down primarily by word of mouth along five generations of his ancestors, but in Critias he makes reference to a manuscript of Solon, a manuscript which has never been found (Pellegrino, 1991: pp. 30-32).
Though Plato is the first author to mention Atlantis, other ancient references can also be found. Herodotus seems to have written about Atlantis before Plato, but the Atlantians to whom Herodotus refers were a people of North Africa who have nothing in common with Plato's Atlantis except the name. There were many mentions of Atlantis in writings after Plato. Elianus in the second century after Christ described in his Historia Naturalis how the rulers of Atlantis were dressed, indicating their origin from Poseidon, and in his Historia Varia he quotes the Greek geographer Theopompos on a conversation between the Phrygian king Midas and the demigod Silenos about a vast continent now lost. The writer Proklos from the fifth century A.D. makes reference to an earlier writer concerning seven islands consecrate
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