Abstract

The book by Gunnar Rudberg is dedicated to the well-known and exciting legend on Atlantis. The author carefully considers different opinions, starting from late antiquity and finishing with the beginning of the twentieth century. The main question that he proposes to answer is: Did anything in reality correspond to the Plato’s story or it must be taken as a pure invention by the Athenian philosopher? Did he invent the island with this unique political structure or took some polis as a prototype? Having considered various hypotheses proposed by the scholars from Antiquity to the present times, he himself suggests that at the time of Plato the Sicilian Syracuse could be such an example and concludes that this city had become Plato’s prototype.