Chapter 6 Plato, Atlantean Rhetoric, Mythic σχῆμα (Schema), and the Speeches of Critias

Plato uses myth argumentationally throughout his dialogues, but notably on the topic of rhetoric through the Thamus-Theuth myth in Phaedrus (Plato, 1914), composed some ten years (370 bce) before Critias (360 bce). Throughout his dialogues, Plato suggests that myth possesses an inchoate power to convey truth, as though myths possessed an independent life to convey truth outside the rules of dialectic. Few authorities have yet examined Plato’s Atlantis myth as a rhetorical artifact. Kathryn Morgan (1998) has acknowledged a relationship between Plato’s Atlantis myth and rhetoric and has argued that it “stands recognizably, then, in the tradition of eulogistic Athenian festival speeches along Isocratean lines” (p. 107). Bess R. H. Myers’s (2021) recent study has further introduced Timaeus to the conversation in historical rhetoric while conceding “it contains no explicit discussions of rhetoric,” but it no less contains material relevant to rhetorical theory (p. 251). This chapter supplements these observations about the relationship of rhetoric and the Timaeus-Critias. If the Atlantis narrative is viewed through the lens of what Plato describes a skema muthos, it appears that Plato used the Atlantis myth as a logos in the “form” or shape of a muthos—not as σχήμα λόγου (a term usually applied to figures of speech; Papadopoulou, 2013, p. 135). Plato creates a metaphorical likeness to advance an argument as a skema muthos, which is ultimately “true” as a form of logos. The logos more specifically takes the shape of an analogical metaphor and is therefore one in a mythic form to convey the truth (Aristotle Poetics, 1457b1). Both Aristotle and Plato use the term skema in the context of myth to suggest that myths conveyed a complex in an analogical relationship to concepts they purport to explain. If one accepts that Atlantis took the “form” of a Page 154 →myth as an analogical metaphor for an ideal human society, the Atlantis myth valorizes rhetorical and scriptocentric culture in an ideal society as indispensable to civilization because it provides continuity, collective memory, and self-determination.

Plato’s willingness to use myth to advance argument has been a field of inquiry unto itself (Fogelin, 1971). Furthermore, the tension of ancient muthos and logos in Plato’s works have been exhaustively discussed without much definitive agreement.² Luc Brisson (1998) has stated that Plato’s critique of myth is that myths operates independent of the deductive method and are limited in their power to “only” describe “well defined individuals” and “are not universal” (p. 10). Rowe (2012), by contrast, posited that myth was far more complex a tool to ancient people than a simple vehicle for allegorical moralia. At least for Plato, while myths possess “something of the appearance of an allegory,” they are “also something rather more subtle than that” (p. 189). Myth can be a vehicle for theorizing human invention, synthesis, and conceptual principles. Griswold (1996) reflected that myth is a form of rhetoric that takes the shape of an argument or story (p. 138). Commentators on Plato’s myths often use terms suggesting similitude, if not analogical metaphor, to describe Plato’s tropic use of myth. T. Brisson (2008), for example, contended that Plato’s attitude toward myth “always belonged in the realm of imitation” (p. 17) and could be a medium “through which all information in the past is communicated” (p. 19). However, Brisson pointed out that Plato rejects myths an allegorical interpretation of myths of the Gods in the Republic (2.378d) “when he refuses the allegorical defenses of Homer concerning the gods” (Naddaf, 2009, p. 112).

L. Brisson (2012b) has pointed out that in stark contrast with the Atlantis myth in Critias, Timaeus is introduced as an eikos muthos. In Critias, the Priest of Sais describes the narrative as another sort of myth entirely (pp. 370–371). Cherniss (1965) has argued that “we are meant by Plato to infer that the Atlantic myth is an eikos logos” (p. 171). Gill (1979) disagreed with Cherniss; he argued that “Critias is interested in likeness” but not wholly therein and suggested instead that Critias offers “statements that are only a little like their subject” (p. 68). Gill translated the σχῆμα in his 2017 critical translation of Plato’s Atlantis myth as “shape” or “appearance” interchangeably but indicated σχῆμα is an accusative with respect to grouping (p. 98). L. Brisson has argued that in the Atlantis myth, Plato posits an image more or less removed in time from an actual model but still seems to suggest Plato’s deployment of the myth hinges on mimesis or the muthos eikos (Brisson, 2012a, p. 404).³ Vidal-Naquet (1984) argued that the Atlantis myth was created with gamelike intent but was used to reflect mimesis to truth and that “the myth and the story, like anything that Page 155 →comes under imitation (mimesis), are among these games” (p. 410). None of these sources, however, examined Plato’s use of the term skema to describe the Atlantis myth.

There are many differing positions on the use of myth that converge with rhetorical design among authorities on Plato. Rabel (1996) stated that Plato uses skema to describe “imitation” ascribed to various forms of speech (p. 368). Griswold (1996) pointed out that in Phaedrus, Plato refers to his myths as “mythoi” or “logoi” at various times and contexts, all except for the narrative of Theuth. In Phaedrus, “the Theuth/Thamus myth is called a ‘logos’ (275b4) but not a ‘muthos’ (though it bears all the traditional markings of being a myth)” (p. 139). David White (2016) has argued that Plato uses myth analogically, as a form of “collection and division” in Statesman, reflecting a relationship between mythic paradeigma and skema that hinges on the “closeness” of the two that is metaphysical in form (see Deslauriers, 1990). White sets out a rigorous model for a specific skema more apropos for metaphysical inquiries, while the present argument concerns a representation of human affairs (p. 105).

