of their father Poseidon. When night came, they put on azure robes
and gave judgment against offenders. The most important of their laws
related to their dealings with one another. They were not to take up
arms against one another, and were to come to the rescue if any of their
brethren were attacked. They were to deliberate in common about war, and
the king was not to have the power of life and death over his kinsmen,
unless he had the assent of the majority.

For many generations, as tradition tells, the people of Atlantis were
obedient to the laws and to the gods, and practised gentleness and
wisdom in their intercourse with one another. They knew that they could
only have the true use of riches by not caring about them. But gradually
the divine portion of their souls became diluted with too much of the
mortal admixture, and they began to degenerate, though to the outward
eye they appeared glorious as ever at the very time when they were
filled with all iniquity. The all-seeing Zeus, wanting to punish them,
held a council of the gods, and when he had called them together, he
spoke as follows:--

No one knew better than Plato how to invent 'a noble lie.' Observe (1)
the innocent declaration of Socrates, that the truth of the story is
a great advantage: (2) the manner in which traditional names and
indications of geography are intermingled ('Why, here be truths!'): (3)
the extreme minuteness with which the numbers are given, as in the
Old Epic poetry: (4) the ingenious reason assigned for the Greek names
occurring in the Egyptian tale: (5) the remark that the armed statue
of Athena indicated the common warrior life of men and women: (6) the
particularity with which the third deluge before that of Deucalion is
affirmed to have been the great destruction: (7) the happy guess that
great geological changes have been effected by water: (8) the indulgence
of the prejudice against sailing beyond the Columns, and the popular
belief of the shallowness of the ocean in that part: (9) the confession
that the depth of the ditch in the Island of Atlantis was not to be
believed, and 'yet he could only repeat what he had heard', compared
with the statement made in an earlier passage that Poseidon, being a
God, found no difficulty in contriving the water-supply of the centre
island: (10) the mention of the old rivalry of Poseidon and Athene, and
the creation of the first inhabitants out of the soil. Plato here, as
elsewhere, ingeniou