{"id":2491,"date":"2010-06-01T18:05:21","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T18:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/?p=2491"},"modified":"2026-05-08T09:11:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T08:11:29","slug":"marcellus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/marcellus\/","title":{"rendered":"Marcellus"},"content":{"rendered":"

M<\/strong>arcellus <\/strong>was\u00a0<\/strong>a Greek geographer about whom very little is known. He wrote just before or just after the start of the Common Era, offering what is probably the earliest independent reference to Atlantis after Plato. He states that it consisted of \u2018seven islands and also three others of immense extent\u2019, the middle one of which was dedicated to the Atlantean god Poseidon<\/a>. The magnitude of this island was \u2018one thousand stadia \u2018, and the inhabitants of it preserved the remembrance of their ancestors, or the Atlantic island that had existed there, and was truly prodigiously great; which for many periods had domination over all the islands in the Atlantic Sea.\u2019<\/p>\n

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The above passage from Marcellus\u2019 now lost\u00a0Ethiopic History<\/em>\u00a0is cited by Proclus<\/a> in his commentary on Timaeus.<\/em><\/p>\n

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One interpretation is that in this extract the Atlantic \u2018Sea\u2019 is the Tyrrhenian Sea<\/a> and that the three \u2018immense\u2019 islands referred to are Corsica<\/a>, Sardinia <\/a>and Sicily<\/a>! Outside the Aegean, the Central Mediterranean is the only location within striking distance of Athens that has three very large islands together with numerous smaller ones.<\/p>\n

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S\u00e1ndor Csizi, a Hungarian researcher, who favours an Atlantis location for Atlantis, has published a paper on Marcellus(a)<\/sup> that “explores the references made to Atlantis in Plato’s Timaeus, focusing on two fragments attributed to Marcellus, as reported by Proclus. It discusses the implications of these fragments for understanding the historical and literary context of Atlantis, including debates about Marcellus’s potential authorship and the categorization of his work. The analysis extends to examining the narrative characteristics of ancient literature associated with fantastical geography, the interplay of myth and history, and the significant roles of different scholars in interpreting these fragments. The paper ultimately raises questions about the credibility of sources and the nature of early fictional narratives.”<\/em><\/p>\n

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(a)<\/sup> https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/120284730\/Atlantis_and_the_lost_book_of_Marcellus<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marcellus was\u00a0a Greek geographer about whom very little is known. He wrote just before or just after the start of the Common Era, offering what is probably the earliest independent reference to Atlantis after Plato. He states that it consisted of \u2018seven islands and also three others of immense extent\u2019, the middle one of which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[931,1756,966,280,2103,8066,100,101,1870],"class_list":["post-2491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-atlantic-sea","tag-corsica","tag-marcellus","tag-poseidon","tag-proclus","tag-sandor-csizi","tag-sardinia","tag-sicily","tag-tyrrhenian-sea"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2491"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67408,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions\/67408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}