Plato did of course write about Atlantis in the Timaeus and the Critias. He said that Solon had said that the Egyptians had said that nine thousand years before there had been a great island in the Atlantic, "larger than Libya and Asia together," which traded, flourished, grew proud and sent its "mighty host . . . insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe and Asia to boot. Then Fate intervened-- "there occurred portentous earthquakes and floods, and in one grievous day and night . . . the island of Atlantis was swallowed up by the sea and vanished. . ." Plato spent a lot of time describing the political practices of the Atlanteans, and obviously meant the "island" to be understoon as only a rhetorical device, no more real than his "republic." Geologists agree that there has been no vast earth convulsion as recently as 10,000 B.C., and even if there had been, no land mass as large as the "island" Plato described could have sunk far beneath the sea in one day and night. . .