Myth was used to persuasive ends in the dialogues, yet Plato makes few definitive statements about his mythmaking rhetoric. Plato’s myths are often of particular interest and produce conflicting opinions as to their intent and overall place in Plato’s philosophy. Ancient rhetoric, likewise, is riddled with mythic references and narratives, such as Cicero’s (1949) myth of the first rhetor in De Inventione (1.1). Many classical rhetoricians used the label “metaphor” to generally describe the operation of myth as a metaphorical trope, and Aristotle (1989) stated in Topica that “those who use metaphor do so always in view of some likeness” (140a.10). Papillon (1996) has explained that Isocrates uses mythic exempla in analogical situations to prompt his correspondents to action or inaction (p. 392). Plutarch (1970) implied without detailed explanation that similitude can be found in the deployment of myth, perhaps speaking authoritatively as a high priest of Apollo; he asserts that one should not ever assume the myths are offered either for their historicity or veracity (58.16). He writes that “we must not use the myths as wholly factual accounts, but take what is fitting in each episode according to the principle of likeness” (mimesis, μίμησις; 58.15). Plato (1930, 1935) uses the term mimesis frequently in Republic X to describe the lifelike character of certain things and, according to Leszl (2006), to reflect a correspondence to a model (p. 251). These scholars suggest, therefore, that the relationship of logos and muthos in Platonic myth lies in a principle of mimesis. However, in the Priest of Sais’s twice-told tale, the key to Page 156 →the Atlantis myth lies in his use of the term skema, a more specific rhetorical term Plato uses to describe his own art of mythmaking.

The rhetorical principle that underpins the Atlantis myth Critias intends to convey is one that he calls a logos, but one clothed in the skema of a muthos. A figure of speech is generally referred to as a σχήμα λόγου (skema logos); Quintilian (1920) himself stated “figuras quae σχήματα (skemata) Graece vocantur” (Institutio, 9.1.1). However, the tale of Critias is described in comparatively close terms as the σχήμα of a muthos. Kathryn Morgan (2000) has wryly remarked that Critias’s Atlantis myth “has the great advantage of not being an invented muthos but a true logos” (p. 268). This is a central issue to the interpretation of Critias that has vexed many scholars. Plato’s (1925) Atlantis myth in Critias derives its analogical power from the complex web of relationships between myth and conceptual expression. Critias explains, “The accounts given by us all must be, of course, of the nature of imitations and representations,” thereby emphasizing that the nature of his discourse is metaphorical similitude, not equivalency (Critias 107b–c).⁴ Critias thus implies that the narrative is not a historical account but similar enough to it to convey a kind of truth; Plato thereby prepares the reader for a foray into analogical metaphor, which assumes a mythic guise. Critias likens himself to a painter and promises that the discourse will be descriptive. Critias warns us he is about to talk about the nature of the human world and that audiences might be more critical when a likeness is painted of ourselves: because “we examine with precision what is mortal and human” in contrast to paintings of the natural world (107d–e). This frames the way the Atlantis myth is to be received, as Critias states plainly he will be creating a form of the mortal and human world with an inherited story. He likens the myth to a painting, implying an approximate accuracy in its general skema, or form. By begging the indulgence of his audience for a narrative skema to represent another (arguably more historical) concept, he warns that every part may not be “wholly fitting” to what he intends to convey (107d–e). To the ancient Greeks and Plato in particular, the skema of a myth means that it can convey the shape of the truth and therefore be wholly true, while still being a myth.⁵ Critias prepares a listener for how to receive the Atlantis myth and offers a rhetoric for Plato’s mythmaking itself a skema.

Mark Turner (1998) has aptly summarized the role of σχῆμα in its rhetorical sense as well as its other forms and argued that while “schema became a Page 157 →technical term of Greek rhetoric,” it was “used prototypically to signify a conventional pairing of a form and a meaning or, more broadly, a form and a conceptual pattern” (p. 44). Turner explained that the many uses of σχῆμα “had a range of commonplace meanings that cluster around a central prototype: a schema is a pairing of two patterns at unequal levels” (p. 44). The term advanced by the Priest of Sais to describe the logos Critias relates in this painterly fashion is not mimetic of life, nor as an eikos, or a likeness akin to image, but as Solon before him received it: as a skema (see Grasso, 2012). In the case of Critias, this skema, is the shape or outline of a muthos, intended to bear a rhetorical relationship to prehistoric events. In Phaedrus, Plato (1914) used the word skema (σχῆμα) to condemn false rhetoric and again when he says writing has a skema “very like painting” (275d).⁶ The skema Critias repeats conveys a tropic deployment of myth as something else altogether that is neither mimesis (μίμησις) nor likeness (ὁμοιόω).

Aristotle (1933) used σχῆμα term in a similar fashion in Metaphysics when he describes an analogical myth: “tradition has been handed down by the ancient thinkers of very early times, and bequeathed to posterity in the skema (σχῆμα) of a myth” (1275d). Aristotle referred to a myth that avers that the stars are gods. Its analogical meaning was meant to convey that the divine pervades the whole of nature (12.1074b1).⁷ The “form” of such a mythic argument can therefore possess the skema (σχῆμα) of a logocentric argument. Naddaf (2009) has noted that Metaphysics “shows that for Aristotle the initial or pre-anthropomorphic notion of the divinity that was handed down in the form of myth (en muthou schēmati) and that identified the primary natural forces or substances with gods” (p. 119). Skema seems to denote a generalized analogical context when conjoined with the specific speech act of mythmaking. In Aristotle’s analogy, for example, the stars are called gods because of a mythic skema to imply the divine pervaded all things, while Critias’s skema conveys Atlantis was analogical to the shape of an ideal human society. Plato’s rhetorical aim to create an analogical metaphor is at the center of his use of skema.

