"No doubt Plato drew on both history and myth in creating his Atlantis. But that doesn't make any of his possible models the 'Real' Atlantis." -- Roxana (from Other topic)
-- Perhaps, I am trying to draw her in to this discussion. Yes, many elemants from within the topic can be reconstructed from other previous myths.

Like the number of Athenians, from the Cecrops myth. The 100 Nereids(usually there are 50), but Plutarch, post-Plato, says there are 100. The division of citizens into 3 kinds, which could be argued as Ideal (if you were comparing ideal vs. real)(ie. Republic vs. Timaeus)(Hermione), which Diodorus explains that the Athenians copied the Egyptians. The discussion of Cities meeting together before declaring war(an old UN), like the Amphictyonic council. Basically nothing is original in Plato's story, and could be viewed as a hodge-podge of pre-existing myth.

Wiki updated there site on the timeline of plato's tales, which now says no schollars agree. Nice. At one time, my memory, which could be faulty, said that old stories had stuff like "I agree", "It is so". Terrible dialogue with these 3-word affirmations. Now this stuff is present in the Timaeus too. I do not have enough information to determine this stuff stylistically, and haven't read the formal arguments on the stylistic comparison, and just a synopsis. What I can say that is if you line up participants as the basis of determining time-frame, you come to a different conclusion as to the order of the dialogues.

If you line up when people lived and died(participants), you also get a different conclusion then what is presented on wiki as the standard order. Assuming they are fictious Socratic Dialogues, like most schollars agree, and there is some basis for thinking so... it is kind of wierd to think... participand A died. Participant B was 30 years younger and died 30 years later. So the story with Participant A occured after B (stylistically). So I don't like the order of these dialogues. Rightly or Wrongly. However, I am not in a position to weigh this order stuff properly, and I don't see anybody else here ready to either(maybe Ogygos), but if anybody is interested, I will post the "participant-order-theory".

The premise of this ordering is:
Jan-mar(partcipant 1), Feb-Apr(participant 2), Mar-May(participant 3), etc.. if you order the dialogus by overlapping participants, you get a different order than what is presented. Of course, nothing precludes multiple visits by a participant, but it is an interesting way to order the dialogues(if anybody wants to see this).



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2009 01:42AM by rich.