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302 Nesselrath, H 302 De novis libris iudicia / G. Jonkers / Mnemosyne 62 (2009) 302-305 Nesselrath, H.-G. 2006. Platon, VIII.4: Kritias, Übersetzung und Kommentar von H.-G.N. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 496 S. Pr. €79.90 (hb). Nesselrath’s translation of and commentary on Plato’s Critias constitutes volume VIII.4 (in accordance with the tetralogical numbering) of a series that is to publish the complete works of Plato in German translation with commentary. Th e transla- tion makes for pleasant reading and is a faithful rendering of the original Greek text. Th e commentary is predominantly philological and therefore mainly focuses on problems of the constitution and interpretation of the text. A useful feature is that the commentary contains lemmata providing not only the text in translation, but also the Greek text (Burnet’s edition, with some slight changes). In the com- mentary, separate sections of the text are preceded by a synopsis. In telling the tale of Atlantis in the Critias, Plato does not intend to revive memories of a forgotten island; his story requires a state dominating through its military force but rotten from the inside, as a counterbalance to the historic and morally uncorrupted Athens: a far-away island that does not exist anymore, hav- ing been swallowed by a tidal wave. Plato pretends that Solon saved memories of Atlantis, but there is no reason to suppose that Atlantis is not Plato’s own fiction. Nesselrath does not go into the history of the speculation about Atlantis’ existence in his introduction, but he refers to a previous publication (2002. Platon und die Erfindung von Atlantis (Leipzig/München)). Th e name ‘Atlantic sea’ is first mentioned by Herodotus (1.202) to describe the sea to the west of the Pillars of Hercules. Th is is where Plato situates his island, which he names after Poseidon’s and Cleito’s eldest son Atlas. He depicts Poseidon as the island’s tutelary deity, thus giving a mythical background to the conflict between Atlantis and the city of Athens: Poseidon would have liked to become Athens’ protector, but his rival Athena won the contest. In the Timaeus, Critias had announced that he would tell the story of the conflict between Athens and Atlantis, but in the Critias he gets no further than an introduction: after a short description of ancient Athens and a longer one of the island of Atlantis, the dialogue is interrupted, just at the point where the actual story of the war is about to begin. Th e text occupies no more than fifteen pages in Stephanus’ edition. Why didn’t Plato complete the dialogue? Nesselrath argues (pp. 34-41) that Plato, while writing, changed plans and simply stopped working on the Critias. Instead, he started writing the Laws, which he believed to be a bet- ter example of the ideal state in practice than the Critias. Nesselrath rejects other possible explanations, for instance that the aged Plato was no longer capable of the necessary creative imagination—after all, he did write the Laws!—or that he died while writing the Critias—for in that case he would not have been able to finish © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/156852508X321446 De novis libris iudicia / G. Jonkers / Mnemosyne 62 (2009) 302-305 303 the Laws either, which is generally believed to be Plato’s last work. Nesselrath also refutes the unlikely hypothesis that the dialogue as we have it is actually finished. Can Critias be identified with the Critias, the hated Athenian tyrant at the end of the Peloponnesian war? Yes, Nesselrath says, once more providing solid argu- ments against the hypothesis that Plato would have referred to a grandfather of the tyrant. In the series of conversations about the ideal state, a fourth speaker was announced after Socrates, Timaeus and Critias, namely Hermocrates. Th is Hermocrates must be the Syracusan politician who, on two occasions, proved to be the Athenians’ opponent and nemesis during their expeditions to Sicily (in 424 and 415-413). Critias and Hermocrates were the ideal pair to criticize Athe- nian democracy of the time: Critias as an inside opponent and Hermocrates from the outside. Internal indications for the dramatic date for the conversation are contradic- tory. Whether the conversation is historic or not is not certain either. Plato does not seem to have considered it worthwhile to make the conversation even histori- cally plausible. Plato wrote the Critias, and also the Timaeus, between 360 and 354. Comparisons with Isocrates’ works show both a terminus post and ante quem. Th is puts the Critias into the final set of Plato’s dialogues, but not as the very last one. Nesselrath repeatedly points to examples in Herodotus and Th ucydides that may have inspired Plato for his description of ancient Athens and his model of Atlantis. Just as both historians do, Plato prefaces his (projected) tale about the conflict between two states and their respective satellites by a description of both adversaries, as already indicated by Brisson and Gill in their studies on the Critias (Nesselrath in his note on 109a2-8). Just like Herodotus and Th ucydides, Plato uses contemporary topographical phenomena in the city as sources for the recon- struction of the past (see Nesselrath’s notes on 110a6-c2 and 111a2-d8). Herodo- tus’ description of Ecbatana, Babylon, the Hephaestion in Memphis and the Egyptian city of Bubastis may have served as examples for Plato in his depiction of Atlantis. Th e commentary is full of interesting observations. I will give a few examples. Why is Th eseus’ name missing among the three mythical kings of old Athens? Nesselrath (pp. 161-2) suggests three reasons: Th eseus is mentioned by Th ucy- dides (2.15) as a representative of a new generation of kings. He is said to have brought Attica, originally divided into various poleis, to unity. More important, however, is the fact that other authors, such as Euripides and Isocrates, present Th eseus as the arch-father of democracy, a fact that Plato could not use in his Critias, just as he could not use Th eseus’ frequent portrayal as a son of Poseidon’s, who is Atlantis’ original father in the Critias. .
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