Plato -- or Solon (was it?) -- or the Egyptian priests -- no doubt had several sources, and Plato's intention was to make a point about the hubris of the Athenians, showing how another power had fallen. I'm sure it was part of the game to be as accurate as he knew how, but the moral of the story came first, and rightly so.
Plato certainly wrote "outside the pillars of Herakles" and any place in Spain could be reached overland from the Atlantic coast. The attempt to relocate Plato's pillars to, say, the Peloponnese, is one of the weaker parts of the Thera/Crete theory. Another is the necessity of shrinking the dimensions considerably.
Some interesting stuff has turned up in the waters around Cuba, too.
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branchandroot
Indeed.
Date: 2004-06-07 03:25 pm (UTC)Plato -- or Solon (was it?) -- or the Egyptian priests -- no doubt had several sources, and Plato's intention was to make a point about the hubris of the Athenians, showing how another power had fallen. I'm sure it was part of the game to be as accurate as he knew how, but the moral of the story came first, and rightly so.
Plato certainly wrote "outside the pillars of Herakles" and any place in Spain could be reached overland from the Atlantic coast. The attempt to relocate Plato's pillars to, say, the Peloponnese, is one of the weaker parts of the Thera/Crete theory. Another is the necessity of shrinking the dimensions considerably.
Some interesting stuff has turned up in the waters around Cuba, too.