What to make of Critias?

Keane's comment about Critias representing a different side of Plato's attitude toward the arts (in this case what scholars call literary-historical imagery, though the history part certainly needs scare-quotes) is intriguing. There is plenty of precedent for it, however, throughout the middle and later parts of Plato's corpus. In Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic, and other dialogues -- including Meno, where Socrates makes a point of explaining what he's up to in appealing to Meno's love of specacle -- there is a marked pattern of myth-spinning, tending to occur at a predictable point in the conversation when the younger participants have reached their limit of reasoned discourse. How exactly this pedagogical method (which I take it to be) relates to the drier, dialogic methods (such as collection and division) evident in several of the later dialogues is an open and interesting question.

What else of philosophical interest might we find here? We see echos of many themes from Republic and Statesman in the divine intellect and character of the Atlantean kings, as well as in their degeneration into greed and aggression which led to the catastrophic war with the noble, ancient Athenians, and we see proportion, measure, and geometry (not to mention peace, fertility, a class-blind adherence to law) as potent symbols of a healthy culture and divine favor. I trust you will have other thoughts this evening.