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PLATONE, ATLANTIDE E LA TYRRHENIA

2020, Studi Etruschi LXXXIII, pp, 121-30

This paper aims to broaden the term Tyrrhenia that Plato uses to define one of the boundaries of Atlantis's domain. Tyrrhenia is not used specifically for Etruria but broadly, to indicate Tyrrhenian Italy up to Sardinia. This term could evoke, together with Libya and the Iberian Peninsula which are included in the description of Atlantis's kingdom, the boundaries of the empire of Carthage, conceived as a negative, real-life model for the mythical lost continent. Likewise, the geographical extent of Atlantis's maritime empire, from Libya to Sardinia, might call to mind the territories involved in the imperialist ambitions of the Athenian democracy, against which Plato sets the ideal model of the city of Solon, able to defeat a more powerful enemy.