The ancient city of Lacedaemon – is it the legendary Atlantis?

The name Lacedaemon is derived from the verb, λαγχάνω (lachano), to assign somebody something by lot, and δαίμων (daemon), which means God in ancient Greek. Lacedaemon therefore denotes the divine lot, a piece of the world given to the God Poseidon, according to Plato, who identifies Lacedaemon with Atlantis.

I consider it worthwhile to mention a remark by J. Spanuth in his book, ‘Atlantis:  Heimat, Reich and Schicksal der Germanen’, (Tuebingen 1965), that Atlantis is “the oldest, most disputed, most hazardous and clearly most thankless, but still the most rewarding and most intriguing  matter that Antiquity has bequeathed to us”.

There is a vast bibliography about Atlantis, but the modern scholarship concluded that to locate Atlantis and to prove the validity of its identification, four points of agreement must be met and generally accepted. (See E.Bloedow. ‘Fire and Flood from Heaven: Was Atlantis at Troy?’ La Parola del Passato 48, 1993, pp.109-160.

• Atlantis was an island.
• It lay beyond the “Pillars of Hercules”.
• It was larger than Asia and Libya together.
• Its destruction (sinking) produced a barrier of impassable mud.      

These four prerequisites are completely fulfilled in the case of Lacedaemon

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The name, features, and location of Lacedaemon have been hotly debated from Antiquity to modern times. Lacedaemon was mentioned for the first time in the second Book of Iliad, in the so-called Catalogue of the Ships, verse 581, as the first city of the Kingdom of Menelaos in Lakonia – “Οι δ’ είχον κοίλην Λακεδαίμονα κητώεσσαν” (‘E de ichon kili Lacedaemon kitoesan’). Κοίλη (‘kili’) and κητώεσσα (‘kitoesan’) are the two traditional epithets steadily connected with Lacedaemon. ‘Κili’ means hollow, everybody agrees on that, but the epithet ‘kitoesan’ has been variously interpreted. It might refer either to its geological formation and identity – that it is full of ravines and subterranean caustic splits – or to its island nature, in this case abounded with κήτη (‘kiti’), sea monsters or big fish (dolphins, turtles, whales, seals etc.).

The Iliad by Homer. Credit: BigStockPhoto

Taking for granted that in northern Lakonia there once existed a huge lake from the Pleiocene period, measuring 35 square kilometres, the epithet ‘kitoesan’ may well fit the geology of the site of Lacedaemon. The lake is now dry and contains big deposits of lignite layers, similar to those in the adjacent plain of Megalopolis. The date of dessication or draining of the lake in the area of mount Taygetos is of paramount importance for the history of Lacedaemon, its identity, and identification with Atlantis.

Plato, in Timaeus and Critias, describes Atlantis as an island in what he calls a ‘Pontos’, a word meaning Sea or Sea-lake (Timaius 24E Critias 113-114 B). The other geological and geographical coordinate of the area is the Πέλαγος (‘Pelagos’), erroneously interpreted by Atlantologists as ‘Ocean’. Pelagos in Greek signifies a large and extensive area, such as the Aegean Pelagos or the Ionian Pelagos. Pontos was the huge lake of Lacedaemon, Pelagos was the large and navigable river Eurotas.

The inhabitants of Atlantis, known by various names, like Hyperboreans, Phaeakes, Phoinikes, Atlantes, Minyans etc, were thought to live in a remote area, safe in their natural environment, reluctant to be visited by other people. There they lived a whole millennium, eternally young, and they were beloved to the Gods. Tyndareos, the father of Helen and the divine Twins Kastor and Polydeukes lived where Lakonia ended, very close to Arcadia - “εν τοις εσχάτοις της Λακεδαιμονίας” (‘En tis eshatis tis Lacedaemonias’).

We have reasons to suppose that the area of the lake was covered by small islands, some natural, others artificial, founded upon wooden tree trunks, taken from the densely forested mount Taygetos, an activity described by Plato in reference with the works of the Atlantians in the main island in the Pontos.

The work and the plan may be paralleled with the miraculous achievements of the Venetians in the large Lagoon in the Adriatic. This “Civitas Serenissima” was built entirely upon wooden trunks and was composed of numerous islands, constructed densely to each other

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The city of Venice was built on wooden foundations.

Plato himself speaks of other islands, besides Atlantis, in the same Pontos. Atlantis lay at the eastern fringes of the sea, near the exit of the river, beyond the Pillars of Hercules and was surrounded by islands, which were approached from Atlantis both by sea and land (Timaeus: “εξ ης επιβατόν επί τας άλλας νήσους τοις τότε εγένετο πορευομένοις”).

Plato seems to know well not only the geophysical conditions of the area of Lacedaemon, he also knew the geography of the island group and most probably the names of the islands, at least of some of them.

Taking that into consideration, we may come to the solution of the most difficult of the Platonic references to Atlantis, which is described by Plato as being larger than Asia and Libya together.  What was known as ‘Asia’ and ‘Libya’ at the time were small islands in the lake of Lacedaemon, and we know that Asia and Libya were Laconian toponymics (see my book LACEDAEMON, volume II, p. 399 ff).

Accordingly, we fix one of the four points of agreement posed by Atlantologists. Plato’s trustworthiness is strengthened by the reference in ‘The Odyssey’ that Ithaca, the original homeland of Odysseus, lay in a similar landscape. It is described as “χθαμαλή εν αλί, πανυπερτάτη προς ζόφον”, i.e. hollow and the most remote to North-West, though many other islands that were close to each other, lay to the East and South (“νήσοι πολλαί, μάλα σχεδόν αλλήλησιν”, Odyssey, book 9, 22-3).

