Timaeus and Critias

Introduction

The Timaeus is Plato's only systematic account of the cosmos: a divine craftsman, looking to the eternal Forms, shapes disordered matter into an ordered world and gives it a soul. The dialogue goes on to the geometry of the elements, the human body and disease, and in the Middle Ages it was almost the only work of Plato that could be read in Western Europe. Its sequel, the Critias, tells of the war between ancient Athens and the mighty island empire of Atlantis beyond the Pillars of Hercules. It is the source of the Atlantis legend, and it breaks off at its climax.