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[[File: Atlantis 4.jpg|200px|thumb|left|A Minoan Palace at Knossos]]

In the dialogue Critias, a well-known Athenian politician relates that the Olympian Gods divided the earth between them. The sea-god Poseidon was allocated the great island of Atlantis. This was located beyond the Straits of Gibraltar and was therefore situated in the Atlantic Ocean. It was believed to be very large and was approximately 500 miles long <ref>Plato. Critias. 32 b</ref>It was very fertile and rich, but it was very prone to earthquakes. According to Egyptian sources, the island was hilly and in the center was a great plain. Critias in the Platonic dialogue states that Poseidon had five pairs of twins with a nymph. The firstborn son was named Atlas and he later became monarch of the island. The Atlantic Ocean is named after this fabled king. The other sons of Poseidon were also given extensive territories to rule in and around Atlantis. According to the Platonic dialogue, Poseidon created a palace for the mother of Atlas. Near here, the Atlanteans build a canal and tunnels that linked this palace to the rest of the island<ref>Plato. Critias. 32 b</ref>. They also built a great city that was surrounded by mighty walls, that were multi-colored and covered with precious metals. Plato has Critias state that Atlantis was a veritable paradise on earth for many centuries. It was a well-ordered land, that was justly ruled, and its kings were wise. In the Platonic dialogue, the island is portrayed as the perfect society and a Utopia. However, over time, the Atlanteans became decadent and lost their old virtue and become increasingly rapacious and war-like ref>, Plato. Critias. 32 b</ref>. Some 9000 years ago there was a great war, between the Atlanteans and the rest of the inhabited world. The Atlanteans had subjugated most of Europe, as far as Italy. Athens led a coalition against the new Atlantean Empire. Even though the Athenians were betrayed by their allies, they still managed to defeat the Atlanteans<ref>, Plato. Critias. 32 b</ref>. Soon after the defeat of Atlantis, a series of floods and earthquakes shook the island and this led it to subside and eventually to sink into the sea<ref>Forsyth, p. 18</ref>. All traces of it apart from some records have vanished according to the Dialogue. We do not know if Plato invented the fable or if there was an actual myth about the great island, in the Classical era. In Ancient times, opinion was divided on the historicity of the island, some such as Strabo believed it to be true, while others saw it as a fiction. The tale of Atlantis inspired Francis Bacon in his great work the New Atlantis and St Thomas More in his work Utopia. In 1882, the Minnesotan politician Ignatius L. Donnelly wrote the pseudo-historical work Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. Donnelly took Plato literally and he contended that there had once been a huge island in the mid-Atlantic and that the Atlanteans once had a superior civilization. This work revived interest in Plato’s philosophical narrative and from then on there are those who have been committed to finding the lost island or continent.

==The Minoans==

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