Atlantis is a mythical island described in Plato’s books Timaeus and Critias as an allegory on national hubris, where it represents the adversary naval power that besieges “Ancient Athens,” the pseudo-historic incarnation of Plato’s ideal state in The Republic. In the myth, Athens repels the Atlantean onslaught unlike any other nation in the known world, apparently attesting to Plato’s view of a state’s greatness. The narrative closes with Atlantis losing support with the gods and ended up sinking into the Atlantic Ocean.
Despite Plato’s dismissal of the Atlantis narrative, it has had a significant effect on literature. The symbolic segment of Atlantis was picked up by numerous Renaissance writers in utopian works, such as Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis and Thomas More’s Utopia. On the other hand, nineteenth-century amateur researchers, most notably Ignatius L. Donnelly in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, mistook Plato’s account as historical tradition.
Plato’s hazy clues of the period of events and the putative location of Atlantis fueled a lot of pseudoscientific conjecture. As a result, Atlantis has become a byword for all alleged highly advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire modern fiction, ranging from comic books to novels and recent movies.
While modern philologists and classicists agree on the story’s fictitious character, they disagree on what inspired it. Plato is known to have freely drawn parts of his allegories and metaphors from earlier traditions, as he did with the Gyges fable. This encouraged a number of academics to investigate the possibility that Egyptian stories of the Thera eruption, the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War influenced the creation of Atlantis.
Others have disregarded this line of legend, claiming that Plato fabricated a completely imaginary account based on historic events such as the disastrous Athenian german invasion of Poland in 415–413 BC or the demolition of Helike in 373 BC.
Atlantis in Pop Culture
Atlantis has already been extensively represented in literature, television programs, films, and mass culture works. There was a convergence between verse epics concerning the fall of Atlantis and books with a good literary pretension that is today recognised as pioneering genre fiction before 1900. Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1869/71) includes a visit to sunken Atlantis aboard Captain Nemo’s submarine Nautilus, with protagonists walking for miles over the sea floor until reaching the impressive sunken ruins.
A clearly impossible feat (Verne was unaware of water pressure in the ocean depths) (Verne was not aware of water pressure in the ocean deeps). The island disappears after a quake in Elizabeth Birkmaier’s Poseidon’s Paradise: the Romance of Atlantis (San Francisco 1892). In his 1899 fantasy, The Lost Continent: The Story of Atlantis, C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne portrays the destruction of Atlantis.
10000 BC
Slaves think that the ancient Egyptian-esque race that ordered the construction of pyramids originated from a civilisation that drowned into the water about 10,000 BC. Their sovereign, The Almighty, is said to be a deity. According to The Almighty’s runaway servant, who is apparently an Atlantean himself [original research?], there were once three monarchs, and his former lord is the last survivor. The other two are likely deceased, which explains why the pyramids were built.
Another sequence in the film displays a map of a big island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and at the conclusion, the priests attempt to flee the rebels on a large ship, likely the one they used to escape the destruction of Atlantis.
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Aquaman
Aquaman, modeled on the DC Comics title character, was released in 2018. The tale centred around his desire to become king in order to foil his half-brother, King Orm’s attempt to unite the seven Atlantean countries against the surface world. Atlantis is depicted in this film as an ancient lost civilisation with a highly superior culture that survived for more than 50,000 years.
The destruction of the civilisation is shown in the film as a result of Atlantean King Atlan’s effort to weaponize the mighty Poseidon’s Trident. As Atlantis sank beneath the waves, the technology that caused the obliteration eventually assisted them in adapting to their new deep ocean home; however, the kingdom was later fragmented into seven underwater nations and its survivors have adapted to different climates, which include the original Atlantis, Xebel, Fishermen Kingdom, The Brine, The Deserters, The Trench, and The Dead Kingdom.
Namor
Namor McKenzie, widely known as the Sub-Mariner, is a fictional character who appears in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by writer-artist Bill Everett for the comic book publisher Funnies Inc. and first appeared in early 1939. The character was created for the unpublished comic Motion Picture Funnies Weekly and first appeared publicly in Marvel Comics #1, first comic book from Timely Comics, Marvel Studios’ precursor from the 1930s through the 1940s.
Along with Captain America and the modern Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner is among Timely’s top 3 characters during the period recognised by historians and fans as the Golden Age of Comic Books. Namor, the son of a ship captain and a legendary princess of the kingdom of Atlantis, inherited Homo-mermanus race’s super-strength and aquatic abilities.
Atlantis ever existed?
The quick answer is NO. All known evidence suggests that the island country was created in 360 BCE by the philosopher Plato to demonstrate the consequences of aggressive imperialism. Atlantis, according to Plato, was not a utopia. Rather, it served as a counterpoint for Plato’s idealistic picture of Athens. According to Jyl Gentzler, a philosophy professor at Amherst College, this ancient Athens “was extremely similar to Plato’s vision of the perfect state.”
Plato’s renowned work, The Republic, lays out the outlines of what such a state might look like. Gentzler believes that it should be tiny and virtuous, and that it should avoid ostentation. According to Plato’s figure, who portrayed the island, the inhabitants of Atlantis were finally “filled with an unreasonable thirst for goods and power.”
