Atlantis Pyramids Floods by Dennis Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

among
yourselves. As for those genealogies of yours which you just now
recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of
children.
    In the first place you remember a
single deluge only, but there were many previous ones; in the next
place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your land the
fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you and
your whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of them
which survived.
    And this was unknown to you, because,
for many generations, the survivors of that destruction died,
leaving no written word. For there was a time, Solon, before the
great deluge of all, when the city which now is Athens was first in
war and in every way the best governed of all cities, is said to
have performed the noblest deeds and to have had the fairest
constitution of any of which tradition tells, under the face of
heaven.
    Solon marveled at his words, and
earnestly requested the priests to inform him exactly and in order
about these former citizens. You are welcome to hear about them,
Solon, said the priest, both for your own sake and for that of your
city, and above all, for the sake of the goddess who is the common
patron and parent and educator of both our cities. She founded your
city a thousand years before ours, receiving from the Earth and
Hephaestus the seed of your race, and afterwards she founded ours,
of which the constitution is recorded in our sacred registers to be
eight thousand years old.
    As touching your citizens of nine
thousand years ago, I will briefly inform you of their laws and of
their most famous action; the exact particulars of the whole we
will hereafter go through at our leisure in the sacred registers
themselves. If you compare these very laws with ours you will find
that many of ours are the counterpart of yours as they were in the
olden time.
    In the first place, there is the caste
of priests, which is separated from all the others; next, there are
the artificers, who ply their several crafts by themselves and do
not intermix; and also there is the class of shepherds and of
hunters, as well as that of husbandmen; and you will observe, too,
that the warriors in Egypt are distinct from all the other classes,
and are commanded by the law to devote themselves solely to
military pursuits; moreover, the weapons which they carry are
shields and spears, a style of equipment which the goddess taught
of Asiatics first to us, as in your part of the world first to
you.
    Then as to wisdom, do you observe how
our law from the very first made a study of the whole order of
things, extending even to prophecy and medicine which gives health,
out of these divine elements deriving what was needful for human
life, and adding every sort of knowledge which was akin to
them.
    All this order and arrangement the
goddess first imparted to you when establishing your city; and she
chose the spot of earth in which you were born, because she saw
that the happy temperament of the seasons in that land would
produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess, who was a lover
both of war and of wisdom, selected and first of all settled that
spot which was the most likely to produce men likest herself. And
there you dwelt, having such laws as these and still better ones,
and excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became the children and
disciples of the gods.
    Many great and wonderful deeds are
recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds
all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a
mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole
of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end.
    This power came forth out of the
Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and
there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by
you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than
Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and
from these you might pass to the whole of