George Lord - Classics

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Classics is one of the broadest subjects you can study.  It's interdisciplinary so although you start by reading the same texts as everyone else, you end up doing completely different things in completely different areas, whether it is literature, philosophy, history, art & archaeology, linguistics or a combination.  In your final year, you choose four papers from a range of about thirty (!), one of which can be a thesis.  I always knew I wanted to write a thesis.  Learning for exams is fine but personally, I start to forget everything I know from the moment I leave the exam hall.  A thesis is not only better quality than an exam essay (you have more time), but it is also more permanent.  In the future, I will have something tangible, a culmination of my studies.  It will always prove that whatever I end up doing, I used to know something about Classics!

I specialised in ancient history and philosophy so I wanted a thesis topic that would complement and possibly combine the two.  My director of studies suggested that I look at something philosophical but with ties to historical writing, like the myth of Atlantis in Plato.  Amazingly, the story of the lost city of Atlantis comes from just one source, the Greek philosopher Plato who, in the 4th century BC, wrote two works, the Timaeus and its direct sequel, the Critias.

If you have never read any philosophy before, I would recommend Plato.  His works are dialogues that read like plays and although he grapples with complex ideas, he does so by having his characters ask and answer simple questions anyone can consider:  What is justice? Can virtue be taught?  How would the best state be governed?  It is this last question that the Timaeus-Critias is concerned with.

In the Timaeus we join Socrates, Timaeus, Critias and Hermocrates. Yesterday, we are told, Socrates impressed everyone with an account of what he believed the best state and its citizens would look like. When he finished, he gave his friends their task for today:  just as a painter desires for his work to come to life, Socrates wants to hear a story of his imaginary state in action, how it conducts its affairs and wages war.  Critias notices a strange coincidence.  As a child, he heard a story about Athens in ancient times (about 9500BC) and how it went to war with and defeated a great maritime power that wished to conquer the world - Atlantis. What Critias finds incredible is that the Athens from his story matches Socrates' imaginary state in many ways and so he narrates his childhood story.

Already, it seems that the story is not an historical account but an answer to Socrates' request.  The story is not really about Atlantis at all – it is Athens that resembles Socrates' ideal state and it is Athens that wins the war.  But we learn this by reading the story in its context rather than on its own which leads  to the endless documentaries insisting that it can be found here or there.  These theorists usually lack familiarity with both Plato and ancient Greek which unsurprisingly, when it comes to close analysis of ancient texts like Platonic dialogues, really matter.  One theory I found argued that Atlantis was the neolithic site of Sesklo in Thessaly.  A large part of it relied on a line of the Timaeus that in English says “[Atlantis] was greater than Libya and Asia put together.” By choosing to interpret 'greater' as meaning 'older' rather than 'larger', the author argued that a neolithic site was to be preferred.  Had they read the Greek however, they would have seen that the Greek word for 'greater' (μείζων) really only refers to size.  Of course, this assumes that we should be looking for an actual place at all!

Looking to avoid the Atlantis-theorists, my thesis instead explored features that are seen by reading the story in context as part of the Timaeus-Critias and alongside other Platonic works.  Can we gain greater understanding of the story by examining the characters of the Timaeus-Critias?  Notably it is Critias (who shares his name with a historical tyrant) that tells us the story of Atlantis rather than Socrates, who's usually seen as the mouthpiece for Platonic theories. 

The question everyone asks- 'is the story true?' quickly becomes problematic if we read it in the context of Plato's philosophy.  The concept of 'fiction' doesn't exist yet (the first 'novel' won't be written until the 2nd century AD) and 'truth' is equally difficult to pin down.  If historical truth means something actually happened, philosophical truth is more abstract. If I tell a story about a city called Atlantis that sunk overnight because it was punished by the gods, I might not be talking about something that actually happened but I could be expressing a philosophical truth: a city that is not pious will lose its way and fall.  Am I telling the truth or not?  How would Plato answer, a man who often expressed his ideas in myths and allegories elsewhere in his writing?  It's not at all clear. 

If there is a philosophical truth in the story about how a state should be governed, does it fit in with Plato's other works?  Did Plato change his mind on some things later in life or can we read the Atlantis story as still fitting with his other theories in works like the Republic, Statesman and Laws? Finally, what are we to make of the end of the Critias, which suddenly finishes mid-sentence?Perhaps Plato felt he already said everything he needed to say? Or maybe as an older man, he lacked the drive required to complete his epic undertaking, an in-depth description of the Atlantic war.

These are all questions that I ended up addressing even if there wasn't room for some in the final draft.  Although I haven't 'solved' anything, I decided on my approach and continued to ask myself questions that ended up producing some interesting ideas.  When you're looking at texts as old and well-studied as these, finding new questions to ask is always a positive. One thing is certain however: uncovering the true nature of Atlantis must be done by searching the depths of Plato, not the ocean.

 

Further Exploration

The Timaeus - http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html

The Critias - http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/critias.html