The Chinese count ten emperors, partakers of the divine nature, before the dawn of historical times. The Germans believed in the ten ancestors of Odin, and the Arabs in the ten mythical kings of the Adites.”

(Lenormant and Chevallier, “Anc. Hist. of the East,” vol. i., p. 13.) The story of Plato finds confirmation from other sources.

An extract preserved in Proclus, taken from a work now lost, which is quoted by Boeckh in his commentary on Plato, mentions islands in the exterior sea, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and says it was known that in one of these islands “the inhabitants preserved from their ancestors a remembrance of Atlantis, all extremely large island, which for a long time held dominion over all the islands of the Atlantic Ocean.”

AElian, in his “Varia Historia” (book iii., chap. xviii.), tells us that Theopompus (400 B.C.) related the particulars of an interview between Midas, King of Phrygia, and Silenus, in which Silenus reported the existence of a great continent beyond the Atlantic, “larger than Asia, Europe, and Libya together.” He stated that a race of men called Meropes dwelt there, and had extensive cities. They were persuaded that their country alone was a continent. Out of curiosity some of them crossed the ocean and visited the Hyperboreans.

“The Gauls possessed traditions upon the subject of Atlantis which were collected by the Roman historian Timagenes, who lived in the first century before Christ. He represents that three distinct people dwelt in Gaul: 1. The indigenous population, which I suppose to be Mongoloids, who had long dwelt in Europe; 2. The invaders from a distant island, which I understand to be Atlantis; 3. The Aryan Gauls.” (“Preadamites,”

380.)

Marcellus, in a work on the Ethiopians, speaks of seven islands lying in the Atlantic Ocean—probably the Canaries—and the inhabitants of these islands, he says, preserve the memory of a much greater island, Atlantis, “which had for a long time exercised dominion over the smaller ones.” (Didot Mueller, “Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum,” vol. iv., p.