but the dealings of the ten governments with one another were determined by the Commandments of Poseidon, which were engraved by the first men on a Table of orichalcum, which was preserved in the Temple of Poseidon on the island-mountain. There, every fifth year and every sixth year alternately, a meeting was held for the dis cussion of affairs and the judgment of transgressions; and this is how they conducted their business:-There were sacred bulls, which were kept within the precincts of Poseidon. The Ten, who were left alone in the precincts, after they had prayed to the god that they might take that bull which should be an acceptable sacrifice to him, began to hunt the bulls, without weapons of iron, with staves and nooses; and when they had taken one of them they brought him to the Table of the Commandments, and there struck him on the head and shed his blood over the writing, and afterwards burnt his members, and mingled a bowl, casting into it clots of his blood, one clot for each of the Ten. Then they drew from the bowl in golden vials, and poured a libation on the fire, and swore that they would give judgments, and do all things, according to the Commandments of their Father Poseidon written on the Table. When they had drunken of the vials, and dedicated them in the Temple, they supped; and after supper, when it was dark and the sacrificial fire had died down, they put on azure robes exceeding beautiful, and sat down on the ground about the embers, all the lights in the Temple having been extinguished, and there, in the darkness of night, judged and were judged; and when day dawned they wrote the judgments on a golden tablet, and laid it by, along with their robes, for a memorial. There were laws also regulating the behaviour of the Ten Kings towards one another. They were not to make war against one another; they were to aid any one of their number if his subjects rose against him in rebellion and tried to overthrow his dynasty; they were to take counsel together about war and other matters, always recognising the suzerainty of the line of Atlas; and a majority of the Ten must agree before a King could put to death one of his kinsmen. For a long while the people of Atlantis preserved the divine nature that was in them, and obeyed the laws and loved the Gods, honouring virtue above gold and all other possessions, and using their wealth in temperance and brotherly love. But in course of time their divine nature, from admixture with human nature, became feeble, and they were corrupted by their prosperity, so that, in the end, their life, at the very time when it seemed most glorious, was indeed most debased, being filled with lust of wealth and power. Then Zeus, God of Gods, whose kingship is the rule of law, perceiving that a noble nation was in a wretched plight, and wishing to punish them that they might be reformed by chastisement, summoned all the Gods to an assembly in his most holy mansion, which, being situate in the centre of the Cosmos, beholds all things which partake of generation; and, when the Gods were assembled, spake unto them thus: * OBSERVATIONS ON THE GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY OF Enough, I hope, has been said to indicate the importance of the Atlantis Myth as setting forth the ideal of Imperial Hellas; and now a few remarks may be added on the interesting, though comparatively unimportant, topics of its Geology and Geography. Mr. Arthur Platt, in a very instructive article on "Plato and Geology,"1 after quoting from the Critias (110 E) Plato's account of the antediluvian Attica as a rolling champaign very different from the broken rocky country of the present epoch, says: "To put this into the language of modern geology we should say, 'The whole of Attica has suffered great denudation, withstood by the underlying hard rocks, which now accordingly stand out like the skeleton of the country.'" Mr. Platt does well in claiming for Plato, on the strength of the Critias, rank as an "original geologist.' Sir Charles Lyell," he says, "in his history of the progress of geology, has entirely omitted the name of Plato as an original geologist, and I am not aware that this omission has ever been corrected. Yet it is in reality a serious one. . . This statement of denudation by Plato is, I believe, the first ever made, certainly the first upon so grand a scale. It is true that Herodotus (ii. 10 ff.), when he speaks of the formation of the Delta in Egypt, implies denudation of those districts which furnish the alluvium . . . but he does not call attention to this necessary denudation, and does not seem to have appreciated its consequences, his mind being fixed solely on the formation of the new deposit. Plato therefore must have the credit of the first distinct enunciation of a most important geological doctrine." "The next question," Mr. Platt proceeds, " is: Is this doctrine, however true in general, true of Attica in particular?" and he quotes Lyell's authority for an affirmative answer: "The whole fauna,' says Lyell, speaking of the remains of Miocene age discovered by Gaudry in Attica, attests the former extension of a vast expanse of grassy plains, where we have 1 Journal of Philology, vol. xviii. pp. 134-139 (1889). 2 Principles of Geology, chap. ii, |