by Ryu Mitsuse
But his interest in Atlantis only increased.
Some who came after Plato interpreted his yearning for Atlantis as a facet of his quest for the ideal state, but this couldn’t have been further from the truth. The thing that drove him westward was his passion, undiminished since youth, for adventure in unknown lands.
After the sentencing of his teacher, Socrates, Plato had gone to Megara, homeland of his elder Eukleides, and there he had first learned of other peoples—barbarians—living within the Greek world. Humanity, went the common opinion of the day, was a distinction reserved only for the Greek; to educate a barbarian was to welcome him into the fold of civilization. Yet many barbarians proved intractable, unwilling to participate in the glory that was the polis —the Greek city-state. Persia threatened from the east and Carthage from the west. At times, Plato felt as though the non-Greek world would overrun the world he knew. To a citizen of Greece such as himself, the downfall of Greece meant the collapse of the polis, and there was only one way to save his society from fading away altogether—to realize a strong and resilient “ideal state.” Yet, rather suddenly after their inception, Plato’s political dreams turned down the path of pessimism.
The age called for empire. It was already being said among a certain segment of the cognoscenti that the uniform rule of a single archon over all Hellas was preferable to the chaotic polis society of independent city-states.
In later years, Plato visited Archytas, who was serving as director of a Pythagorean school in southern Italy. Then he went to visit Dionysos the First in Sicilia, where he first made the acquaintance of Dionysos’s brother-in-law, Dion. He made no small number of friends there and returned later, at Dion’s request, during the reign of Dionysos the Second. There he was subjected to a scathing counterargument to his theory of the ideal state from actual politicians. A shadow passed over these thoughts in his mind. During this time, he also traveled to many other lands: Crete, Carthage, Algeria, and even as far as Judea and the Sinai Peninsula. It would be difficult to sum up all he saw in those travels, but it is clear that his solitary drive toward the unknown kept him far better company than the rapidly fading patina of his ideal state. For Plato, all roads led toward Atlantis.
That night, Isus, the legate of Sais, held a great banquet for the famous scholar of Athens. Isus’s villa was a magnificent affair constructed of slick polished rock, white with deep brown speckles, that faced the central courtyard in town. It was decorated all about with lit sconces, and even the two hundred or so slaves who bustled about the grounds seemed an insufficient number to carry all of the wine jars up from the cellars.
Plato found himself holding a silver goblet filled with retsina as he peered at the fires that burned atop the elegantly carved pillars. Long blue flames wavered from three saucers of oil on each capital. Meanwhile, a warrior in the middle of the courtyard moved through his forms in a demonstration of skill. He was a large man with a brown beard—a foreigner from the East by his appearance—and the two swords he swung around him danced like waterwheel shadows. As the man moved, the long scar that ran from his shoulder down his back seemed to stretch and contract upon his skin like a living thing.
“Master Plato?”
Isus leaned across the table. His light blue eyes peered at Plato’s face. A good man, by his bearing and demeanor, the philosopher thought. Plato took a sip of wine while his free hand went to a nearby saucer, plucking out an olive drenched in sheep’s milk.
“I’ll need Gladius and four others,” he said quietly. “And donkeys.”
The journey Plato was about to undertake would make any other he had experienced seem like an afternoon stroll by comparison. His sister’s child Speusippus would look after the Akademia in his absence. He would have to skip the fall seminar this year, but he could always make up for it with a special session the following spring.
Plato’s face tilted upward as he sank into his thoughts. For a long moment his expression was as vacant as that of a fever victim, until a slave poured fresh wine into the goblet in his hand and its weight brought him back to his senses.
“Master Plato, I have a request—a small request,” Isus began, his voice hesitant and quiet, as though he had been waiting for this moment for some time.
“A request?” Plato said without turning to look at him. “How could I, your guest at this sumptuous reception, refuse you anything?”
The man’s face broke into a broad smile. “Isus is honored by your words,” the legate purred. He twisted around to give a hushed command to an old retainer who hovered behind him.
In the courtyard a woman was now dancing, having replaced the foreign warrior some time ago. She plucked a lyre even as she moved with windlike grace.
The old retainer led a tall, younger man up to the table.
Isus spoke. “Master Plato, this man is Eamos, head instructor at our college in Sais. He revealed to me some time ago his great desire to learn from you, the great philosopher, the true heir to Socrates. If you would be so kind as to oblige me by fulfilling this, Eamos’s one wish.”
The tall man bowed his head low before the seated philosopher.
Plato cursed inwardly. More than anything, he felt deceived. He knew it was popular, especially in places such as this where Eastern influences ran deep, for provincial legates to establish a so-called “college” in part of their villa where they kept pet philosophers and poets and the like in order to show off the refinement of their own noble education. This legate Isus would doubtless be thrilled to boast that his own resident scholar had studied at the foot of none other than the great philosopher Plato.
Plato turned his eyes away from the man and took a spoonful of honey-stewed lamb from a pot on the table.
“Go on, Eamos, go on.” Isus gave his own fledgling philosopher a shove on the hindquarters, pushing him toward the suddenly grim Plato. The poor fellow was rigid with nerves, and his limbs trembled violently.
