Atlantis (lit. “island of Atlas”) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato’s works Timaeus and Critias, wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges “Ancient Athens”, the pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato’s ideal state in The Republic. In the story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the known world, supposedly bearing witness to the superiority of Plato’s concept of a state. The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean. Despite its minor importance in Plato’s work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis and Thomas More’s Utopia. On the other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato’s narrative as historical tradition, most famously Ignatius L. Donnelly in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. Plato’s vague indications of the time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time) and the alleged location of Atlantis (“beyond the Pillars of Hercules”) gave rise to much pseudoscientific speculation. As a consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films. While present-day philologists and classicists agree on the story’s fictional character, there is still debate on what served as its inspiration. Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors from older traditions, as he did, for instance, with the story of Gyges. This led a number of scholars to investigate possible inspiration of Atlantis from Egyptian records of the Thera eruption, the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War. Others have rejected this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato created an entirely fictional account, drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events such as the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC or the destruction of Helike in 373 BC. Among modern storytelling, the clairvoyant Edgar Cayce spoke frequently of Atlantis. During his “life readings”, he claimed that many of his subjects were reincarnations of people who had lived there. By tapping into their collective consciousness, the “Akashic Records” (a term borrowed from Theosophy), Cayce declared that he was able to give detailed descriptions of the lost continent. He also asserted that Atlantis would “rise” again in the 1960s (sparking much popularity of the myth in that decade) and that there is a “Hall of Records” beneath the Egyptian Sphinx which holds the historical texts of Atlantis.
Appearance List Literature (partial list): Plato’s Timaeus (c. 360 BC), Plato’s Critias, Philo’s On the Eternity of the World, Neoplatonist Zoticus’ epic poem Atlantis (3rd century AD), Cosmas Indicopleustes’ Christian Topography (6th century), Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (16th century), Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), The New Atalantis by Delarivier Manley (1709), Archeoloigst Augustus Le Plongeon invented narratives such as the kingdom of Mu saga, Jacint Verdaguer’s L’Atlantida (1877), Atlantida of Olegario Víctor Andrade (1881), José Juan Tablada’s “De Atlántida” (1894), Queen Móo & The Egyptian Sphinx by Augustus Le Plongeon (1896), Janus Djurhuus’ “Atlantis” (1917), Ignatius L. Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine (1888), Frederick Tennyson’s Atlantis (1888), The Lost Island by Edward Taylor Fletcher (1889), David Maclean Parry’s The Scarlet Empire (1906), Velimir Khlebnikov’s poem The Fall of Atlantis (1912), The Ancient of Atlantis by Albert Armstrong Manship (1915), Mona, Queen of Lost Atlantis: An Idyllic Re-embodiment of Long Forgotten History by James Logue Dryden (1925), Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Man by James Churchward (1926) [Internet Archive], George V. Golokhvastoff’s The Fall of Atlantis (1938), Lost Atlantis by James Bramwell (1939), Dion Fortune’s Esoteric Orders and Their Work, Egon Friedell’s Kulturgeschichte des Altertums (1940), W. H. Auden “Atlantis” (1941), Fredric Brown’s short story “Letter to a Phoenix” (1949), Lost Continents – Atlantis Theme in History, Science and Literature by L. Sprague De Camp (1954). Pulps (partial list): “The Second Deluge” by Garrett P. Serviss in Amazing Stories vol. 1 #8, “The Lemurian Documents” by J. Lewis Burtt in Amazing Stories vol. 7 #6, “The Maelstrom of Atlantis” by Joseph Wm. Skidmore in Amazing Stories vol. 10 #8-9, “Atlantis and Its Successors” by T. O’Conor Sloane, Ph.D. in Amazing Stories vol. 10 #11, “They Found Atlantis” by Dennis Wheatley in Amazing Stories vol. 11 #2, “When Atlantis Was” by H. F. Arnold in Amazing Stories vol. 11 #5, “A Modern Atlantis” by Frederick Arthur Hodge in Amazing Stories Quarterly vol. 1 #2, “Mu and Atlantis” poem by Allen Glasser in Amazing Stories Quarterly vol. 6 #4, “The Beast-Gods of Atlantis” by John Peter Drummond in Jungle Stories vol. 4 #11. Comics (partial list): Swift Morgan #16, Fight Comics #43, The Marvel Family #10, Space Adventures #11, Dime Comics #1, Gorgo #6, Undersea Agent #1, Gorgo’s Revenge, Miracle Comics #4, Super Comics #3-6 (“The Lost Colony of Atlantis”), “The Time Travelers” in Operation: Peril #6. Film (partial list): L’Atlantide (1921), Undersea Kingdom (12 chapter serial, 1936), Siren of Atlantis (1949), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961), The Giant of Metropolis (1961), Hercules and the Conquest of Atlantis (1961), Journey Beneath the Desert (1961). Podcast: Astonishing Legends: Episode 166 Edgar Cayce on Atlantis.
Sample Read Astonishing Legends: Episode 166 Edgar Cayce on Atlantis [YT]
Description Atlantis (lit. “island of Atlas”) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato’s works Timaeus and Critias, wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges “Ancient Athens”, the pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato’s ideal state in The Republic. In the story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the known world, supposedly bearing witness to the superiority of Plato’s concept of a state. The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean. Despite its minor importance in Plato’s work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis and Thomas More’s Utopia. On the other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato’s narrative as historical tradition, most famously Ignatius L. Donnelly in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. Plato’s vague indications of the time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time) and the alleged location of Atlantis (“beyond the Pillars of Hercules”) gave rise to much pseudoscientific speculation. As a consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films. While present-day philologists and classicists agree on the story’s fictional character, there is still debate on what served as its inspiration. Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors from older traditions, as he did, for instance, with the story of Gyges. This led a number of scholars to investigate possible inspiration of Atlantis from Egyptian records of the Thera eruption, the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War. Others have rejected this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato created an entirely fictional account, drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events such as the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC or the destruction of Helike in 373 BC. Among modern storytelling, the clairvoyant Edgar Cayce spoke frequently of Atlantis. During his “life readings”, he claimed that many of his subjects were reincarnations of people who had lived there. By tapping into their collective consciousness, the “Akashic Records” (a term borrowed from Theosophy), Cayce declared that he was able to give detailed descriptions of the lost continent. He also asserted that Atlantis would “rise” again in the 1960s (sparking much popularity of the myth in that decade) and that there is a “Hall of Records” beneath the Egyptian Sphinx which holds the historical texts of Atlantis.
