While present-day philologists and classicists agree on the story's fictional character, there is still debate on what served as its inspiration. 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. 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. Donnelly in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. On the other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato's narrative as historical tradition, most famously Ignatius L.

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. The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean.ĭespite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. 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. Atlantis ( Ancient Greek: Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, romanized: Atlantìs nêsos, 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.

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