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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: may be replied that there is no such legend in any writer previous to
Plato; neither in Homer, nor in Pindar, nor in Herodotus is there any
mention of an Island of Atlantis, nor any reference to it in Aristotle, nor
any citation of an earlier writer by a later one in which it is to be
found. Nor have any traces been discovered hitherto in Egyptian monuments
of a connexion between Greece and Egypt older than the eighth or ninth
century B.C. It is true that Proclus, writing in the fifth century after
Christ, tells us of stones and columns in Egypt on which the history of the
Island of Atlantis was engraved. The statement may be false--there are
similar tales about columns set up 'by the Canaanites whom Joshua drove
out' (Procop.); but even if true, it would only show that the legend, 800
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