: Sir Daniel Wilson
: The Lost Atlantis and Other Ethnographic Studies
: Books on Demand
: 9783748131526
: 1
: CHF 2.70
:
: Soziologie
: English
: 723
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
The story of the Lost Atlantis is recorded in the Timaeus and, with many fanciful amplifications, in the Critias of Plato. According to the dialogues, as reproduced there, Critias repeats to Socrates a story told him by his grandfather, then an old man of ninety, when he himself was not more than ten years of age. According to this narrative, Solon visited the city of Sais, at the head of the Egyptian delta, and there learned from the priests of the ancient empire of Atlantis, and of its overthrow by a convulsion of nature."No one," says Professor Jowett, in his critical edition of The Dialogues of Plato,"knew better than Plato how to invent a noble lie"; and he, unhesitatingly, pronounces the whole narrative a fabrication."The world, like a child, has readily, and for the most part, unhesitatingly accepted the tale of the Island of Atlantis."

II THE VINLAND OF THE NORTHMEN


The idea that the western hemisphere was known to the Old World, prior to the ever-memorable voyage of Columbus four centuries ago, has reproduced itself in varying phases, not only in the venerable Greek legend of the lost Atlantis; and the still vaguer myth of the Garden of the Hesperides on the far ocean horizon, the region of the setting sun; but in mediæval fancies and mythical epics. The Breton, inThe Earthly Paradiseof William Morris—

Spoke of gardens ever blossoming
Across the western sea, where none grew old,
E’en as the books at Micklegarth had told;
And said moreover that an English knight
Had had the Earthly Paradise in sight;
And heard the songs of those that dwelt therein;
But entered not; being hindered by his sin.

A legend of mediæval hagiology tells of the Island of St. Brandon, the retreat of an Irish hermit of the sixth century. Another tale comes down to us from the time of the Caliph Walid, and the invincible Musa, of the “Seven Islands” whither the Christians of Gothic Spain fled under the guidance of their seven bishops, when, in the eighth century, the peninsula passed under the yoke of the victorious Saracens. The Eyrbyggja Saga has a romantic story of Biorn Ashbrandsson, who narrowly escapes in a tempest raised by his enemy, with the aid of one skilled in the black art. After undergoing many surprising adventures, he is finally discovered by voyagers, “in the latter days of Olaf the Saint,” in a strange land beyond the ocean, the chief of a warlike race speaking a language that seemed to be Irish. Biorn warned the voyagers to depart, for the people had evil designs against them. But before they sailed, he took a gold ring from his hand, and gave it to Gudleif, their leader, along with a goodly sword; and commissioned him to give the sword to Kiartan, the son of Thurid, wife of an Iceland thane at Froda, of whom he had been enamoured; and the gold ring to his mother. This done, he warned them that no man venture to re