Arethusa fountain old view, Ithaca island, Greece. Created by Provost, published on L'Illustration. Credit: BigStockPhoto

Odysseus, the Argonaut, was at home in Lacedaemon, where he acquired the famous composite-bow of Iphitos and it was not a mere coincidence that his descendant Telemachos came to Lacedaemon many years or centuries thereafter to visit Menelaos and Helen in order to be informed about his farther’s return to Ithaca.

Part Two – The Location of Atlantis and the Pillars of Hercules

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(Read Part One) Turning to the second “point of agreement” about the location of Atlantis is the highly disputed location of the ‘Pillars of Hercules’.

Many scholars identified the Pillars with the Straits of Gibraltar and mistook the Platonic Atlantic Pelagos (large and extensive area) for the Atlantic Ocean.

Plato however has used his own interpretation about Atlantis and the Atlantic Pelagos. His terms derived from Atlas, the first son of Poseidon and Kleito, the divine couple and the first inhabitants of the famous island.

Atlas was said to be the first king of Atlantis and was the son of Poseidon. Photo source.

I have identified the Pillars of Hercules with the Columns, which were erected on the Mount Thornax, some 2 kilometres from the Lagoon of Lacedaemon, very close to the Eurotas River. The slope of the mount facing the river was meticulously cut and transformed to a platform to house and to support the columns. These columns were a unique archaeological mystery in Antiquity; in fact they were the two obelisks, of 15-16 metres in height, which were erected later in the sanctuary (temenos) of Apollo Pythaeus in front of the city of Sparta, near the Eurotas (Pausanias III, 10,8).

Sometime thereafter, one of them was removed to the famous sanctuary of Apollo at Amyclae, and was enclosed in the monument made by the sculptor and architect Bathycles of Magnesia before the middle of the 6^th century BC.  Herodotos mentions the statue (“το νυν της Λακωνικής εν Θόρνακι ίδρυται” Ι,69), and Pausanias, in the second century AD, gave a description of the columns, which were gilded with the gold that King Kroisos of Lycia donated to the Spartans. The columns were crowned by a curious figure of the God Apollo and the one at the Amyclaion was placed upon the cenotaph of Hyacinthos, the Dorian deified hero, the most revered cultic figure of their Minyan forefathers, the Atlantes of Lacedaemon.

The columns, or Pillars of Hercules, were placed in the narrowest point of the street, which led to the islands of Lacedaemon and therefore they acquired the name “Agyieis”, from the Doric word agyia (αγυιά), which means a narrow street or passage.  The column Agyieus became the holy heirloom of the Dorian cities throughout the ancient world, from Sicily to Egypt, and in Rome itself, and was taken for the symbol of the Golden Age, the Aetas  Aurea, the Arcadian Utopia (see my book LACEDAEMON, vol.II, p. 447).    

Atlantis was not the only island in the Pelagos of Lacedaemon, it was one of several islands, the main island among the groups of small islands, which form the model, the prototype, of the 500 tiny islands of Venice, which are also supported on wooden trunks. Some of these islands in the Pontos of Lacedaemon were referred to in the Greek epic poetry (see Odyssey book 15, 405 ff). The Lexicographer Stefanos Byzantios states that there is an island known as Tyros in the Lakoniki, and the so-called Tyrian Odyssey refers to some other islands, originally situated in the Pontos of Lacedaemon, like Scheria, Ogygia, Aia and so on (LACEDAEMON vol.II,462-3). Plato added ‘Asia’ and ‘Libya’.

The miraculous island Atlantis with the huge temple of Poseidon, whose ceiling was made of ivory, variegated with gold and silver, was enclosed in three rings of sea and land. The most external of the rings, near the outflow of Eurotas, close to the bountiful spring of Vivari, the main tributary of Eurotas, is preserved to some extent and is still visible today.

According to the Periegetes, (travellers) of the 19^th century (Leake, Bursian, Ross, Fraser and Loring) it measured 200 metres, was made in masonry and crossed the river Eurotas. It is identified with the “Characoma”, (the Entrenchment), a monumental construction mentioned by Pausanias (III, 21,2). It is situated in the right place to be convincingly identified with the external ring of the island of Atlantis, referred to in Plato’s Critias, 117 E.

An illustration of Atlantis with three rings of sea and the Temple of Poseidon in the centre. Image source.

Atlantis and the entire island group was destroyed, and disappeared beneath a layer of mud.  Plato refers to exceptional earthquakes and to cataclysmic rains, which lasted one day and one night. It was a natural disaster, which was probably synchronized with the volcanic eruption in Thera (Santorini).

The tsunami  from Thera affected not only the island of Crete, it devastated the Minyan Palatial establishments in the Aegean and the East Mediterranean, on Kea, Avaris (Tell el’ Daba) in Egypt, Tell Kabri in Galilee, Dabna in Syria and the remote city of Mari on the Euphrates.

In all these places, the destruction layers were accompanied with pumice from the Thera Volcano, but before they fell to ruins, they had been decorated with fresco paintings, similar to those unearthed at Akrotiri in Santorini.  Some of the representations in these palaces are echoed in references in the Greek epic (see my book LACEDAEMON, vol. II, p. 357 ff).

The destruction of Atlantis. Image source.

Featured image: Two pillars on Seville's city hall. The Pillars encourage one to ignore the ancient warning, to take risks and go further beyond. It indicates the desire to see the Pillars as an entrance to the rest of the world rather than as a gate to the Mediterranean Sea. Source: Wikipedia
(Part 1)

By Dr Theodore Spyropoulos