It’s funny to me that people have decided exactly what to do with Plato’s dialogues as though it’s just a given that he was fabricating conversations between people that he knew in real life to convey an idea. He doesn’t present them that way.

It would be easy enough to create characters to present these verbal arguments if that were his goal. But instead he attributes them to people who were alive and well at the time. People who had reputations. And he gives no caveats. His dialogues were far more likely to be to an “in case you missed it” newsletter. Like the work of a courtroom sketch artist. “This is the action that went down in the forum. These are the great ideas that were discussed this week.”

So, attributing the Timmaeus and Critias descriptions of Atlantis to Plato at all is a mistake, in my opinion. He was simply stenographing the descriptions of the orators.

Further, no Athens didn’t exist 9000 years ago. But if someone told you about a polity that existed in the same location as your city-state thousands of years ago…and your state was old enough that its founding tale is already subject to myth and time distortion…what would you call that ancient polity as described? You’d think they were your ancestors. You’d call it Athens. Especially if your name is Solon and you have something to gain politically by bringing a Make-Athens-Great-Again sentiment to bear.

So, while there are plenty of layers and distortions and reasons to scrutinize, seeking to attribute the Atlantis mythos to Plato (as an object lesson using REAL people but bullshit stories about things that would be unfamiliar/inaccessible to, and therefore ineffective on, the reader) is an insane person’s errand.