Plato’s Critias breaks off mid-sentence as Critias is about to quote Poseidon’s address to the assembled gods. Whether Plato stopped there or the ending was lost is unknown; the evidence does not show that he wrote The Laws instead. Plutarch, writing roughly 450 years later, is the earliest known ancient author to note the missing ending. Timaeus introduced Hermocrates as a planned third dialogue, but no such dialogue survives and whether it was ever written is unknown.
Plato’s Critias breaks off mid-sentence; Hermocrates’s fate is unknown
Key facts
- Timaeus and Critias are the earliest surviving literary accounts of Atlantis.
- Critias breaks off mid-sentence as the character Critias prepares to quote Poseidon’s address to the assembled gods; the cause of the break is unknown.
- Conventional chronology places Critias around 360 BCE and The Laws, which has 12 books, near the end of Plato’s life. Exact dating is disputed, and no source says The Laws was written instead of Critias.
- Critias circulated on papyrus, but that fact alone does not establish that a complete earlier version existed.
- Plutarch, writing in the first century CE, is the earliest known ancient author to note the missing ending, roughly 450 years after Critias.
- In Timaeus, Critias promises to recount the Athens–Atlantis war using Solon’s records from Egypt; the surviving Critias ends before the war account.
- Timaeus introduces Hermocrates as a planned third dialogue; no dialogue under that title survives, and whether it was ever written is unknown.
Sources
Critias (dialogue) - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
Critias one of Plato's late dialogues, recounts the story of the mighty island kingdom Atlantis and its attempt to conquer Athens, which failed due to the ...
How Unfinished is Critias? - Atlantis FYIatlantis.fyi
Critias is both complete and incomplete. Critias is a dialogue about the duality of Athens and Atlantis, and Plato mirrors that duality in the ...
Plato: Critias - Atlantis, philosophers and aliens?diggingupancientaliens.com
Critias is a Socratic dialogue by Plato describing the ultimate state and its fall. It's also the origin of the Atlantis myth, so let's read ...
Plato: The Timaeus | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophyiep.utm.edu
The identity of Critias is disputed. The name brings to mind the notorious oligarch Critias: student of Socrates, uncle of Plato, and leader of the Thirty ...
Critias, by Platogutenberg.org
The Critias is a fragment which breaks off in the middle of a sentence. It was designed to be the second part of a trilogy, which, like the other great Platonic ...
Decoding the dialogues Timaeus & Critias of Platofigshare.com
The identification of Plato's Atlantis marks ancient Greek history from at least 9,600. BC, as mentioned by the Egyptian priests who told Solon ...
Extract from Plato's Timaeus and Critiasing.iac.es
This extract from the work of Plato (circa 427 - 347 BC) is the first appearance in classical literature of the Atlantis myth.
Atlantis in the Timaeus and Critiasarcus-atlantis.org.uk
This page features translations of the relevant passages from the Timaeus and Critias of Plato.
Was this story useful?
Keep exploring
Every site on this page sits on the globe, and the people who research them are on the Discord.
3D Globe · Sites by country · Story Archive · Research Library · Weekly Journal · Search
AI-generated text · images from the original sources · always verify with the sources.