“Ask your question.”
Plato’s thick brown beard framed his face harshly; in the glow of the flickering sconces, his sunken eyes seemed to burn with an unearthly light, and the lines of a weary frown across his brow made his visage suddenly fearsome. Isus’s philosopher startled at his look, staring like a hare in a trap, and he reddened with embarrassment. His eyes jumped to the courtyard beyond the table, as though trying to avoid the older man’s gaze. Plato looked down at his stew and said quietly, “You do have a question, do you not?”
His voice was gentle. He saw no point in shaming the man or spurning him. If scholarship is what this man has offered in exchange for receiving bread and board from this provincial noble, then he has done very well for himself, and who am I to judge another’s livelihood? Besides, I am sure there is Truth to be found even within a man such as this. He brought another spoonful of stew to his mouth and favored the scholar with a smile. Whatever he’s going to ask, he’d better ask it quick or his employer will fear his money wasted.
Suddenly, Eamos lifted his head. “A-are ideas unchanging?” he asked, thrusting the words out like fists.
There, that’s more like it.
Plato shifted in his chair so that his body was now facing Eamos. “Ideas have an objective existence. They are not the material of thought, but the object of thought, outside the thinker. The world we experience is a phenomenal world, a reflection of the world of ideas. The vicissitudes of life merely suggest that all things are in a state of flux because of the inherently unstable manner in which this world receives the Truth of ideas. Thus it falls to us to endeavor to see through that fluctuation to perceive that which is universal—that which exists objectively,” Plato explained, his voice deliberately assertive.
Eamos muttered something, but the words failed to pass his own lips. He looked up again. “And the ideal state?”
Plato noisily sipped at his stew and reflected on how this was the first time he had lectured in quite this manner. Of course, he often found himself pontificating on Truth and Beauty whil
e drinking wine or soaking in the baths, but this game he played now followed an entirely different set of rules. In this game, not only was he expected to inform, he was furthermore obliged to award his participant a medal.
“The ideal state holds as its governing ideology a philosophy based upon the fundamental concepts of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. In other words—” Plato took a swig of some pungent goat’s milk to wash down a lump of meat from his stew. “As reason is illuminated by the lens of wisdom, so does it develop from something experiential into something universal. Only with universal reason may we perceive the fundamental Truth shared by all things.” He cleared his throat. “Truth, mind you, is not some thing existing in a solid, unchanging state; it is universal objectivity itself. Now, while ‘will’ is the sum of the choices we make by virtue of our courage, the fundamental concept of Goodness is none other than the universal will. As for Beauty, that beauty which we perceive is limited, a mere projection of the phenomenon of a greater, limitless Beauty. Within men this quality manifests in the form of the passions and the moderation of arbitrariness. It is only by achieving harmony between these three fundamentals that the entire soul may take on the virtue of righteousness. This is a basic qualification for one who would rule, as it is for those who would aid him and, indeed, for all citizens of the ideal state.”
Plato spoke succinctly, one word after the other, as though he were speaking to a student at his own Akademia. Eamos stood with his head hanging low. He remained quiet as Plato finished, leaving his teacher unsure whether he had understood any of what he said. A sudden weariness came over Plato and he lifted his wine goblet. But Isus sprang to his feet, jumping like a boy at play, thanking him repeatedly. It was at that instant that Plato knew with certainty he would leave upon his journey to the west the next morning. He wanted to be alone. And he felt a longing for that great continent, touched by the wrath of the gods, alone in Poseidon’s endless sea, as though it were his own homeland.
It was a very long time before Plato forgot the events of that night. In fact, that banquet marked the last time he spoke on philosophy to another. Contrary to popular opinion, Plato did not write Timaeus or Critias himself. These were compiled by his followers in later years. What he began writing shortly after that night in Sais was an account of his long journey from Libya to Numidia and farther west, past the Atlas Mountains into Mauretania. It was these writings he sent in a great volume to his prized disciple Aristotle—though it remains doubtful whether his able pupil showed much interest in them.
In the face of pressure from Persia in the east, Carthage in the west, and the newly risen Macedonia in the north, mounting strife had worn away at the freedom and independence of the Greek polis. The evening bells of Greece were ringing when Speusippus—heir to the Akademia—and others of Plato’s disciples collected their master’s scattered writings into new works, ten of which remain to this day. Of these, Timaeus and Critias held but fragments of the records of his travels.
In 347 BC, in a chamber within his Akademia, built within the sacred grove of Akademos, Plato passed from this world. This is true. But there are few who know the other truth about Plato’s later years.
Gladius, Plato’s follower upon his journey to the West, who became Plato’s shadow and trusted assistant, spent his last days in solitude in Biskra near Carthage. For the most part, he avoided the company of others, yet there were times when, lips loosened by drink, he would tell stories. At these times he would claim that he had seen the hero Atlas from ancient myths with his own eyes. That Atlas was indeed a titan who held up the world from his glorious country of Atlantis. And that his master, Plato, had gone on to heaven in search of the true titans.
