Hi, thanks for tuning in to Ancient Greece Declassified.

Episode 13 Decoding Atlantis. No other story from ancient Greece has fueled so much controversy, speculation, so many theories,

investigations, novels, movies, and documentaries as the story of Atlantis.

That grand civilization that supposedly flourished thousands of years before the pyramids were built

and was completely wiped off the face of the earth by a giant tsunami, or some comparable cataclysm.

Even today, there are people out there looking for this lost civilization.

In fact, there are more Atlantis seekers, aka

Atlantologists, today, than there ever have been before. There's even an online Atlantipedia

where you can find an endless supply of articles and theories about where Atlantis must have been.

Now, what you may not know about Atlantis is that all of our written,

quote unquote, evidence for it from ancient times, is contained in the work of a single author,

the philosopher Plato, who we talked about in episode 8. Plato wrote about Atlantis

towards the end of his life in two philosophical works called the Timeas and the Critias,

which are meant to be sequels to his earlier philosophical blockbuster, The Republic.

Now the thing about Plato is that throughout his writings, he includes imaginative stories,

and in most cases they're obviously allegorical. In fact, the use of parables and allegories to make a philosophical point was common practice among intellectuals of the day.

Xenophon did it, Protagoras did it, Gorgias, prodigus, everybody was doing it.

I mean, these guys realized that if you want to be famous, having the best

logical arguments isn't enough. Arguments don't go viral, but stories do. Case in point,

the story of Atlantis. Now, what sets the Atlantis story apart from the many other tales,

parables, and allegories scattered throughout Plato's works,

is that Plato actually insists that the story of Atlantis is true. And also, it's the only

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