Elsewhere in Timaeus, Plato uses “skema” to denote an outward appearance that gives shape or form to a conceptual arrangement. Plato describes the vestments of Athena as being arranged in a gendered skema that suggests an analogical relationship between the idea of martial prowess and the shape of the goddess, akin to the skema of Critias’s narrative (110b). Athena, Critias explains, was traditionally attired in armor to suggest female martial equality: “ ‘Consider too the appearance of the statue [literally ‘appearance and statue’] of the goddess.’ Since at that time military practices were common to women Page 158 →and men, in line with that custom the people of that time set up the image of the goddess in armour” (110b). Gill (1979) pointed out that the use of skema seems to connote an accusative context suggesting Athena’s trappings and shape are arranged in a skema that proposes feminine equality by its general form. By analogy, just as the logos that is martial power is the skema of Athena’s dress, the skema of the Atlantis myth is attired in a myth to signify the logos of an ideal society. Within that ideal society are a range of scriptocentric and rhetorical practices that serve a distinct purpose. The Atlantis myth is thus an analogical metaphor functioning as a description of the place of rhetoric and writing in human culture.

In Aristotle’s On Rhetoric (2006), metaphor is a trope—a type of skema logon—of which there are four subtypes. Metaphor, to Aristotle, is a tropic device that creates similitudes but not all are those of thought. Metaphors of type 1–3 are purely linguistic and not the sorts that are applicable to the skema Plato explains through Critias. But Aristotle explains that metaphors of the fourth type are not substitution of terms, but factual (Levin, 1982, pp. 24–26). Levin explained that in metaphors of the fourth kind, there is at work an “analogical process” that contains an “implicit understanding” of hierarchical categories (p. 36). Thus, things of certain species are paired with things of a higher genus, or order, implicit in their conveyance. At one point in Timaeus, Plato (1925) describes the concept of a circle as an ideal skema that “comprises within itself all the shapes there are” that are called “circular” (Timaeus, 110b). Thus, Plato uses a skema as a kind of “all-encompassing” and categorical description of a given concept, and the Atlantis myth is such a skematic representation. Skema as a “figure”—a way of conveying the “shape” or “outward dress” of a truth—suggests an encompassing categorical totality in its description of concepts. This encompassing categorical myth constitutes an analogical relationship to a set of concepts. The skema is thus the relationship of the concepts between the myth and the meaning of its analogical intent.

If skema muthos is a rhetorical principle governing the making of myth to Plato, how does he deploy his skema in Critias? The skema of human society presented in Plato’s myth as analogical argument begins with its resemblance to a world whose written history is lost to us. Critias explains that whereas in a painterly representation of the natural world, the audience tolerates general form (σχῆμα) when a picture is painted of humans, we are more sharply critical and likewise “in the case of logoi (λόγους)” (Critias 107d). Logos, as Griswold (1996) explained, is used in distinction from muthos in Phaedrus; the story of Theuth is rather explicitly referred to as a logos, not a muthos, while Page 159 →other mythic stories in Phaedrus very explicitly are muthos (p. 139). Griswold remarked on this oddity, but the answer lies in a lexical explanation. Griswold pointed out that there “does seem to be a difference between mythic and nonmythic logoi” (p. 139). Griswold’s unspecified belief in this distinction could be explained in the use of the word logos in the sense of “an account,” but it is probable in this context Plato employs the word to mean “proportional or analogical words” of relation, correspondence, or proportion. This meaning of muthos is likewise distinct from the eikos muthos used as a naturalistic model elsewhere in Timaeus (see L. Brisson, 1998, p. 293). Plato states explicitly the narrative is a skematic myth with a logocentric proposition. Plato elsewhere uses the noun to express a parity of reasoning. An example of this is in Cratylus (393c), where Plato uses λόγους in this way, which also provides an illustrative example of logos deployed in a proportional and analogical skema. Aristotle (2006) very overtly includes analogical metaphors as metaphors of the fourth type (Poetics, 1457b.14).

Although contemporary interpreters have not reconciled the nature of skema as a key term in the Atlantis myth, sources from late antiquity seem to have readily recognized its importance. The Greek commentaries of Proclus, interpreting the nature of skema muthos in Timaeus and Critias, examined the Atlantis myth as a species of analogy; Proclus (2007) was decidedly in favor of an analogical interpretation. Porphyry interpreted the myth as nonliteral, but Proclus viewed Plato’s Atlantis as an extensive analogy on spiritual substance (2007, p. 79). He wrote that the Atlantis “war” and the constitution of Atlantis should be received as a metaphorical analogy. In one passage, he concludes: “assuming that we have observed the analogue of the constitution in the entire cosmos, we must surely also take note of this ‘war’ that is embedded in the whole of nature” (2007, 78.12–13). Proclus emphasized that these “contrasting properties” are evidence of Plato’s analogical intent. His intent lies in the skema of his narrative: “contrasting life either among gods or among daemons or among souls or among bodies—you would in every case be able to bring analogies that begin with humans to bear upon things” (78.27–28) (emphasis added).

Proclus interprets the term skema when he notes that the Priest of Sais’s narrative “ ‘takes the shape of a myth, whereas its true reference’ is to something else” (2007, 129.29–30). Proclus suggests that Plato relies on such a form because “the Egyptians too, whom he makes the fathers of this story, put the secrets of nature into riddles through myths” and “the allegorical unveiling of this narrative would also suit the character who is telling it” (129.29–30, p. 225). Page 160 →Thus, “the Egyptian priest would be teaching the truth of things through symbols” (130.1–2, p. 225). Proclus’s interpretation of the myth is likewise analogical in his commentary but ultimately focuses far more on the implications of the relationship of the soul and the physical cosmos than the human world. The Atlantis myth’s skema muthos also illustrates that Plato conceived of writing and rhetorical processes as one of the analogous ways that humans influence things, particularly the structure of society.