Plato’s entourage left Sais and headed west beneath the blazing sun. Thanks to the enthusiastic support of Isus, legate of Sais, the philosopher had been able to acquire a total of eight slaves and four donkeys. Plato rode one of the animals, Gladius another; the third carried their food and water, while the fourth was kept in reserve. Behind them followed the slaves, laden with a variety of goods purchased in Sais. They spent just a short while on the road before turning aside to the coast, where they hired a ship. Only twelve days after leaving Sais they arrived in Carthage.
The king of Carthage was pleased to have such an esteemed guest in his domain, and he prepared extra supplies for them to take on the next phase of their journey along the main road south of the Atlas Mountains. In the town of Capsa, Plato sent back the slaves he had borrowed from Isus and took on three hardy youths the king had supplied. They headed southwest along the foothills, following a dry riverbed from Biskra to the town of M’sila. From there the road passed through a vast wasteland of desert, heading toward Iguidi. They had already reached the farthest outlands of Carthage. Now they made for Elcasia—a small oasis in a corner of the desert, and Plato’s first major goal.
The journey to Elcasia was a hard one. They split their baggage between the four pack animals, and Plato, Gladius, and the youths leaned on their walking sticks as they treaded across the shifting sands. Eight days out of M’sila, Plato climbed up a tall dune from which the sand spilled in a soundless torrent and spotted the tiny village in the distance. It was little more than a few low roofs huddled beneath the meager shade of two or three barren tamarisks.
“Elcasia,” the philosopher said simply.
The traveling party made its way straight down the far side of the dune toward the houses. Passing through a barren valley, they were startled by an unfamiliar bird taking wing. By the time they had climbed to the top of the next dune, the village was directly beneath them.
As they approached, several men emerged from the dwellings. They wore short tunics tied with leather belts and shallow hoods on their heads. Plato noted their clothing with interest—this was nothing like what the people of Persia or Egypt wore.
“We mean no harm,” Plato called out. “I am Plato of Athens, and these are my men.” It was doubtful that these people had heard of the philosopher of Athens, though it would certainly make things easier if they had.
An older man stepped out from the crowd. He said something to those around him and they formed a line with him at the head and came closer.
“Plato of Athens, long ago it was that we first heard your name. I am Seim the Elder of Elcasia. You are welcome among us.” The man opened his arms wide in a gesture of greeting. “Indeed, we have been expecting you for some time now.”
Plato frowned. “Expecting me? How is that possible?”
The old man paid no mind to Plato’s muttered question and led them into the village. Low houses squatted in a circle around a spring where the meager tamarisks grew. Their walls were made of deftly carved limestone, with large windows and doors set at regular intervals. The philosopher spotted several people peering out from the windows, some looking and then ducking out of sight. Seim told the three from Carthage to wait outside and led Plato and Gladius toward one of the stone buildings.
“It’s a temple,” Plato whispered. “See how ornate its decorations are.”
The door was open, revealing a few small flames lighting the dim interior. Before the open door, the old man reached out his right hand and made a gesture as though he were pushing something away from the entrance, though there was nothing there for him to push. He stood to one side and ushered the two of them in.
How curious.
Plato looked down at the old man’s hand as he walked through the doorway. It appeared he was still pushing something back toward the wall with it. Plato stared at the old man and the wall, making no attempt at subtlety. The old man grinned.
“Looking for this, perhaps?”
The old man relaxed his arm and Gladius jumped back with a yelp.
A large panel of something transparent—perfectly transparent—had come swinging out, pivoting on an axis set flush with the stone wall. When it had swung out all the way, it closed the entrance with a perfect seal.
“Glaes. This is glaes.” The man tapped t
he translucent panel with one finger. It made a hard, clear sound, like metal. “Not even an arrow from the tallest bow wielded by the strongest man may pierce it.”
Plato stared at the swinging door, speechless. He had never seen anything like it. He had heard once from a Persian trader of a material that allowed light to pass through as though it were water, but he never imagined it to be so wonderfully transparent. He realized that the people of Elcasia must be using the same material in the windows in their village. How else could they possibly admit light to their homes in the middle of a desert such as this? Plato recalled the many windowless houses he had seen in Egypt and Carthage.
There is knowledge here of a level not seen in Persia, Egypt, or any of the lands farther east. This is of a different nature than anything I have encountered—an entirely different nature.
Plato stepped silently through the entranceway. The room beyond was filled with brilliance and splendor enough to dazzle the eyes. The wall reflected a beautiful orange image of the setting sun, painting Plato’s outstretched hands and illuminating Gladius’s stern features.
“Orichalcum!” Plato gasped. In one corner of the shining wall stood a large square window where scintillating waves of green light rippled. “And what is that?”
The old man glanced over at the window, then motioned for Plato to take a seat at the table. “That is the window of the suzerain.”
“The suzerain?”
“You will meet him presently.”
As Plato watched, the rippling of the light seemed to slow, until he could look past its brilliance to see the silhouette of a man’s head. He gripped the edge of the table convulsively, with such strength that his knuckles cracked.
Now, framed by the clear green light, a large head and broad shoulders appeared. The light shone painfully bright, washing out any detail in the man’s full silhouette.
“Master Plato, our suzerain.” Seim the Elder made a short bow to Plato, then another to the silhouette.