The Atlantis Narative- Mistaken Assumptions of its Translators

© Nicholas Costa 2025

In 1841 Thomas-Henri Martin published Études sur le Timée de Platon (Studies on Plato’s Timaeus), in which he analyzed previous interpretations of the Atlantis story. He concluded that the location described by Plato was not a real, historical place but a literary creation belonging to another world (the world of ideas and philosophy).

In 1862 Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a prominent British statesman and classical scholar, in his An Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients (1862), dismissed the story as entirely Plato’s invention. 

In 1871 the first English translation of Plato’s complete works was published by Benjamin Jowett. Jowett was a highly influential classical scholar and Master of Balliol College, Oxford. His translation, conformed entirely to the prevailing academic ethos of the Victorian era and preceding centuries: that the story of Atlantis was a philosophical myth and not literal history.

This evidently coloured the words he chose to use in his translation. His interpretation has remained the standard academic view well beyond the Victorian age.

None of the commentators on the Atlantis texts at this time were professional archaeologists in the modern sense. Archaeology as a distinct, professional scientific discipline was still in its infancy during the 1800s.

Here is a breakdown of the main commentators’ professions:

Benjamin Jowett was a classical scholar, theologian, and translator.

Sir George Cornewall Lewis was a statesman, author, and classical scholar.

George Grote was a historian of ancient Greece was a banker, and a politician.

Victor Cousin was a French philosopher, statesman, and professor of philosophy.

Thomas-Henri Martin was a philosopher, a professor, a historian, and a philologist

Archaeology in the 19th Century

Thus in the mid-19th century, archaeology was generally practiced by interested antiquarians, historians, and philologists who focused on ancient texts or collected artifacts. The scientific, systematic method of archaeological excavation did not fully develop until later in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

None of them led archaeological expeditions to prove or disprove Plato’s story or the veracity of the myths; they simply gave their subjective interpretation of the written word. Thus their conclusion that Atlantis was a myth was based solely on the textual analysis available at that time and its philosophical context, not tangible excavation data.

They believed that the myths were allegorical in nature and were simply designated to convey profound moral, religious, or philosophical truths. Plato they concluded used myths as literary tools: His use of the Atlantis story was a deliberate literary device, a political myth or a fable, rather than a transcription of a real event.

Some 200 years later this view still prevails. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2016 edition) states that,

“The myths Plato invents, as well as the traditional myths he uses, are narratives that are non-falsifiable, for they depict particular beings, deeds, places or events that are beyond our experience: the gods, the daemons, the heroes, the life of soul after death, the distant past, etc. Myths are also fantastical, but they are not inherently irrational and they are not targeted at the irrational parts of the soul.”

Given the plethoria of eccentric views and theories the Atlantis mythos has generated, even before Jowett’s translation, it tends to be given a wide berth by modern academics who readily repeat the views expressed by the learned professors two centuries ago.

Jowett made the assumption that Plato’s narrative was referring to a sunken continent in the Atlantic Ocean and by so doing he made a nonsense of the original text.

For instance in the same passage of the Timaeus, Jowett translates pelagos (sea) as ocean then immediately switches to referring to it as this sea and the real sea. This inconsistency confuses Plato’s description and makes the logic of the passage difficult to follow.

In fact nowhere does Plato use the word ocean, or continent, and neither does he make any reference to the west in the narrative as to its location.

By placing it in the Atlantic the translator actually succeed in making a nonsense of Plato’s explanation as to the real location of the city. Jowett merely complied without question to the prevailing ethos of his time, that Plato could only be referring to a location beyond the Strait of Gibraltar in the Atlantic Ocean. It was an opinion which had become prevalent centuries before Jowett. However this location in fact does not align in any way with Plato’s description. The Straight was never like a harbour, neither was it ever impassable to vessels through shoal mud.

Plato expressly stated that the city was located on a coastal plain which he called a harbour which led from the city to the sea, and that due to a catastrophic earthquake and tidal wave this harbour had silted up so that ships could no longer sail there, making the mainland beyond inaccessible.

