“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth.”1
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427-348 BC) first introduced Atlantis in Timaeus, which is said to have been written in 360 BC. Plato called it Atlantis nêsos, or the “island of Atlas”, and the philosopher did not intend it to represent the pinnacle of human achievement or an advanced technological race with supernatural abilities. The standard academic synopses of his work are as follows:
“Atlantis is a fictional island mentioned in Plato’s works Timaeus and Critias as part of an allegory on the hubris [arrogance] of nations. In the story, Atlantis is described as a naval empire that ruled all Western parts of the known world, making it the literary counter-image of the Achaemenid Empire.
After an ill-fated attempt to conquer ‘Ancient Athens’, Atlantis falls out of favour with the deities and submerges into the Atlantic Ocean. Since Plato describes Athens as resembling his ideal state in the Republic, the Atlantis story is meant to bear witness to the superiority of his concept of a state.”2
I believe there is sufficient evidence to establish that parts of Plato’s Atlantis are based on actual events, and that this ‘counter-image’ is in fact the Carthaginian Empire (founded by Phoenician settlers around 814 BC), and not the Achaemenid Empire as suggested above.