Critias

Plato's Critias is a fragment of another late period dialogue written in a similar tone to the Platonic dialogue Timaeus, to the point where scholars of antiquity regard the two as synonymous.

In this work, the topic discussed by Critias, Timeaus, Socrates and Hermocrates is one of intense interest even today: the lost city of Atlantis. After introducing the world's earliest creation by the Gods, we hear that the magnificent Atlantis was given to Poseidon; the God of the Sea. 

The conversation proposes that after an initial period of holy alignment and splendour, the city of Atlantis had gradually become corrupted. Its citizenry came to lose their virtues and thus their alignment with the Gods. As a result, Zeus - the God of all Gods - commences to speak. 

At this point however, the dialogue is cut short - leaving scholars with an ancient cliffhanger story that, over two millennia later, has never been resolved.  

Translated by the highly regarded Oxford scholar Benjamin Jowett, this edition of Critias combines quality with inexpensiveness.