On The East Part Our West
Ocean, And On The North Side The Sea That Severeth It From
Greenland, Through Which Northern Seas The Passage Lieth, Which I
Take Now In Hand To Discover.
Plato in his Timaeus and in the dialogue called Critias, discourses
of an incomparable great island then called Atlantis, being greater
than all Africa and Asia, which lay westward from the Straits of
Gibraltar, navigable round about:
Affirming, also, that the princes
of Atlantis did as well enjoy the governance of all Africa and the
most part of Europe as of Atlantis itself.
Also to prove Plato's opinion of this island, and the inhabiting of
it in ancient time by them of Europe, to be of the more credit:
Marinaeus Siculus, in his Chronicle of Spain, reporteth that there
hath been found by the Spaniards in the gold mines of America
certain pieces of money, engraved with the image of Augustus Caesar;
which pieces were sent to the Pope for a testimony of the matter by
John Rufus, Archbishop of Constantinum.
Moreover, this was not only thought of Plato, but by Marsilius
Ficinus, an excellent Florentine philosopher, Crantor the Grecian,
Proclus, also Philo the famous Jew (as appeareth in his book De
Mundo, and in the Commentaries upon Plato), to be overflown, and
swallowed up with water, by reason of a mighty earthquake and
streaming down of the heavenly flood gates. The like thereof
happened unto some part of Italy, when by the forcibleness of the
sea, called Superum, it cut off Sicily from the continent of
Calabria, as appeareth in Justin in the beginning of his fourth
book.
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