When Poseidon inspected his new domain he found the islands to be more beautiful than anywhere else in the world. Every leaf on every tree glistened as brilliantly as an emerald, and the rolling pasturelands were as sleek and green as the waves of a summer sea. The flowers were so richly scented that they made the warm air as intoxicating as wine. Great herds of tame cattle grazed the pastures, the water in the streams was as clear as crystal and as fragrant as clover, while the hillsides shone with veins of white, black, and red marble and with deposits of every kind of precious metal.

As Poseidon explored the land he came to a hill rising from the very center of the largest island, and he climbed through its flowering forests until, close to summit, he found the abode of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She told him her name was Cleito. The dazzling glance of her sea-blue eyes, and the sumptuous beauty of her face and form, aroused such lust in the potent deity that he conquered her without delay. She responded ardently to his power and splendour and in due course bore him ten fine sons. They named the firstborn Atlas, and Poseidon named the islands and the surrounding ocean in honour of his son. They became Atlantis while the oceanis the Atlantic.

Poseidon is the most violent and most jealous of the gods, distrustful of all mortals including Cleito, and so he isolated her upon her hill by digging three great moats around it. Each was about a kilometre wide, and separated from the others by a circle of land of the same width. Thus the Hill of Cleito was surrounded by great concentric circles of land and water. When Poseidon's ten sons grew to maturity he made them all into kings, each with responsibility for one-tenth of Atlantis. Under his orders they formed themselves into a council, led by Atlas, to rule the nation for the benefit of all its people. The Atlanteans were so vigorous and intelligent, so adept at developing their arts and technology and so industrious in exploiting the resources of the islands, that they soon established the world's first and finest civilisation.

With Poseidon's permission, and under the guidance of the ten kings, they built a magnificent city upon the circles of earth surrounding the Hill of Cleito. Atlantean architects used the red, black and white marble of their county to design buildings of dazzling splendour, with the three colours artfully blended or contrasted to attract and please the eye.
On the hill of Cleito they built her a great palace, and this together with the palaces of the ten kings and the temple of Poseidon all blazed with inlays of gold and precious stones.

The principle temple to Poseidon was the wonder of all the world. The pinnacled roof was so high that clouds drifted around its spires, and it contained an enormous image of Poseidon riding in his chariot attended by sea nymphs and dolphins. The unique beauty of the city, on its circles of land linked by great bridges across the circles of water, was further enhanced by brilliant gardens, groves of flowering trees, and innumerable sparkling fountains.
Great universities, observatories, libraries, laboratories and academies for people of all ages showed that Atlantis was the well-spring of human arts and sciences.
Portions of the city were devoted to commerce and industry, because the Atlanteans used the discoveries of their scientists and technologists as the basis of a flourishing trade with other nations. They dug a great canal from the city to the sea, so that ships could sail right up to the water-circles and pass from one to another by tunnels dug through the land-circles.

Visitors to the city wrote enthusiastically of its beautiful women and handsome men; of the freedom they enjoyed under the laws of the ten kings; of the skilled craftsmen who wrought in base and precious metals, and of fresh sea breezes which cleared the smoke of their foundries from the air; of the busy markets where countryfolk sold the rich and colourful produce of their farms; and of the frequent festivals which brought throngs of Atlanteans singing and dancing into the streets. The greatest of these festivals was staged once every five years, when the ten kings assembled in Poseidon's temple for their quinquennial parliament.
While they deliberated, stockmen drove a number of splendid bulls in from the outlying ranches and corralled them within the temple grounds. Great crowds assembled to admire these monstrous animals with their sleek hides and sword-like crescent horns, while warriors and nobleman prepared for the bull-hunt.
When the parliament was over, the bulls were released and the hunters chased them barehanded through the temple grounds, dodging their charges as they attempted to seize one and throw it to the ground. At last a group of hunters would manage to corner a bull and wrestle it to the ground, and the animal was then sacrificed to the glory of Poseidon. The other bulls were taken back to their ranches and the festival concluded with a great public banquet.

The scientists and technocrats of Atlantis were not jealous of their skills and learning. They acted as industrial missionaries who spread their knowledge all over the known world. They taught the Egyptians and the Mayans how to build pyramids and the Greeks how to construct Atlantes, the sculptured figures of males which support the architraves of temples and other buildings. They spread their knowledge of metallurgy, astronomy, medicine, magnetism, and many other arts and sciences, wherever the ships of Atlantis could sail. They invented reading and writing, mathematics, agriculture, architecture, and all the concepts of human civilisation.

