{"id":3749,"date":"2010-06-10T13:19:42","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T13:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/plato%e2%80%99s-text\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T09:36:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T08:36:09","slug":"plato%e2%80%99s-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/plato%e2%80%99s-text\/","title":{"rendered":"Plato\u2019s Text *"},"content":{"rendered":"

P<\/strong>lato\u2019s<\/strong> T<\/strong>ext <\/strong>has reached us through a rather circuitous route. 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. Plato\u2019s original writings were essentially lost to Western civilisation\u00a0until they were brought from Constantinople in the century before its fall.\u2019 Today there are only seven manuscripts of Plato\u2019s work extant, the earliest of which dates to\u00a0895 AD and is now in Oxford(c)<\/sup>.\u00a0It is unfortunate that the earliest versions of Plato\u2019s work available to us are only Latin translations of an early original Greek text(d)(e)<\/sup>*<\/span>. 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>provides us with a Latin translation from earlier Greek sources, apparently different from those used by Ficino. A comparison of the Chalcidius and Ficino translations shows considerable divergences. The Ficino Latin text was in turn translated back into Greek at the Aldina Academy in Venice in the 16th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

Diaz-Montexano<\/a> has written, in his hallmark 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.<\/p>\n

Many quotations from Plato\u2019s text will have alphanumeric references, which are derived from the 1578 edition of Plato\u2019s works by the 16th<\/sup> century French scholar and printer, Henricus Stephanus<\/a>, which\u00a0show\u00a0his page numbers, and the letters\u00a0a-e, equally spaced down the margin of each page. Although they bear no relationship to the natural breaks in the debate or narrative, the majority of editions and translations now include them.<\/p>\n

All of Plato\u2019s Dialogues are to be found on many sites on the Internet. However, we can highly recommend the P<\/em>erseus<\/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><\/sup>a<\/sup>)<\/sup> Ubicacion de la Atlantida Perdida de Platon – Timeo Critias Timaeus – Plato’s Atlantis – About Erroneous Editions and Translations and the Impossibility to Correctly Dec (archive.org)<\/a>\u00a0*<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

(c<\/span><\/sup>)<\/sup> https:\/\/atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com\/index.php?topic=21170.0;wap2<\/a><\/p>\n

(d<\/sup>)<\/sup> Atlantis Research today – Atlantis Rising (archive.org)<\/a>\u00a0 (page 3, item 16) \u00a0<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n

(e<\/sup>)<\/sup> Atlantis Research today – Atlantis Rising (archive.org)<\/a> (page 2, last paragraph)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plato\u2019s Text has reached us through a rather circuitous route. 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. Plato\u2019s original writings were essentially lost to Western civilisation\u00a0until they were brought from Constantinople in the century before its […]<\/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":[1130,402,1131,1132,1129,975,1133],"class_list":["post-3749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aldina-academy","tag-chalcidius","tag-diaz-montexano","tag-henricus-stephanus","tag-janus-cornarius","tag-marsilio-ficino","tag-perseus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749","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=3749"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64410,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions\/64410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}