Thus, to summarize the rationale of this analysis, in Timaeus Critias offers his skema as a rhetorical device as an analogical trope founded in encompassing likenesses between things to convey a form of its true nature. Plato seems to convey that myth possesses a power to convey truth outside the rules of dialectic. His use of myth is sometimes described as allegorical when, in fact, this is a fairly imprecise description of the argument Critias indicates he is about to offer; it is rather a metaphor of the fourth kind to make an argument in the all-encompassing shape of a muthos. Critias proposes a similitude that might be a metaphor, but in Plato’s hands, its effect is analogical rather than allegorical. As the tale of Critias begins in Timaeus, Plato writes in the interlocutor’s voice of the priest Sais, contrasting written Egyptian and oral Greek myths. Thus, the priest of Sais uses a similar term later used by Critias to describe his tale on the skema of the condition of humankind he wishes to set forth in Critias.

Plato’s mythic skema in its application illustrates that the Atlantis myth is at least partially a commentary and qualification of his position on writing and rhetoric. Critias promises a depiction of an ideal human society based on the skema muthos of the Priest of Sais. Critias also insists that it is, in reality, a logocentric argument that is wholly true; he begs indulgence that his retelling captures it in a painterly way to depict an ideal republic. Plato depicts the idealized state of the lost civilization of Atlantis as one in which deliberation, common persuasion, and the cultural memory of writing governed their most sacred processes. The fall of Atlantis, by contrast, occurs due to the rejection of these practices. In deploying this mythic skema, Plato analogically advances the vital nature of rhetoric to provide the continuity of an ideal state. The manner in which Plato constructs his mythic skema provides insight into the role of his theory of writing and rhetoric. Because we only possess Critias in fragmentary form, we cannot know the full details of the fourth-level metaphor Page 161 →Plato was trying to convey in every detail. However, Timaeus contains a mythic skema that, in its analogical structure, concerns the nature of rhetoric.

We know from details in Timaeus that the narrative ends with the eventual destruction of Atlantis and that Critias is framed as an image of a mythic skema depicting the ideal state and its demise. Critias has also advised us that the Atlantis myth’s logos (conveyed in a skema muthos) is a before-and-after narrative with instructive intent and an analogical skema. More significantly, from the elements we possess of the idealized Atlantis state, we can assume Critias is narrating what took place “before” the collapse and its cause. From this, we can partially extrapolate what Plato was trying to convey in his extended mythic analogy. The first assumption I have advanced is the meaning of skema in the text; the second is the existence of a relationship between Atlantean impiety against the Gods and the traditions of their rhetorical, scriptocentric society that precipitated their collapse: Plato’s explanation as to their decline is brief and probably incomplete. If the reader accepts that the Atlantis Critias describes is the ideal state responsive to Socrates’s request, we see the subject of Critias as a promotion of values in Plato’s ideal culture that centralizes writing, collective memory, and rhetorical practices.

We are first told that Critias learned a tale from Egypt in a writing (grammata) handed down to him. But we are also told that the priest offered this traditional and unverifiable story involving the gods. Its source, nevertheless, is implicitly in the writing that had endured in the Kingdom of Egypt for millennia. This is significant principally for two reasons: first, in Plato’s time, a very active debate existed regarding the necessity of a written constitution as the basis of Athenian government. In Solon’s time some three hundred years before, he offered the first document in writing to establish Athenian government’s laws and structure (Stegman, 2017, p. 262). Athens, much expanded and more integrated into trade in the Mediterranean region in Plato’s time, was debating the need for a constitutional basis of government. Second but perhaps more significantly, recall that Critias’s story is about a vanished and forgotten world; and the idea of the past of Atlantis is a skema offered as analogical to the present, to contrast the difference between an ideal state and a fallen one. The intergenerational nature of writing is an issue emphasized within the preface. Critias states he is a descendant of Solon and that he discovered a writing among his ancestor’s effects that forms the basis of his narrative. These facts prefatorily provoke the interpretation that Plato is discussing writing as a kind of intergenerational persuasion across time. The story of the story—how Critias came to know the skema describes—is a lesson in miniature about the Page 162 →intergenerational nature of written knowledge. By framing the Atlantis myth as a writing from the past that conveys the nature of humanity’s relationship to writing in the present, Plato argues that writing is necessary as a form of rhetorical action between the past and the future. The provenance of the Atlantis myth as an inherited writing also suggests that an ideal culture depends on the inscription and re-inscription of its values over time. This message further underscores the dialogic intergenerational cultural memory as a central pillar of human life.

Another significant detail regarding writing, which also suggests what Plato intended as one central theme of Critias, is the episode in Timaeus describing how Solon came into possession of the Atlantean myth, describing “what Solon related and how, and who were the informants who vouched for its truth” (Timaeus, 21d). Solon ventured to Egypt and questioned the Egyptian priests at Sais about ancient history, only to discover he knew nothing of their accounts (21e). When Solon’s rejoinder is to explain the ancient myths of the Greeks, one priest remarks that the Greeks are always children, because “You are young in soul, every one of you … you possess not a single belief that is ancient and derived from old tradition” (Timaeus, 22b). As previously stated, the passage is notable in the context of Plato’s view of the σχῆμα of myth in Timaeus and also presages the importance of the skema in the subsequent mythic narrative in Critias. But it likewise creates an analogical relationship between a culture with a long-recorded history and a relationship to writing that is contrastive with Solon’s Athens.