Isocrates and Plato

Jowett chose to ignore what Isocrates had written. Isocrates (436–338 BC) was contemporaneous with Plato (428/427–348/347 BC). He was some six or eight years older than Plato. Both were students of Socrates. Like Plato he set up his own academy. Isocrates established his school of rhetoric around 392 BC that focused on practical education for civic and political life. Plato subsequnetly founded his Academy (around 387 BC), which focused on philosophy, mathematics, and a more theoretical approach to truth and governance.

They Were Friends

Diogenes Laërtius (fl 3^rd century AD) in his work Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (Book III, Chapter 3), confirms that Plato and Isocrates were friends and associated socially. “Now our philosopher [Plato] was a friend of Isocrates; and Praxiphanes (of Mytiline, fl end of the 4th century BC to the mid-3rd century BC) composed an account of a conversation which took place between them, on the subject of poets, when Isocrates was staying with Plato in the country”.

Diogenes’ source was the historian Neanthes of Cyzicus (fourth- third centuries BC) who in his turn was a pupil of Philiscus of Miletus who was a student of Isocrates, creating thereby an academic lineage for the validity of the information.

The Original Pillars were in the East

Isocrates, quite clearly placed the exploits of Heracles in the Aegean and located the Pillars of Heracles somewhere between Troy and Cos on the coast of Anatolia and most definately not in the Atlantic Ocean.

One can find knowledge of this still existed many centuries later and that it had been written about, as demonstrated by Maurus Servius Honoratus (Servius) in his 4th-century AD commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid in which he explicitly located a set of Pillars of Heracles in the region of the Pontus (erroneously interpreted by modern commentators as signifying the Black Sea instead of the Mediterranean), which complemented those in Spain.

In his commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid, Servius wrote: “For we read of the columns of Hercules both in Pontus and in Spain.”

Jowett’s translation is a prime example of how the prejudices of the translator can completely alter the narrative of an original text. In fact Isocrates clearly stated that the purpose of the two pillars was to mark “the bounds of the territory of the Hellenes,” in other words explicitly signifying thereby Ionia.

The allocation of the Pillars of Heracles as being adjacent to the strait leading to the Atlantic Ocean was a relatively late development. It did not in fact come about until after the westward expansion of the Greek colonies in the 8- 6th century BC whereas according to Plato’s narrative, the original Egyptian text had been written down many centuries earlier in the temple of Athene/ Neith at Sais.

Sais was a major, ancient Egyptian capital in the Nile Delta that had significant, long-standing interactions with the Greeks, especially during the Late Period (Saite Dynasty), when it served as a powerful cultural and trade hub, with nearby Naukratis acting as the primary Greek trading port and gateway to Egypt.

Therefore the only pillars Plato’s text could have been referring to were the ones cited by his friend and contemporary Isocrates. Plato’s text categorically states that the story is real. The Critias expressly states that: “it is no invented fable but genuine history.” yet in spite of this it has almost universily been decried in modern times as a mere philosophical fabrication. However when the disaster at Ephesus, as attested by Hittite documents, c1327 BC, is taken into account then Plato’s description fits perfectly.

Jowett’s translation 1871 states:

“for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent.”

Gill’s Translation 2017 states:

“At that time, the ocean there was navigable, since there was an island in front of the strait which, as you say, you call the Pillars of Heracles. The island was bigger than Libya and Asia combined, and it provided passage at that time for those travelling to the other islands, and from there to the whole continent opposite which surrounds the sea which truly deserves that name. In fact, everything inside the strait we are talking about is evidently just a harbour with a narrow entrance, whereas that is the real ocean, and the land which completely surrounds it could truly be called ‘the continent’.

Author’s Translation (The viewpoint is the Cayster Valley)

“At that time, the sea there was navigable, since a straight which you call the Pillars of Heracles fronted the peninsula. The peninsula was larger than Libya (Luwia) and Asia (Assuwiya) combined, and it provided passage at that time for those traveling to the other islands, and from there to the whole mainland opposite which surrounds the Mediterranean sea which truly deserves that name. In fact, everything inside the strait we are talking about is evidently just a harbour with a narrow entrance, whereas the Mediterranean is the real sea, and the land which completely surrounds it could truly be called a landmass.”