eased to have a
history and began to appropriate the legends of other nations, many such
monuments were to be found of events which had become famous in that or
other countries. The oldest witness to the story is said to be Crantor,
a Stoic philosopher who lived a generation later than Plato, and
therefore may have borrowed it from him. The statement is found in
Proclus; but we require better assurance than Proclus can give us before
we accept this or any other statement which he makes.

Secondly, passing from the external to the internal evidence, we may
remark that the story is far more likely to have been invented by Plato
than to have been brought by Solon from Egypt. That is another part of
his legend which Plato also seeks to impose upon us. The verisimilitude
which he has given to the tale is a further reason for suspecting it;
for he could easily 'invent Egyptian or any other tales' (Phaedrus). Are
not the words, 'The truth of the story is a great advantage,' if we read
between the lines, an indication of the fiction? It is only a legend
that Solon went to Egypt, and if he did he could not have conversed with
Egyptian priests or have read records in their temples. The truth is
that the introduction is a mosaic work of small touches which, partly
by their minuteness, and also by their seeming probability, win the
confidence of the reader. Who would desire better evidence than that
of Critias, who had heard the narrative in youth when the memory is
strongest at the age of ten from his grandfather Critias, an old man of
ninety, who in turn had heard it from Solon himself? Is not the famous
expression--'You Hellenes are ever children and there is no knowledge
among you hoary with age,' really a compliment to the Athenians who are
described in these words as 'ever young'? And is the thought expressed
in them to be attributed to the learning of the Egyptian priest, and not
rather to the genius of Plato? Or when the Egyptian says--'Hereafter at
our leisure we will take up the written documents and examine in detail
the exact truth about these things'--what is this but a literary trick
by which Plato sets off his narrative? Could any war between Athens and
the Island of Atlantis have really coincided with the struggle between
the Greeks and Persians, as is sufficiently hinted though not expressly
stated in the narrative of Plato? And whence came the tradition to
Egypt? or in what does the story consist except in the war