The priests’ prologue bears scrutiny, because he tells us a great deal about Plato’s perspective on myth as skema. The myth of Phaethon, he explains, has the skema of myth, but the myth itself is not the truth of the matter: in shape, it bears an analogical relationship to the truth. In the skema of the myth, Phaethon loses control of his chariot and scorches the earth, but the truth, he explains, is “the occurrence of a shifting of the bodies in the heavens which move round the earth, and a destruction of the things on the earth by fierce fire” (Timaeus, 22d).⁸ Much like the Atlantean myth, which is a skema of mythic details representing something else, the tale of Phaethon suggests the cosmological truth of another matter analogically. This, in turn, warrants the priest’s argument, namely that a civilization that forgets the art of writing and its rhetorical relationship to the past is doomed to be childlike. The priest of Sais explains that notable events are always recorded in Egypt, “whereas your people and the others are but newly equipped, every time, with letters [γράμμασι] and all such arts as civilized States require” (23a). In a world of Page 163 →recurrent disasters, the priest continues that when “the flood from heaven comes sweeping down afresh upon your people, it leaves none of you but the unlettered and uncultured” (23a–b).⁹ The term that the priest uses to describe the word of those who do not value written tradition is “without the Muses” (ἄμουσος, amuseia). Phiroze Vasunia (2001) has observed that this contrast of difference between Egyptians and Greeks crucially relates to the “defining emphasis placed on the written word” (p. 220). At the beginning of the narrative of Critias, the early Greeks were in this condition. He thus creates an analogical (fourth level) metaphor between Greeks, Egyptians, and their comparative inherited and emergent literacy after a period of forgetfulness. The priest explains that by contrast to Athenian recordation, Egyptian civilization has existed 8000 years, “as set down in our sacred writings” (Timaeus 23e). The generationally inherited rhetorical power of the Egyptians is held in stark contrast to the traditions of Greece to underscore the nature of continuity between youthful and mature states; but more significantly implies that maturity is not related to age but rather to the continuous preservation of the ability for members to express themselves in writing.

Plato notes that generations of Athenians did not know the art of writing, nor did they have myths (Critias, 110a).¹⁰ The Athenians were a people without a memory, the amuseia, and thus Plato connects writing, myth, and memory. However, Plato adds another element to this reflection, namely the seemingly unrelated observation of the priest that after each successive deluge, the Athenians consisted of “herdsmen and shepherds” (Timaeus 23c). Throughout the exchange between Solon and the priest of Sais, Plato emphasizes the illiteracy of the Athenians, but only in connection to historical and cultural memory. The priest suggests these “herdsmen and shepherds” perhaps had heard the names of ancient people but knew less of their works; Greek knowledge was mainly about the things they required merely to subsist (22d). This explanation of the priest of Sais creates a number of mythic analogical relationships. First, the antediluvian Athenians were unlettered and therefore without knowledge of their ancestors; an analogical relationship is thus created between the prehistorical Greeks and the Greeks of Solon’s time, unaware of these ancient events. A secondary analogical relationship in the narrative relates to the urbanization of Greeks into city-states as coincident with their creation of myth. According to the priest, the postdiluvian Greeks did not have cities; therefore, they did not have myths or writing. In suggesting that the polis was a prerequisite for a people to have myth, Plato advances the precept that to remember and speak collectively is causally connected to rhetoric and myth.

Page 164 →Another analogical relationship is created in the mythic narrative, more centrally concerning the relationship between memory and writing. Still, more intriguingly, Plato suggests that myth exists with writing in parity as (at least) a kind of imperfect remembering. He also implies that myths can be forgotten without groups of people acting to collectively self-reflect upon them. To Plato, humans who are merely isolated in the wilderness are effectively only capable of concern with the rudiments of survival, and this magnifies their collective forgetfulness over time. Their forgetfulness, in turn, derives from their inability to record or discuss the past. But in an intriguing paradox offered in contrast to Phaedrus, he implies that only writing can preserve the past to provide the necessary catalyst for civilizing states to exist. One all-encompassing or skematic myth in Plato’s theory of rhetoric in Critias is that while, for example, the myth of Theuth-Thamus seems to treat writing as a secondary epistemic path to truth deleterious to memory, Critias, by contrast, suggests the only way for humans to remember collectively is through a scriptocentric system across generations. It posits a kind of persuasion from the past to the present and rhetorical action between the dead and the living. The means of this intergenerational persuasion necessarily implicate myth and writing; to Plato, myth, writing, and rhetoric seem intimately connected to collective memory.

Plato thus connects writing, persuasion, and myth as a prefatory note to frame the Atlantis myth. Critias offers a hymn to Memnosyne before the Atlantis myth, emphasizing that memory is one central theme of the dialogue. “For practically all the most important part of our logos (λόγων) depends upon this goddess” (Critias, 108d).¹¹ If one takes “our logos” to mean the power of reasoning and discourse as a collective possession of all people, this becomes particularly important to the theme of the work. Moreover, the structural choice to preface the entire narrative with a prayer to Mnemosyne suggests that rhetorical power has memory as one of its primary attributes, which seems consistent with Plato’s position in Phaedrus. Plato thereby analogizes collective memory, cultural maturity, and cultural continuity by using a myth about the collective ability to engage in the art of writing. The priest of Sais tells Solon that the Greeks are like children by analogical comparison to the Egyptians. The argument is reiterated in the conclusion of the priest’s speech when Solon expresses amazement that his myths bore only a faint likeness to historical truth that the Egyptians had preserved continuously for some 8000 years. Millennia of facts “escaped your notice because for many generations the survivors died with no power to express themselves in writing” (Timaeus, 23c).¹² Plato Page 165 →argues that writings themselves do not convey power to remember collectively, but the knowledge of how to write does.