It was rumoured also that Atlantean scientists expected to discover the mystic force which powers the Cosmos, and that when they had harnessed this force there would be no limit to human achievements.

For many centuries, Atlantis was the center of the world.
The peace and security of the nation were protected by a great army and navy, too strong to be challenged by any other country, and the Atlanteans enjoyed long contented lives of achievement and prosperity. But, about 1200 centuries ago, the parliament of the the Ten Kings began to alter its attitude towards the outside world. In one of the quinquennial parliaments, the kings decided that it was not enough for the Atlanteans to spread their civilisation far and wide. Those who benefited from the Atlantean technocracy should also become its subjects and pay tribute to their imperial masters.
Thus the Atlanteans embarked upon the conquest of the world. their ships took expeditionary forces to Central and South America, where they overwhelmed the Incas, Aztecs, and Mayas and sent rich booty back to Atlantis. Another force conquered the whole of North Africa, and regrouped in Egypt so that they might invade Greece and then sweep eastwards through the kingdoms of Asia.

In about 9500 BC, a great Atlantean invasion fleet sailed into the bat of Athens, where a vastly outmubered force of Athenians waited to resist them. When the two armies clashed the arrows flew in such clouds that they darkened the sky, the hooves of the chariot horses were like thunder upon Olympus, the brazen armour of the Atlanteans dazzled the eye and their spearheads seemed as multitudinous as wheat growing in a field.
But the Athenians fought desperately in defence of their city-state and at last the massed batalions of Atlantis faltered, fell back, and turned in headlong retreat towards their ships.

The Atlantean fleet was about to set sail when the whole sky turned the colour of dry blood, and a mass of black clouds swept across it with such a dreadful sound as had never been heard before. The seas rose in gigantic waves which swallowed the entire fleet, while the whole world reverberated with earthquakes and the ocean roared and rushed from one sea to another like water swilling around in an immense bowl. For days on end it seemed the whole Cosmos would fly apart. The skies deluged the earth with water, the mountains shuddered and cracked apart, the oceans were a torment of monstrous waves.
When at last the seas became calm again a few battered ships crept into port. They brought the news that Atlantis had disappeared, and that the Atlantic Ocean rolled over the place where this magnificent empire once flourished in all its glory.

Ever since those days, historians have debated the reason why Atlantis was obliterated. Some say that Poseidon was angered by the Athenian victory, and punished his people with total destruction. Others say that an Atlantean scientist had discovered the forbidden secrets of the Cosmos, and released the forces which may eventually destroy the whole of mankind." ---

--- Encyclopedia of things that never were.

 

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VOYAGE TO ATLANTIS

Did the lost continent of Atlantis really exist, or is the account of the island paradise destroyed just a moral tale? The story of Atlantis was first told by the Greek philosopher Plato as a parable to show how heaven punishes those who worship false Gods. But at the same time he hints that the story is true --- the memory of a terrible cataclysm passed down by word of mouth for hundreds of years. Myth or reality, the legend of Atlantis has inspired a search that echoes down the centuries.

"It is 3,500 years ago and the long, lazy Aegean summer is drawing to its close. It is dusk and the rays of the dying sun pick out a tiny island so nearly a perfect circle in its outline, so compellingly lovely with its ochre-coloured volcano rising out of a violet sea, that even among the islands of the Aegean it is outstanding for its beauty.
The swallows streak through the sky, darting and wheeling in the blaze of the setting sun. The branches of the olive tress quiver in the light evening breeze.
The island's harbour is quiet, now that the business of the day is over. The fisherman are going home with their shining, silvery catches. The narrow streets begin to fill with people , laughing and talking. In the doorways of the little houses women sit gossiping and from dozens of tiny workshops all over the town comes the cheerful whirr of the potter's wheel. In the orchards and vineyards, the men are strolling home after the day's labour.

The shadows lengthen as night comes. Then a strange choking heat engulfs the town.
The sea turns to the colour of lead. From deep within the earth comes a muffled rumbling, intermittent at first but soon continuous. Panic seizes the islanders. They sense that the great volcano, whose 1,500-metre peak dominates their lives, is about to erupt and that the god who controls the earth-shaking forces inside the volcano has awoken from his long sleep.

What they could not have known, as they stumbled from their houses clutching a few frantically snatched treasures, was that their town, their island and ultimately their whole civilisation was about to be destroyed by what, according to evidence gathered by volcanologists and seismologists of a later day, has come to rate as one of the most violent volcanic cataclysms the world has ever seen.

