The Blue Lagoon of Atlantis
© 2025 Scott L.
All rights reserved.
The Blue Lagoon of Atlantis
An Original Philosophical Dialogue, inspired by Plato’s Timaeus and Critias
Author’s Note
The story of Atlantis originates in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, where it is presented as a philosophical and moral account rather than a legend of treasure or conquest. Plato leaves the fate of Atlantis unresolved. This dialogue is an original work written in the Platonic tradition, imagining the conversation that might have followed.
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Persons:
Socrates, Critias, Timaeus
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Socrates:
You have spoken, Critias, of a city greater than any now remembered, and of its disappearance beneath the sea. Yet you say little of what became of it afterward. Was it destroyed utterly, or merely lost to us?
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Critias:
The account I received says only this: that in a single day and night of misfortune, the city was swallowed by the sea, and the way to it became impassable.
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Socrates:
Impassable to whom?
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Critias:
To men.
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Socrates:
Then let us be careful. For what is impassable to men is not therefore erased from being. Many things escape us without ceasing to exist.
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Timaeus:
Just so. As with the soul, Socrates — when it departs the body, it is not destroyed, but removed to a subtler order.
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Socrates:
Then perhaps Atlantis suffered not annihilation, but a change of medium. Tell me, Timaeus, is it not true that all things, when they lose harmony, must either be corrected or withdrawn?
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Timaeus:
It is so. For disorder cannot remain long within a cosmos governed by proportion.
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Socrates:
And what receives that which is withdrawn?
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Timaeus:
That which lies between form and dissolution — what the ancients called aether.
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Critias:
You speak of the upper realm, where stars are formed.
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Timaeus:
There is also a deeper expression of the same principle — not luminous, but receptive. Not fire, but depth.
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Socrates:
Then the sea itself may be more than water.
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Timaeus:
Indeed. It may be memory made liquid.
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Critias:
Are you saying, then, that Atlantis was preserved?
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Socrates:
Not preserved as it was, but as it was meant to be. For cities, like men, possess a true form — and when they betray it, the form withdraws.
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Critias:
And the sea becomes its keeper?
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Timaeus:
Not the sea as sailors know it, but a deeper basin — where excess dissolves and essence remains.
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Socrates:
Then Atlantis was not punished, but remembered.
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Critias:
And we, who hear only of its loss, mistake silence for destruction.
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Socrates:
As men often do.
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Timaeus:
The danger is not that Atlantis fell, but that others will rise believing themselves immune.
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Socrates:
Let us then say this: the city was removed from history, not from truth. And what is removed from history waits — not to be conquered, but to be recognized.
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Critias:
A sobering thought.
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Socrates:
All true thoughts are.
