Atlantis

Plato's sunken island — and the wave Tolkien dreamed of all his life

Other names

Timaeus Plato

ca. 1 min

AI-generated voice · continually improved · veiled destinies are read aloud as wellAI voice · continually improved

In briefanswer capsule

Plato tells the story twice, in the Timaeus and the Critias: a great island power beyond the Pillars of Heracles, arrogant in its might, swallowed by the sea in a single day and night. Tolkien had what he called an Atlantis-haunting — a recurrent dream of a great wave coming in over green land, which he gave to Faramir — and he described the Downfall of Númenor plainly as a special variety of the Atlantis tradition. The Elvish name Atalantë, 'the Downfallen', was too good a coincidence to leave unused.

Atlantis according to Athanasius Kircher, 1678Kircher’s map of the sunken island between Spain and America. Tolkien’s Númenor is, as he wrote himself, his own variety of the Atlantis legend — and the great wave a recurring dream.© Athanasius Kircher · Public domain

The source text itself

Below stands the original wording of the source, public domain, with a translation of our own or one that is public domain. Marked words lead to the entry in the register that took something from them.

Timaeus 25c–d
ὑστέρῳ δὲ χρόνῳ σεισμῶν ἐξαισίων καὶ κατακλυσμῶν γενομένων, μιᾶς ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς χαλεπῆς ἐπελθούσης, τό τε παρ' ὑμῖν μάχιμον πᾶν ἁθρόον ἔδυ κατὰ γῆς, ἥ τε Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος ὡσαύτως κατὰ τῆς θαλάττης δῦσα ἠφανίσθη.
But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.
public-domain translationPlato, Timaeus (ed. Burnet 1902), 25c–d
English by Benjamin Jowett (1871); the German is ours. An Egyptian priest is telling Solon the story.

What became of it

Númenor
The island that grows proud and is drowned in a day: Tolkien called the Downfall of Númenor a special variety of the Atlantis tradition and traced it to a wave-dream that haunted him from childhood.
- The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien — Letter 154the Downfall of Númenor: a special variety of the Atlantis tradition
- The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien — Letter 276for many years I had a recurrent Atlantis dream

Sources

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien — Letter 154
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien — Letter 257
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien — Letter 276

Cite this page

Legendarium (2026): „Atlantis“. Last updated September 3, 2026. https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/plato-atlantis/

APA

Legendarium. (2026). Atlantis. Last updated September 3, 2026. https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/plato-atlantis/

MLA

„Atlantis“. Legendarium, 2026, https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/plato-atlantis/. Last updated September 3, 2026.

BibTeX

@misc{legendarium-plato-atlantis-en,
  title        = {Atlantis},
  author       = {{Legendarium}},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/plato-atlantis/}},
  note         = {Last updated September 3, 2026}
}