First came a choking plume of dark smoke. Then a terrible rain of blazing pumice stone, followed by ash, poured down in between explosions blasting up from the cone. At the height if the cataclysm, the volcano itself exploded under enormous internal pressures.
With a bang that was heard from one end of the mediterranean to the other and must have sounded like the end of the world, most of the island was blasted into dust.
Finally, the magma chamber beneath the volcano emptied, spewing out millions of tonnes of solid rock and, as a result, the great volcano collapsed in on itself, forming a steep-sided caldera or crater, 60 kilometres in circumference. Into this void poured the sea, bringing even more horrors in its wake.

These were the giant tsunamis, tidal waves which are set off by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions and are perhaps the most terrifying forces in nature. Waves as high as 200 metres radiated from the island to strike nearby coasts with a force that has never been equalled. This is how scientists today see the sequence of events that the island 3,500 years ago. An explosion that they estimate produced a destructive force equivalent to 500-1000 atomic bombs.

A terrible darkness, caused by the thick fall of ash, descended on the Aegean, plunging the whole area into a night that was to last for weeks. The ash itself continued to fall for some time and today deposits of it, called tephra, lie more than 60 metres deep on what remains of the island which the Greeks call Kalliste.

Scientists now believe that what happened to Kalliste might be the solution to a riddle that has perplexed historians and geographers since the days of the Greek philosipher Plato (427-347 BC). Plato, one of the fathers of western thought, is our sole direst source for the legend of Atlantis. His fragmentary account of the continent that was swallowed up by the sea still excites the modern mind. Plato's Atlantis was as kind of paradise - a vast island 'larger than Libya and Asia put together' - with magnificant mountain ranges, lush plains which teemed with every variety of animal, including elephants, and luxuriant gardens where the fruit was 'fair and wondrous and in infinite abundance'.
The earth was rich with precious metals, especially the one prized most highly by the ancients, the fabulous, iridescent orichalc, an alloy of copper, perhaps brass. The capital of Atlantis, built in the very centre of the island, was remarkable for the scale and splendour of its public buildings which were designed in an architecturally harmonious blend of white, black and red stone. Even more extraordinary, perhaps, was the plan on which the city had been laid out. It was arranged in five zones built in perfect concentric circles. Its various ports were served by a system of canals. Plato says that the capital's canal and its nearby port were 'full of vessels and merchants coming from all parts, who, from their numbers, kept up a multitudinous sound of human voices, and din clatter... night and day'.

At the heart of the city were the great palace and the temple, which was in more sumptuous: 'All the outside, with the exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with gold and silver orichalc; and all the other parts, the walls and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalc.
In the temple they placed statues of gold: there was the god himself standing in a chariot - a charioteer with six winged horses - and of such a size that he touched the roof of the building wih his head; around him there were a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins...' This charioteer was none other than the God of the Sea and Shaker of the Earth, Poseidon. When he and his divine brothers Zues and Hades divided the world between them, Atlantis fell to Poseidon's lot. He became the all-powerful lord of the island which he peopled with his sons, a virtuos race touched with divinity.

The ten kings of Atlantis were immensely rich and powerful but ruled wisely over the enormous colonial empire they built. Numberless generations of Atlanteans lived in peace under a system of laws which had been handed down to them by Poseidon and whose justness comanded universal admiration. These laws were 'inscribed by the first kings on a pillar of orichalc, which was situated in the middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon'.

But in the end, Atlantean society began to decay. The people started to worship the false gods of wealth, idleness and luxury. Plato, ever a pessimist about human nature, write: 'When the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature gained the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, behaved in an unseemly manner, and to him who had an eye to see, grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest to their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power.'

It was during this era of corruption that the Atlanteans embarked on a war of world conquest, launching huge fleets against other islands and enslaving the inhabitants of the coastal settlements of the Mediteranean. The only power that could stand against them was Athens, the city dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom, industry and war. The Atlantean hoplites, or heavy infantry, succeeded in stemming the tide of invasion and won a brilliant victory. But this setback was not enough. The gods had perpared a terrible retribution for the men who betrayed the ancient faith of Atlantis.
Plato takes up the story: 'Afterwards there occured violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune... the island of Atlantis disappeared into the depths of the sea.'

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This site has information on possible locations and very intriguing recent evidence! Plus more about the history of the legend, Plato, and excerpts from the Timaeus & Critias.

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