{"id":2984,"date":"2010-06-06T15:40:13","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T15:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/chain-of-transmission\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T18:40:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T18:40:56","slug":"chain-of-transmission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/chain-of-transmission\/","title":{"rendered":"Chain of Transmission"},"content":{"rendered":"

The <\/strong>C<\/strong>hain <\/strong>of<\/strong>\u00a0 T<\/strong>ransmission<\/strong>of Plato\u2019s tale to us today should be borne in mind when applying any interpretation to elements in the text available to us. We have absolutely no idea how many languages had to carry the story before it was inscribed on their ‘registers’ (Jowett)\u00a0in Sais, assuming that aspect of the story to be true. The Egyptian priests translated this tale from the pillars for Solon<\/a>, who then related the story to his friend Dropides<\/a>, who passed it on to his son, the elder Critias,<\/a> who, at the age of ninety, conveys it to his grandson, the younger Critias, aged nine. Critias then conveyed the tale to his nephew, Plato. Platothen composed his T<\/em>imaeus<\/em> and C<\/em>ritias<\/em> dialogues, which eventually reached us through a rather circuitous route.<\/p>\n

There are a number of versions of Plato’s family tree(d)<\/sup>, Sprague de Camp records[<\/sup>194<\/a>.324]<\/sup> three from ancient sources, Diogenes La\u00ebrtius, Iamblichus<\/a> & Proclus<\/a>, which have small variations. Some sceptics have sought to undermine the credibility of the Atlantis story by highlighting these differences and\/or questioning whether the persons recorded by Plato adequately span the years between Solon and Plato. Some of the controversies stem from a number of family members, historical figures of that era and participants in the dialogues who share the same name.On the other hand, I would argue that if the Atlantis narrative was just a concoction, I would expect Plato to also have invented a more watertight pedigree.<\/p>\n

Plato\u2019s original writings were essentially lost to Western civilisation, but for the efforts of Muslim scholars who preserved them until they eventually emerged in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, after they were brought from Constantinople in the century before its fall. In due course the texts were translated into Latin from those Greek versions, which are now lost.<\/p>\n

Wilhelm Brandenstein<\/a> suggested that Solon had combined two accounts, one from Egypt<\/a> relating to the Sea Peoples<\/a> and the other concerned a conflict between Athens and Crete<\/a>(c<\/span><\/sup>)<\/sup>. However, this is not convincing as it conflicts with too many other details in Plato\u2019s narrative.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia notes that \u2018the scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages did not have access to the works of Plato \u2013 nor the Greek to read them.\u2019 Today, there are only seven manuscripts of Plato\u2019s work extant, the earliest of which dates to around 900 AD. It is unfortunate that the earliest versions of Plato\u2019s work available to us are only Latin translations of the original Greek text.<\/p>\n

Chalcidius<\/a> undertook the first translation of T<\/em>imaeus<\/em> from Greek to Latin in the 3rd century AD.\u00a0 He translated the first 70% of the text from earlier Greek versions, now lost. The earliest translation of Plato\u2019s complete works into Latin was by Marsilio Ficino<\/a>in the late 15th<\/sup> century. Janus Cornarius <\/a>provided us with a Latin translation from earlier Greek sources, apparently different from those used by Ficino. A comparison of the partial Chalcidius and complete Ficino translations shows considerable divergences. The Ficino Latin text was in turn translated back into Greek at the Aldina Academy<\/a> in Venice in the 16th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

In chapter two of his H<\/em>istory of <\/em>A<\/em>tlantis, <\/em>Lewis Spence<\/a> has produced a version of the Atlantis texts that is an amalgam of various earlier translations \u2018acceptable\u2019 to him.<\/p>\n

Diaz-Montexano<\/a> has written, in his distinctive poor English, a short criticism(<\/sup>a<\/sup>)<\/sup> of the quality of medieval translations of Plato\u2019s T<\/em>imaeus<\/em> and C<\/em>ritias<\/em> that are the basis of the vernacular versions available today.<\/p>\n

There are legitimate questions that can be raised regarding the accuracy of the text used by researchers and since some theories relating to Atlantis are often dependant on the precise meaning of particular words, this lack of an original text, leaves some doubt over the persuasiveness of individual hypotheses. It is highly improbable that current texts do not contain a variety of errors when we consider the number of links in the chain of transmission.<\/p>\n

Many quotations from Plato\u2019s text<\/a> will have alphanumeric references, which are derived from the earliest printed edition of Plato\u2019s works by the 16th<\/sup> century French scholar and printer, Henricus Stephanus<\/a>; these show page numbers and the letters A-E at equal distances down each page. Although they bear no relationship to the natural breaks in the narrative, the majority of editions and translations now include them.<\/p>\n

The entirety of Plato\u2019s Dialogues is to be found on many sites on the Internet. However,\u00a0I can highly recommend the Perseus<\/em> website(<\/sup>b<\/sup>)<\/sup> where the works of most ancient authors can be found there in both English and their original languages. It has a number of valuable search tools for both the novice and seasoned student of Atlantology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*<\/span>(<\/span><\/sup>a<\/sup>)<\/sup> https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20090928000147\/https:\/\/www.antiquos.com\/La-Atlantida-de-Platon\/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=65<\/a>*<\/span><\/p>\n

(b<\/span><\/sup>)<\/sup> https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/<\/a><\/p>\n

(c<\/span><\/sup>)<\/sup> https:\/\/www.atlantis-scout.de\/atlantis_brandenstein_engl.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

(d) <\/sup>The characters and transmission of the Atlantis myth (arcus-atlantis.org.uk)<\/a> *<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chain of\u00a0 Transmissionof Plato\u2019s tale to us today should be borne in mind when applying any interpretation to elements in the text available to us. We have absolutely no idea how many languages had to carry the story before it was inscribed on their ‘registers’ (Jowett)\u00a0in Sais, assuming that aspect of the story to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[1130,1153,186,402,63,1151,1131,644,1150,105,1132,5325,1152,78,975,2103,60,146,2881,1920],"class_list":["post-2984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aldina-academy","tag-aldine-academy","tag-atlantology","tag-chalcidius","tag-crete","tag-critias","tag-diaz-montexano","tag-diogenes-laertius","tag-dropides","tag-egypt","tag-henricus-stephanus","tag-iamblichus","tag-janus-ciornarius","tag-lewis-spence","tag-marsilio-ficino","tag-proclus","tag-sea-peoples","tag-solon","tag-sprague-de-camp","tag-wilhelm-brandenstein"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984","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=2984"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65992,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984\/revisions\/65992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}