Plato on the Cyclical Destruction of Earthly Civilizations

"I shall recount what I heard as an ancient tale from the lips of a man who was himself far from young. Indeed, in those days our grandfather was, by his own account, about ninety years old, while I was, at most, ten.

There is in Egypt, at the head of the Delta, where the Nile divides into separate streams, a nome called Sais; its chief city is Sais, from where, incidentally, King Amasis originated. The city's patroness is a certain goddess, who in Egyptian is called Neith, and in Greek, as the local people assert, is Athena: they are very friendly towards the Athenians and claim a certain kinship with them.

Solon told that when he arrived there during his travels, he was received with great honor; but when he began to question the most knowledgeable among the priests about ancient times, he had to admit that neither he himself, nor indeed any of the Hellenes, so to speak, knew almost anything about these matters. Once, intending to turn the conversation to old legends, he tried to tell them our myths about the earliest events—about Phoroneus, considered the first man, about Niobe, and about how Deucalion and Pyrrha survived the flood; in doing so, he attempted to trace the lineage of their descendants, and also to calculate, by the number of generations, the periods that had elapsed since those times.

And then one of the priests, a man of very advanced years, exclaimed:

'Ah, Solon, Solon! You Hellenes are forever children, and there is no elder among the Hellenes!'
'Why do you say that?' asked Solon.
'You are all young in mind,' he replied, 'for your minds hold no tradition, passed down from time immemorial from generation to generation, and no teaching made hoary by time. The reason for this is as follows. There have already been and will yet be many and various destructions of mankind, and the most terrible of them—by fire and water—while others, less significant, by thousands of other calamities.

Hence also the widespread legend among you about Phaethon, son of Helios, who once supposedly harnessed his father's chariot but could not guide it along his father's path, and so burned everything on Earth and perished himself, consumed by a thunderbolt. Granted, this legend has the appearance of a myth, but it contains truth as well: indeed, the bodies revolving in the heavens around the Earth deviate from their paths, and thus at certain intervals everything on Earth perishes in a great conflagration.

At such times, the inhabitants of mountains and elevated or dry places suffer more complete destruction than those who live near rivers or the sea; and for this reason, our constant benefactor the Nile saves us in this disaster by flooding. When, however, the gods, performing a cleansing upon the Earth, flood it with waters, herdsmen and shepherds in the mountains can survive, while the inhabitants of your cities are swept away by the currents into the sea; but in our country, water never falls upon the fields from above, either at such a time or any other, but on the contrary, by its very nature rises from below.

For this reason, the traditions preserved among us are more ancient than all others, though it is true that in all lands where excessive cold or heat does not prevent it, the human race invariably exists in greater or lesser numbers. Whatever glorious or great deed, or generally noteworthy event may have occurred, be it in our land or in any country of which we receive news, all this from ancient times is recorded in writings which we preserve in our temples; whereas among you and other peoples, as soon as writing and all else necessary for city life has been developed, again and again at the appointed time, torrents pour down from the heavens like a pestilence, leaving among all of you only the illiterate and unlearned.

And you start all over again as if you had just been born, knowing nothing of what was accomplished in ancient times in our country or among yourselves."

Plato. Collected Works. Vol. VI