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History of Atlantis by Lewis Spence
Index | Chapter: 1 | 2 |3 | 4 |5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |9 | 10 |11 | 12 |13 | 14 |15 | 16
CHAPTER XII
THE ATLANTEAN STATE AND POLITY
FROM the account of Plato we receive a very full description of the type of government which obtained in Atlantis. We are told in the first place that each of the twelve kings of Atlantis was absolute in his own island, but that so far as their government was concerned they were almost completely tied down to the mere carrying out of the ordinances of the ancient Atlantean rulers engraven on the column of orichalcum in the temple of Poseidon. This is reminiscent of the laws of the Medes and Persians, which, we will remember from the Book of Kings, were unchangeable and unalterably fixed, but it is not at all uncommon to discover in an early state of society that the legal institutions of a people are rendered incapable of alteration, and this indicates of course that, as they were held to proceed from the gods, it was considered impious to tamper with them.
Anything resembling a fixed condition of the law renders it impossible for a state to advance politically or economically to any great extent, and such must have been the case with Atlantis. But it would seem probable that in the course of time anything like uniformity between the twelve provincial islands and the mainland as regards the legal code could scarcely obtain. Doubtless they were all close enough to make anything like a strong dissimilarity improbable, but it seems possible that the very reason for their kings assembling in the temple of Poseidon once in six years was to refresh their memories with the code on the pillar of orichalcum. The main reason for this conference, however, must have been the consideration of the affairs of the Atlantean Empire at large, and the very fact that it was held at such long intervals is conclusive as showing that the distance between the several islands of which the nucleus of that empire was composed could not have been very great. Although on the other hand it might be argued that such a lapse of time between conferences presupposes a very considerable distance between the several groups of the archipelago.
We observe, too, from Plato's account that the government of Atlantis was closely connected with its religion, that it must have been of a sacerdotal character, and that the kings also acted as priests or hierophants. Their Parliament, however, was practically the temple of Poseidon, and as their laws were ready-made for them, they were in the happy position of not requiring to debate them on the occasions on which they assembled. Their constitution seems in one particular to have adumbrated that of the United States of America, for we are told that the several states were not permitted to take up arms against one another.
Military leadership, like sacerdotal pre-eminence, was vested in the children of Atlas. The government of the country seems to have been on a feudal basis, and indeed it is noticeable that it was in these very countries which were first colonised by Atlantis that later the feudal idea of government arose. The country was divided into cantons or provinces, each about twelve miles square, and each of these furnished an armed contingent. The agricultural portion of the land furnished altogether about sixty thousand men-at-arms, but the mountainous country of the hinterland, we are told, supplied an innumerable host of warriors. As we have seen, the ratio of fighting men which each canton must furnish included charioteers, cavalrymen, foot-soldiers, archers, stone-shooters, and sailors, and it is especially observed that this array was drawn only from the central island, the other parts of the empire having a separate military economy.
The governance of this host would seem, from the evidence in our possession, to have been not unmingled with anxiety for the rulers of Atlantis, especially when the period of unrest began to manifest itself. The reader will remember the passage in the Welsh Triads which almost indubitably refers to a memorial of rebellion in Atlantis. "I will not redeem the multitudes with trailing shields. They know not on what day the stroke would be given . . . they know not the brindled ox with the thick head-band." This, as has been said, is obviously the plaint of a leader who had taken strong umbrage at the irreligious attitude of the plebeian men-at-arms towards the sacred ox or bull. It seems to refer to that period in Atlantean history when the people had grown tired of hearkening to the priesthood, and were possibly manifesting their impatience with an oppressive ritual and an equally oppressive military service. It is possible that at this time the ruling caste in Atlantis, as ruling castes have done elsewhere, sought to distract the attention of the people from internecine troubles by proposing to them a great scheme of foreign conquest, a campaign by which they might overrun the adjacent European region and achieve possessions even for the humblest.
No doubt they were also menaced by neighbouring communities. The Amazons, for example, may have been a numerous tribe, not of women, but of people under female rule or employing female soldiers. Diodorus has put it on record that they attacked the Atlantean communities with a large army and even subdued them, and that the Gorgons, another neighbouring people, similarly oppressed the Atlanteans. Doubtless because they were surrounded by barbarous enemies, the Atlanteans were compelled to dwell in a constant state of armed vigilance, and this, more than any other condition, would contribute to popular unrest and the disintegration of the State.
What we read in Plato and other authors regarding the state and polity of Atlantis has little or no reflection in any Mediterranean form of government as described by the classical writers of antiquity. We must recall that we draw our classical knowledge of things Atlantean from an Egyptian source, and in the account of the priest of Sais, as furnished in Plato, it cannot be said that we discover much that would lead us to think that it had been modelled on Egyptian ideas. True, the various provinces of Atlantis might reflect the nomes of ancient Egypt, and the military economy of Atlantis certainly bears some slight resemblance to that of the Nile country, but on the other hand the Pharaoh was supreme in Egypt and such a conference of kings as is mentioned in Plato's account would never have been possible in a state whose monarch was regarded as a deity, and whose provincial governors, even though vested with a great degree of power, would never have presumed to place themselves on anything like equality with the reigning monarch. And this, it seems to me, is perhaps one of the strongest justifications of the reality of the Atlantean account, of its basic probability, that we find in it such conditions as by no means obtained in any of the states, African, Asiatic or European, as were contemporary with Plato, if perhaps a few minor resemblances be excepted.
We find, however, that in those countries where the Atlantean power planted its first possessions, a condition of things very much more resembling those reflected on Plato's account. In early Britain and Ireland, for example, we encounter such a state of government as we read of in the Platonic statement. In both of the British islands and in Gaul, if we refer to the earliest historical accounts which deal with them, we find the great mass of the people under the stern rule of an aristocracy which regarded them practically as serfs, we find the country broken up into similar cantons ruled by petty kings, and a system of military service obtaining under which foot-soldiers, charioteers and slingers were recruited precisely as in Atlantis. We know, too, that the laws of these peoples were regarded as proceeding from divine influence, that they were unalterable, and that every consideration of state was dictated through divination by the priesthood. Caesar in his sixth book says: "There are only two degrees of men in Gaul who have any power in the administration of public affairs the Druids and the nobility for the commons are esteemed no more than servants and are never admitted to their debates." The Druids, he proceeds to say, have the entire care of divine things, of private and public sacrifices, with the interpretation of their religion. The manner in which the Druids convened, also, is reminiscent of the conference in the temple of Poseidon, for once a year they had a general rendezvous at a consecrated place in the midst of Gaul, where all such as had controversies to decide flocked to submit to their judgment. A similar condition of things obtained in Spain. Indeed the entire tract from the Iberian peninsula to Orkney was in the earliest historical period governed by a dispensation resembling that reflected in Plato's account so closely that it might well have stood for its exemplar. The free republics of Greece, on the other hand, reflect no such condition of affairs, and if Egypt does so to some extent it is probably because it also had imbibed much of the Atlantean culture.