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Also, please bear in mind that there's a good reason to suspect that Plato bent a lot of things to suit his goal of trying to explain philosophical concepts. S

by munk-a 5y ago

Also, please bear in mind that there's a good reason to suspect that Plato bent a lot of things to suit his goal of trying to explain philosophical concepts. Socrates is often hailed as one of the greatest western philosophers but we have almost no record of his character outside the dramatizations written by Plato. We're almost certain he was a real person but if Plato is to be trusted he was extremely against any preservation of his discourses - almost everything we've got on him comes from Plato describing his mentor. So Atlantis might be much the same - the story of a city lost to flooding (maybe even the same root story as the biblical one) repurposed and embellished to express a philosophical point.

neaden 5y ago
While I agree with you about Plato, I think you are underestimating our other sources on Socrates. The historian Xenephon was also one of his students and talked about him in his works, including Socrates' trial and death. The playwright Aristophanes also parodied Socrates in one of his works and while it is a parody what it is parodying is consistent with what we know of Socrates' philosophy as presented by Plato and shows he was a fairly well known figure at least among the play going audience.