Timaeus

“One, two, three”—Socrates counts the guests who promised him a feast of discourse. One is missing; the conversation that follows will reach from the ideal city to an ancient story Critias swears is true.

In Plato’s dialogue, a gathering in Athens resumes the day after Socrates has described his ideal state. He wants to see that city tested in action, and Critias answers with a tale passed down from Solon: a forgotten Athenian deed, stranger than legend. Alongside this story, Timaeus takes up a larger question—the making of a living, ordered cosmos. The dialogue joins political thought to myth and speculation, with the lost city of Atlantis waiting in the background. What did the Athenians do, and what gives the universe its order?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.