The dialogue also creates an analogy between the situation of Greeks and Egyptians before the Greeks became literate: the priest explains the written records of Egypt have been dedicated to “discovering all the effects which the divine causes produce upon human life” through the medium of writing (Timaeus, 24c).¹³ It is also notable because Plato seems to conjoin the practices of writing and myth not merely as precursors to meaningful development but to a fundamental understanding of cause and effect. To Plato, meaningful collective learning is limited if there are no records of previous similar incidents from which humans can analogically compare the causes of situations in the past with the causes of situations in the present. Individuals in the present learn from those in the past only by their ability to express themselves in writing or through myth. Thus, Plato underscores that myth is an intergenerational and scrutable means of transmitting knowledge akin to writing. The image that Plato paints of pre-deluvian Athens is essentially pastoral; instead of the Parthenon, the Athenians merely possessed a small, raised spot on a hill. Their numbers were few. He continues, “concerning the mighty deeds and the laws of their predecessor Greeks at this time had only possessed certain reports” (Critias, 109e).¹⁴ That Plato is propounding the rhetorically centered model of the Atlanteans as an ideal is supported by Naddaf’s (1994) observation that “Plato introduces the so-called Atlantis story … because Socrates wants to see the ideal city, that is, the intelligible model, in action in the sensible world (19b)” (p. 195). Critias therefore recalls such an ideal city as an analogical skema muthos in response to Socrates’s request.

Some additional important details bear final mention, which support the argument that the speeches of Critias are intended as a description of human society that is fundamentally rhetorical. Plato describes the nature of preliterate societies and states that the gods were like herdsmen who governed humanity, “laying hold on the soul by persuasion (πειθοῖ)” for their own ends (Critias, 109c). Plato likewise uses the term πειθοῖ as “persuasion” in Gorgias to ask whether persuasion is the purpose of rhetoric, as Gorgias defines it. Plato creates an analogy between the illiterate Athenians of previous times in counterposition to the illiterate Athenians. Plato states without further amplification that the collective will of the Athenians was not their own, instead being driven like “cattle and nurslings” to and fro by the persuasion of external divine forces, or like a boat being navigated by someone else holding the rudder (109c). Plato creates an analogical relationship between literate and Page 166 →nonliterate societies in his subsequent description of the organization of the Atlanteans, but the implication is clear to the extent he connects writing and rhetorical action to political and social self-determination. The amuseiae of postdiluvial Greece know their future only through the persuasive powers of external forces, rather than their own. In the same sense, their private motivations are only subject to their need for survival. By contrast, Plato describes an Atlantean social order driven entirely by rhetorical processes created among the inhabitants and their linguistic connection to the past.

By contrast, the Atlantean civic system is one whose vital center is writing and mutual deliberative persuasion. The Atlantean civic system is described as one which, in contrast to being persuaded by divine forces, leaders mutually (κοινωνία) persuade one another (ἀλλήλων) (Critias, 119c). Their relations are governed by the writing (grammata) of Poseidon himself. At their periodic assemblies, the Atlanteans deliberate (ἐβουλεύοντο) on whether they had gone against the will of Poseidon in previous times and whether one was to receive blame—αἰτιάομαι—for any crime (Critias, 120c).¹⁵ Thus, the epideictic topic of blame or condemnation also figures into the proceedings. Further connecting these forensic processes to the act of writing, Plato adds, “when they had given judgement, they wrote the judgements” on a golden tablet (120c). Additionally, they deliberate, or “take counsel in public affairs” (119d).¹⁶ Another especially vivid component of these proceedings was a period of praise and oath-giving to the pillar on which the grammata of Poseidon was written. Plato describes these ceremonial procedures where participants coat the writing in a blood sacrifice. In terms of ceremonial condemnation, it is noted that “inscribed upon the pillar, besides the laws, was an oath which invoked mighty curses upon them that disobeyed” (119e).¹⁷ There are numerous other features at work in Plato’s description, but most relevant to this argument is the essentially rhetorical nature of the Atlantean assemblies.

At their assemblies the Atlanteans engage in rhetorical practices consistent with the three ancient genres of rhetoric as classified by Aristotle’s On Rhetoric (2006, p. 1358b). Thus, the Atlanteans engage in processes whose central preoccupation is the past, as in the forensic genre, inquiring into past transgressions against the writing of Poseidon. Likewise, they deliberate “about public affairs,” as in the legislative genre, whose preoccupation is the future. Plato uses the same word to describe the deliberative nature of counsel the Atlanteans engage in (ἐβουλεύοντο) in Critias (119c). Plato uses the same word Aristotle (2006) uses to describe the deliberative genre (1358b). Additionally, much time is devoted to descriptions of the Atlanteans ceremonial offerings of praise or Page 167 →blame, mainly through the giving and taking of oaths and other reaffirmations of the power and binding nature of Poseidon’s writings. While ritual sacrifice and oath-giving may seem a far cry from the genre of epideictic speech, it is worth considering them in the context of Aristotle’s means of proof in the epideictic genre when looking at Atlantean rituals. In On Rhetoric, Aristotle (1358b) explained that epideixis encompasses the way “all speakers praise and blame regarding existing qualities, but they often also make use of other things, both reminding [the audience] of the past and projecting the course of the future.”¹⁸ Part of these ceremonial proceedings was an affirmation that each “should never take up arms against one another” and in the event of an attack, they take counsel (βουλευόμενοι) together regarding public affairs (κοινῇ, or polity; Critias 120c–d). Thus, the Atlanteans blend the past and the future in praise and affirmation of their ancient laws, attendant to ceremonial speech and, as Aristotle puts it, “other things.” The model of the Atlantean system is deliberative, forensic, and epideictic, while at the same time being scriptocentric. These seemingly anomalous details strongly suggest the rhetorical nature of the Atlantean system of human government. Their details significantly support an interpretation that Critias, in its intended form, argued for the indispensable nature of a rhetorical system of human affairs that existed in antediluvian Atlantis.

