{"id":3098,"date":"2010-06-07T08:07:20","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T08:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/destruction-of-athens\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T08:54:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T07:54:00","slug":"destruction-of-athens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/destruction-of-athens\/","title":{"rendered":"Destruction of Athenian Army"},"content":{"rendered":"

The<\/strong> D<\/strong>estruction<\/strong> of<\/strong> the Athenian Army<\/strong>, <\/strong>together with that of Atlantis, as related by Plato, (Timaeus<\/em> 25d) makes no sense if the whole story is allegedly offered as a morality tale, where the wicked and corrupt Atlanteans are destroyed because of their evil ways. Normally, such a story would show the allegedly morally superior Athenians prospering and triumphant over their opponents. The very fact that both<\/strong><\/em> military protagonists were destroyed, though not necessarily at the same time, would seem to be at odds with the idea of it being a morality tale and instead adds to the credibility<\/a> of Plato\u2019s narrative as containing some historical truth. Bernard Suzanne<\/a> offers a totally different interpretation based on the background and motives of Critias(<\/sup>a<\/sup>)<\/sup>. Serbian Atlantis sceptic[1511<\/a>]<\/sup>,\u00a0Slobodan Du\u0161anic<\/a> (1939-2012), has noted(b)<\/sup> that “while the Atlantis myth has been recognised, with good reason, by the majority of modern Platonists as a parable, no consensus has been reached on the parable’s character or precise purpose.” <\/em>I’m not sure if this is a criticism of Plato or of modern scholarship!<\/p>\n

Commenting on the suggestion that the story of Atlantis was intended as a morality tale Eberhard Zangger<\/a> noted that “t<\/em>he description of the natural<\/em> disasters also contradicts the occasional speculative conjecture that Plato did not mean to illustrate the ideal state with Atlantis, but with archaic Greece. After all, he says Atlantis was punished for its gradual moral decline by being destroyed (Vidal-Naquet, 1964). But if the story is supposed to be a moral parable, why is the \u201cgood\u201d Greek side first punished with natural disasters? And why does Plato mainly describe the \u201cbarbaric\u201d enemies instead of the old Hellenic civilisation? The traditional attempts at interpretation offer no answers to these<\/em> questions.”(f)<\/sup><\/p>\n

Plato\u2019s description of the demise of Atlantis and the obliteration of Athens has prompted many writers to link these occurrences with more global events. The association of Atlantis with catastrophism<\/a> has persisted for over a century, ever since Ignatius Donnelly<\/a> published his landmark book A<\/em>tlantis <\/em>and his contribution to catastrophist literature R<\/em>aganorak<\/em>.<\/em> However, the idea of Atlantis as a victim of a global or at least a very widespread catastrophe was articulated as early as 1788 by Giovanni Rinaldo Carli<\/a> who claimed[<\/sup>087<\/sup><\/a>]<\/sup> that a close encounter with a comet caused worldwide devastation that included the permanent inundation of Atlantis.<\/p>\n

In more recent times, commentators such as Stuart L. Harris <\/a>have specified the cause of Atlantis’ destruction as an encounter with Nibiru<\/a> (Marduk<\/a>) in 9577 BC, in a number of papers (c)(d)(e) <\/sup> on the Academia.edu website. If the demise of the Athenian army was concurrent with that of the Atlanteans, 9577 BC is far too early, as Athens does not emerge as a structured society many thousands of years later. However, Harris’ early date is close to the that of the Younger Dryas <\/a>and the extraterrestrial encounter that bombarded North America, which has been highlighted by Richard Firestone <\/a>and others.<\/p>\n

Atlantis is recorded by Plato as being destroyed in \u2018a day and a night\u2019, which led George H. Cooper<\/a> to made the point that the knowledge of the speed of its demise could only have come from \u2018survivors or passing mariners\u2019 and should have been incorporated into the traditions of many nations [236<\/a>.283]<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

What is clear, is that Plato identifies an earthquake as the primary cause of Atlantis\u2019 destruction. If that earthquake<\/a> was triggered by a very close encounter with the likes of Carli\u2019s comet, it would needed to have come near enough to the Earth and been so highly visible as to demand its inclusion in the destruction narrative!<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that the date of the destruction of Atlantis and its army is not known, although it\u00a0has been assumed<\/em> by commentators to have occurred shortly after the war with Atlantis. All that Plato says is that it happened \u201cat a later time\u2019 Similarly, However, Plato records the destruction of the two armies in the same passage (Tim.25d-e) in a manner that might suggest a common cause, a view that I’m inclined to accept.<\/p>\n

(a)\u00a0<\/sup> https:\/\/plato-dialogues.org\/email\/980808_1.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

(b)<\/sup> https:\/\/www.persee.fr\/doc\/antiq_0770-2817_1982_num_51_1_2060<\/a><\/p>\n

(c)<\/sup> (PDF) Sinking of Atlantis by Nibiru in 9577 BC: Part 1, discovery west of Eire | Stuart L Harris – Academia.edu (archive.org)<\/a>\u00a0*<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(d)<\/sup> (PDF) Sinking of Atlantis by Nibiru in 9577 BC: Part 2, Mechanics of Sinking | Stuart L Harris – Academia.edu (archive.org)<\/a>\u00a0*<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(e)<\/sup> (PDF) Sinking of Atlantis by Nibiru in 9577 BC: Part 3, Nibiru sinks Atlantis | Stuart L Harris – Academia.edu (archive.org)<\/a>\u00a0*<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

(f)<\/sup> https:\/\/www.moneymuseum.com\/pdf\/yesterday\/03_Antiquity\/Atlantis%20en.pdf\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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The Destruction of the Athenian Army, together with that of Atlantis, as related by Plato, (Timaeus 25d) makes no sense if the whole story is allegedly offered as a morality tale, where the wicked and corrupt Atlanteans are destroyed because of their evil ways. Normally, such a story would show the allegedly morally superior Athenians […]<\/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":[2241,335,2240,113,980,2001,108,5092,1191,2242,488,5659,673,2266],"class_list":["post-3098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bernard-suzanne","tag-catastrophism","tag-credibility","tag-eberhard-zangger","tag-george-h-cooper","tag-giovanni-carli","tag-ignatius-donnelly","tag-marduk","tag-nibiru","tag-raganorak","tag-richard-firestone","tag-slobodan-dusanic","tag-stuart-l-harris","tag-younger-dryas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3098","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=3098"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63372,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3098\/revisions\/63372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}