Critias

Plato's Critias is the tantalizing fragment that launched a thousand legends. Written in the twilight of the great philosopher's life, it purports to give the true history of Atlantis, a mighty island empire that once ruled the Mediterranean, until its hubris invited divine punishment and it drowned beneath the waves in a single cataclysmic night. The dialogue functions as a mythic prelude to Plato's Republic, depicting an ideal Athens in its primordial glory: a society of philosopher-kings and citizen-soldiers who lived in perfect harmony before facing the military might of Atlantis. Yet Plato never finished. The work breaks off mid-sentence, leaving the story of Atlantis's final destruction forever untold. What remains is the origin story of the most enduring utopian myth in Western literature, a tale so potent that it has inspired everyone from Francis Bacon to James Cameron, two and a half millennia later. For readers who have ever wondered where the dream of a lost, perfect civilization began, this is the source.