Plato, therefore, intended his skema to be a type of rhetorical principle by which mythmakers use analogies. These analogies could be directed to illustrative or argumentative purposes. He suggests this skema is a categorical correspondence between similar things. Plato’s analogical metaphor, in this case, is the Atlantic myth. The categorical pairing of species to genus throughout the narrative is only partially complete because we received the mutilus text. To decipher Plato’s intent, this argument offers the suggestion one such analogy is of between an antediluvian society, whose culture is based around written memory and rhetorical processes, which is Atlantis. The paired categorical comparison is with a subsequent postdiluvian society, where there has been a loss of its written and rhetorical continuity, namely Greece. This is not the only analogy but is presumably a higher categorical comparison into which others fall. Use of fourth-type metaphors is functionally necessary to illustrate complex comparisons. In On Rhetoric, Aristotle (2006) explains, “In some cases there is no corresponding term within the analogy, but a likeness will be expressed” (1457b.14). This complex set of analogies that form an argument in the Atlantis myth therefore requires an extended metaphor for their analogical skema.

Page 168 →Plato’s analogical mythmaking has central relevance to the argument of this book because Plato was operating in a long persuasive tradition that began as early as Sumerian literate culture. Consider the analogical use of narratives and divine exemplars in Egypt and Sumeria that long preceded Critias. Plato was using similar complex analogies to convey the nature of rhetoric and writing as the myths of Thoth, Enmerkar, and Lugalbanda that came before. Certainly, the incomplete myth in Timaeus did not wholly concern the role of writing and rhetoric. Those surviving parts provide only a tantalizing suggestion about Plato’s increasingly complex position on the nature of writing and rhetoric in later life. One can make several conclusions from the relatively sparse details of Critias’s narrative in Timaeus and Critias. First, they provide us with suggestive clues about the operation of mythic analogical skema in Plato’s other works as a persuasive tool. Plato uses the term skema to reflect a relationship between myth and reality that may be seen as analogical, distinct from the muthos used elsewhere in his dialogues. In this way, the Atlantis myth concerns the nature of rhetorical action within humanity in social groupings, particularly in the presence of writing. Like the myth of Theuth, the Atlantis myth invokes similar elements related to memory, writing, and myth, which strongly suggests it was intended as a kind of qualification to Plato’s other statements on the relationship of these subjects. Based on the myth and its prolegomenon offered by Critias related to other topics in the rhetorical dialogues of Plato, we narrow the spectrum of this analysis. The three topics we might examine are writing, memory, and the maturity of civilizations.

In the Atlantis myth, Plato creates analogical relationships among many categories of the collective human condition. These analogies express the condition of humans past and present, literate and nonliterate, and in a state of remembrance and forgetting, representing analogical relationships in and among them. This complexity is precisely why Critias deserves further study: Plato likens these conditions to those in Atlantis, as social continuity, collective memory as maturity, and collective self-determination. The Atlantis myth posits that humanity gains a collective cultural memory through writing, and the past assumes rhetorical power over the future. These arguments alternately contrast with and complement Plato’s critique of writing in Phaedrus (1914) and Letter VII (1925). If one accepts that the speech of Critias creates previously undiscovered developments in Plato’s theory of rhetoric, a more general observation is necessarily implicit in the nature of Plato’s rhetorical theory. This is especially interesting because it represents a development in his philosophy of writing ten years after those expressed in Phaedrus. In addition, Plato offers Page 169 →a practical demonstration of the rhetorical operations of myth as a skema. It represents another (of many) paradoxes within Plato’s theory of rhetoric which results in disagreement among modern commentators. Timaeus-Critias represents a qualifying statement about the role of writing when human life and memory fail, individually or collectively.

Plato’s narrative is filled with analogical relationships and themes that this analysis does not explore and still more that it cannot explore, given the fragmentary nature of the dialogue. However, if the hymn and prolegomenon of Critias are examined in relation to other topics in the rhetorical dialogues of Plato, a common pattern of relation begins to appear. The three topics we might examine are writing, memory, and the maturity of civilizations; they could be expressed as binary relationships, such as writing and preliteracy and memory and forgetting. In the narrative of the rise and fall of Atlantis, then, Plato creates an analogical relationship with mutual interplay among many distinct categories. These analogies express the condition of humans past and present, whether literate and nonliterate, or in a state of remembrance and forgetting. Such analogies do not represent a binary correspondence but constitute a system of analogical relationships in and among the elements of comparison. By way of example, an analogically comparative relationship is created between literate societies and forgetful societies as well as societies young and mature. But Plato does not always cast one set of these “binaries” as categorically positive and their opposite wholly negative. Such complexity is precisely why Critias deserves further study: Plato likens each of these conditions to those in Atlantis, with particular attention to social continuity, collective memory as “maturity,” and collective self-determination. Plato also creates analogies between categories we might think of as only one side of a binary relationship through analogy. Rhetoric, therefore, exists at the nexus of these mythological analogies.

