The Tyrian theory has been mainly sustained by a foolish book, by a foolish man, An Original History of Anc. America (London, 1843), by Geo. Jones, later known as the Count Johannes (cf. Bancroft’s Native Races, v. 73).
The Carthaginian discovery rests mainly on the statements of Diodorus Siculus.[384]
Baron Zach in his Correspondenz undertakes to say that Roman voyages to America were common in the days of Seneca, and a good deal of wild speculation has been indulged in.[385]
[D.] Atlantis.—The story of Atlantis rests solely upon the authority of Plato, who sketched it in the Timaeus, and began an elaborated version in the Critias (if that fragment be by him), which old writers often cite as the Atlanticus. This is frequently forgotten by those who try to establish the truth of the story, who often write as if all statements in print were equally available as “authorities,” and quote as corroborations of the tale all mentions of it made by classical writers, regardless of the fact that all are later than Plato, and can no more than Ignatius Donnelly corroborate him. In fact, the ancients knew no better than we what to make of the story, and diverse opinions prevailed then as now. Many of these opinions are collected by Proclus in the first book of his commentary on the Timaeus,[386] and all shades of opinion are represented from those who, like Crantor, accepted the story as simply historical, to those who regarded it as a mere fable. Still others, with Proclus himself, accepted it as a record of actual events, while accounting for its introduction in Plato by a variety of subtile metaphysical interpretations. Proclus reports that Crantor, the first commentator upon Plato (circa b.c. 300), asserted that the Egyptian priests said that the story was written on pillars which were still preserved,[387] and he likewise quotes from the Ethiopic History of Marcellus, a writer of whom nothing else is known, a statement that according to certain historians there were seven islands in the external sea sacred to Proserpine; and also three others of great size, one sacred to Pluto, one to Ammon, and another, the middle one, a thousand stadia in size, sacred to Neptune. The inhabitants of it preserved the remembrance, from their ancestors, of the Atlantic island which existed there, and was truly prodigiously great, which for many periods had dominion over all the islands in the Atlantic sea, and was itself sacred to Neptune.[388] Testimony like this is of little value in such a case. What comes to us at third hand is more apt to need support than give it; yet these two passages are the strongest evidence of knowledge of Atlantis outside of Plato that is preserved. We do indeed find mention of it elsewhere and earlier. Thus Strabo[389] says that Posidonius (b.c. 135-51) suggested that, as the land was known to have changed in elevation, Atlantis might not be a fiction, but that such an island-continent might actually have existed and disappeared. Pliny[390] also mentions Atlantis in treating of changes in the earth’s surface, though he qualifies his quotation with “si Platoni credimus.”[391] A mention of the story in a similar connection is made by Ammianus Marcellinus.[392]
In the Scholia to Plato’s Republic it is said that at the great Panathenaea there was carried in procession a peplum ornamented with representations of the contest between the giants and the gods, while on the peplum carried in the little Panathenaea could be seen the war of the Athenians against the Atlantides. Even Humboldt accepted this as an independent testimony in favor of the antiquity of the story; but Martin has shown that, apart from the total inconsistency of the report with the expressions of Plato, who places the narration of this forgotten deed of his countrymen at the celebration of the festival of the little Panathenaea, the scholiast has only misread Proclus, who states that the peplum depicted the repulse of the barbarians, i. e. Persians, by the Greeks.[393] To these passages it is customary to add references to the Meropian continent of Theopompus,[394] the Saturnian of Plutarch, the islands of Aristotle, Diodorus and Pausanias,—which is very much as if one should refer to the New Atlantis of Bacon as evidence for the existence of More’s Utopia.[395] Plutarch in his life of Solon attributes Solon’s having given up the idea of an epic upon Atlantis to his advanced age rather than to want of leisure; but there is nothing to show that he had any evidence beyond Plato that Solon ever thought of such a poem, and Plato does not say that Solon began the poem, though Plutarch appears to have so understood him.[396] Thus it seems more probable that all the references to Atlantis by ancient writers are derived from the story in Plato than that they are independent and corroborative statements.
With the decline of the Platonic school at Alexandria even the name of Atlantis readily vanished from literature. It is mentioned by Tertullian,[397] and found a place in the strange system of Cosmas Indicopleustes,[398] but throughout the Middle Ages little or nothing was known of it. That it was not quite forgotten appears from its mention in the Image du Monde, a poem of the thirteenth century, still in MS., where it is assigned a location in the Mer Betée (= coagulée).[399] Plato was printed in Latin in 1483, 1484, 1491, and in Greek in 1513, and in 1534 with the commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus.[400] The Timaeus was printed separately five times in the sixteenth century, and also in a French and an Italian translation.[401]
The discovery of America doubtless added to the interest with which the story was perused, and the old controversy flamed up with new ardor. It was generally assumed that the account given by Plato was not his invention. Opinions were, however, divided as to whether he had given a correct account. Of those who believed that he had erred as to the locality or as to the destruction of the island, some thought that America was the true Atlantis, while others, with whose ideas we have no concern here, placed Atlantis in Africa, Asia, or Europe, as prejudice led them. Another class of scholars, sensible of the necessity of adhering to the text of the only extant account, accepted the whole narrative, and endeavored to find in the geography of the Atlantic, or as indicated by the resemblances between the flora, fauna, and civilization of America and of the old world, additional reasons for believing that such an island had once existed, and had disappeared after serving as a bridge by which communication between the continents was for a time carried on. The discussion was prolonged over centuries, and is not yet concluded. The wilder theories have been eliminated by time, and the contest may now be said to be between those who accept Plato’s tale as true and those who regard it as an invention. The latter view is at present in favor with the most conservative and careful scholars, but the other will always find advocates. That Atlantis was America was maintained by Gomara, Guillaume de Postel, Horn, and others incidentally, and by Birchrod in a special treatise,[402] which had some influence even upon the geographer Cellarius. In 1669 the Sansons published a map showing America divided among the descendants of Neptune as Atlantis was divided, and even as late as 1762 Vaugondy reproduced it.[403] In his edition of Plato, Stallbaum expressed his belief that the Egyptians might have had some knowledge of America.[404] Cluverius thought the story was due to a knowledge of America.[405]
Very lately Hyde Clark has found in the Atlantis fable evidence of a knowledge of America: he does not believe in the connecting island Atlantis, but he holds that Plato misinterpreted some account of America which had reached him.[406] Except for completeness it is scarcely worth mentioning that Blackett, whose work can really be characterized by no other word than absurd, sees America in Atlantis.[407]
Here should be mentioned a work by Berlioux, which puts Euhemerus to the blush in the manner in which history with much detail is extorted from mythology.[408] He holds that Atlantis was the northwestern coast of Africa; that under Ouranos and Atlas, astronomers and kings, it was the seat of a great empire which had conquered portions of America and kept a lively commercial intercourse with that country.
Ortelius in several places speaks of the belief that America was the old Atlantis, and also attributes that belief to Mercator.[409]