Timaeus — Plato

Critias. Critias.

The grove of Poseidon.

Aqueducts. Temples. Gardens. Hippodromes.

Guard-houses.

Docks.

Between the outermost wall and the great harbour was the mercantile quarter.

The city lay in an oblong plain, surrounded by mountains, which descended abruptly into the sea.

p. 540

Disposition of the country.

Critias. Critias.

The great foss, loo feet in depth, 600 in width, and 10,000 stadia in length.

The cross canals.

Two harvests.

60,000 lots and 60,000 officers.

across the centre inland it was two thousand stadia. This part of the island looked towards the south, and was sheltered from the north.

The surrounding mountains were celebrated for their number and size and beauty, far beyond any which still exist, having in them also many wealthy villages of country folk, and rivers, and lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for every animal, wild or tame, and much wood of various sorts, abundant for each and every kind of work.

I will now describe the plain, as it was fashioned by nature and by the labours of many generations of kings through long ages. It was for the most part rectangular and oblong, and where falling out of the straight line followed the circular ditch. The depth, and width, and length of this ditch were incredible, and gave the impression that a work of such extent, in addition to so many others, could never have been artificial.

Nevertheless I must say what I was told. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere ; it was carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length. It received the streams which came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain and meeting at the city, was there let off into the sea.

Further inland, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut from it through the plain, and again let off into the ditch leading to the sea : these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, and by them they brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into another, and to the city.

Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the earth — in winter having the benefit of the rains of heaven, and in summer the water which the land supplied by introducing streams from the canals. As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had to find a leader for the men who were fit for military service, and the size of a lot was a square of ten stadia each way, and the total number of all the lots was sixty thousand.

And of the inhabitants of the mountains and of the rest of the country there was also a vast multitude, which was distributed among the lots and had leaders assigned to them according to their districts and villages. The leader was

The meeting of the kings every fifth and sixth year.

541 required to furnish for the war the sixth portion of a war- Critias. chariot, so as to make up a total of ten thousand chariots ; Critias. also two horses and riders for them, and a pair of chariot- Military horses without a seat, accompanied by a horseman who could '^'■"'^"s^^ '• IO,CXX) fight on foot carrymg a small shield, and having a charioteer chariots, 1,300 who stood behind the man-at-arms to guide the two horses ; ^^'p**' ^*^' also, he was bound to furnish two heavy-armed soldiers, two archers, two slingers, three stone-shooters and three javelinmen, who were light-armed, and four sailors to make up the complement of twelve hundred ships.

Such was the military order of the royal city — the order of the other nine governments varied, and it would be wearisome to recount their several differences. As to offices and honours, the following was the arrange- i.aws affecting ment from the first.

Each of the ten kiners in his own ^^^^^'"g^'"- '-' scnbed on a division and in his own city had the absolute control of the column of citizens, and, in most cases, of the laws, punishing and slaying °''"^*^^''^"'"- whomsoever he would. Now the order of precedence among them and their mutual relations were regulated by the commands of Poseidon which the law had handed down.

These were inscribed by the first kings on a pillar of orichalcum, which was situated in the middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon, whither the kings were gathered together every fifth and every sixth year alternately, thus giving equal honour to the odd and to the even number.

And when they were gathered together they consulted about Administratheir common interests, and enquired if any one had trans- (^""s'jj^^^h^* gressed in anything, and passed judgment, and before they ten kings in passed judgment they gave their pledges to one another on %'l^^^^ "'^ this wise: — There were bulls who had the range of the after sacrifice temple of Poseidon ; and the ten kings, being left alone in ^"'^ p^yer. the temple, after they had offered prayers to the god that they might capture the victim which was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, without weapons, bur. with staves and nooses ; and the bull which they caught they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of it so that the blood fell upon the sacred inscription.

Now on the pillar, besides the laws, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When therefore, after slaying the bull in the accustomed manner, they had burnt