Thematically, the myth of Critias presents a paradox in contrast to Phaedrus and its critique of writing. While Theuth’s invention of writing is critiqued as deleterious to memory, the memory of Atlantis, upon which the organization of people relies for the continuity of civilization, is wholly dependent on writing. Recall that the main theme of Critias’s narrative was to describe humankind’s structural condition. One might argue that Plato’s position in Critias, in contrast to Phaedrus, is that humanity utterly depends on the power of Page 170 →writing to achieve and maintain stable societies, resulting in collective memory. In Plato’s account of prehistory, the only persuasion among humans was that of the gods on disorganized groups of humans; but Plato seems to imply they achieved self-determination in subsequent societies only by virtue of writing and coordinated activity surrounding written artifacts that were essentially rhetorical in nature. History, portrayed as a set of successive disasters, resulted in writing and myth as humanity’s only recourse to perpetuate civilization. It was only because older humans might rhetorically move subsequent generational survivors through the power of writing and myth that human civilization could again exist in an organized state. Moreover, Critias’s myth posits that humanity gains a collective cultural memory only by virtue of writing, and thereby the past assumes rhetorical power over the future. These arguments alternately contrast with and complement Plato’s (1914) critique of writing in Phaedrus and Letter VII (1925). Suppose one accepts that the speech of Critias creates new paradoxes in Plato’s theory of rhetoric. In that case, a more general observation is necessarily implicit in the sometimes paradoxical nature of Plato’s rhetorical theory, the least of which is that it represents a development in his philosophy of writing ten years older than that expressed in Phaedrus. Perhaps it suggests that, at some fundamental level, Plato realized myth was a rhetorically viable method of rhetorically conveying truth apart from apodeictic means. While many paradoxes within Plato’s theory of rhetoric often result in disagreement among modern commentators, perhaps they show that Plato himself might have been entirely at ease with its paradoxical nature.

Consider, then, that Plato’s narrative of Atlantis in Timaeus-Critias represents a confluence of the rhetorical mythic tradition. In it, we see the way that Plato theorizes myth through the words of the Egyptian Priest of Sais. Plato holds forth (as he did in Phaedrus) that myth conveys truth propositions through rhetorical devices. The notion that the truth propositions of myth are conveyed in the “form” or shape of myth is akin to the perfunctory rebuke of Socrates: the external character or provenance of the myth is only a tropic “form,” a garment that dresses the implicit truth proposition. To Plato, those who conflate myth with historicity or verisimilitude have wholly missed the point and conflated form with substance. The ahistorical nature of myths as truth proposition apply equally to the myths of Enmerkar or Setne: they didactically operate using contextualized analogies for rhetoric and its innate or relational properties. Moreover, Plato constructs his rhetorical myth according to the very model he sets forth: the skema of his logos regards the contextual place Page 171 →of rhetoric in human culture and obeys the same rules for rhetorical deployment as the other rhetorical myths. While his statement regarding the proper place of rhetoric in individual knowledge of rhetoric is reflected in the Theuth myth in Phaedrus, in Timaeus-Critias we see rhetoric situated collectively and relationally: rhetoric is thereby given a relational significance to humans that it does not find in Plato’s other dialogues. The dual character of these statements on the nature of rhetoric represents a clouded reflection of similar traditions in Egypt and Sumer, two cultures that devoted specific myths and mythemes to convey the identification of rhetoric and the relational nature of rhetoric in human life. Plato’s adaptation of this tradition is not offered as a novel one; it is an adaptation of traditions already in circulation in the ancient world in which the rhetoric had a definitional existence in myth.

Consider, likewise, Plato’s Atlantis as a kind of apologetic for the tradition of myth in relation to rhetoric in other cultures—notably Egypt—in contrast to Greek culture. When the priest of Sais chides Solon for the character of his people who lack reliance on written tradition and myth, he likens them to children. He states the Greek belief system is in error because no part is “derived from old tradition,” such as mythic accounts of rhetoric in more ancient cultures. Perhaps the Priest of Solon serves as an exemplar to remind the Greeks that ancient cultures far in advance of their own had rhetorical traditions—and attendant myths—and to chide them for their cultural amnesia. Both the myth of Theuth and that of Atlantis are of fictitiously Egyptian provenance but are intimately related to the nature of rhetoric and its functional place in society. The priest, himself Egyptian, and an archival attendant of more ancient traditions, must remind Solon of some central truth contained in the skema of a myth, itself one lesson of the dialogue. Atlantis is a cautionary tale concerning what befalls a people when they abandon the rhetorical practices that harmonize and sustain their civilization. That the Atlanteans, in their fallen condition, effectively lost some vital spirit of the divine suggests a kind of rhetorical forgetfulness and seems also a nod to ancient traditions that holds rhetoric has always been associated with the gods. In Plato’s dramatistic cosmos, the gods keep their old places very close to rhetoric. As the functional mythemes of the Egyptian tradition, the gods are not forgotten even in the unique intellectual climate of fourth-century Athens. While we may never know how extensive Plato’s knowledge of the mythic tradition of Egypt was, these episodes represent strong evidence that he operated in the context of a mythic rhetorical tradition that was very old indeed and employed them for his protreptic ends.

Page 172 →In the conclusion of this work, I summarize and synthesize the previous chapters but note that the rhetorical myths covered here represent only a limited geographical and temporal selection I highlight because of their synchronic history but persistent connectivity. It is evident that Plato, the mythmaker, represented one key figure that perpetuated this tradition in a tortuous but unbroken path from 2650 bce to his own time and milieu, a path that takes us from Uruk to Athens and from Athens to Atlantis.