Aesop Tells his Fables by Johann Michael Wittmer. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Aesop Tells his Fables by Johann Michael Wittmer. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
1,617 words
As discussed in Part 2, the primary issue in Plato’s Atlantis story is the cyclical nature of time. Questions of close secondary importance are what do stories, regardless of their veracity, tell about how people see themselves and others? What are their values? What stories should we tell?
Plato has Critias’ grandfather claim that if Solon hadn’t had to focus on politics and war instead of poetry that he would have surpassed Homer, especially if he had been able to finish the Atlantis story. Thus, the Iliad and Odyssey became the most beloved stories of ancient Greece rather than Atlantis could have been determined by the dimly remembered geopolitics of the Archaic period. (more…)
