Plato Timaeus 21b (Loeb)

   Critias: Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages. 
   He was a relative and a dear friend of my great-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of his poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, who remembered and repeated it to us. 
   There were of old, he said, great and marvellous actions of the Athenian city, which have passed into oblivion through lapse of time and the destruction of mankind, and one in particular, greater than all the rest.  This we will now rehearse. 
   [21a] It will be a fitting monument of our gratitude to you, and a hymn of praise true and worthy of the Goddess (Athena) on this her day of Festival. (The Lesser Panathenaea, held early in June.)

   [21e] In the Delta of Egypt, said Critias, at the head of which the river Nile parts in two, there is a certain district called Sais, and is the city from which King Amasis came.
   The citizens have a Goddess whose Egyptian name is Neith, and is asserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athena. 
   These people are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some way related to them.
   And Solon said that when he travelled there he was held in great esteem amongst them; he asked the priests who were most skilful in such matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old.

   For there was a time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the city which now is
Athens was first in war and in every way the best governed of all cities, is said to have performed the noblest deeds and to have had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells, under the face of heaven. 
   [23d] Upon hearing this, Solon said that he marvelled, and with the utmost eagerness requested the priest to recount for him in order and exactly all the facts about those citizens of old.
   The priest then said: You are welcome to hear about them, Solon, both for your own sake and for that of your city, and above all, for the sake of the Goddess (Athena) who is the common patron and parent and educator of both our cities. 
   She founded your city a thousand years before ours (Observe that Plato gives the same date (9000 years ago) for the foundation of Athens and for the repulse of the invasion from Atlantis (Crit.).), receiving from Ge [23e] and Hephaestus, and after that ours. And the duration of our civilization as set down in our sacred writings is 8000 years. 

   As touching your citizens of 9000 years ago, I will briefly inform you of their laws and of their most famous action; [24a] the full account in precise order and detail we shall go through later at our leisure, in the sacred registers themselves. 
   To get a view of their laws, look at the laws here; for you will find existing here at the present time many examples of the laws which then existed in your city. 
   In the first place, there is the caste of priests, which is separated off from the rest; next, the class of craftsmen, who ply their several crafts by themselves and do not intermix; then the classes of shepherds, hunters, and farmers, each distinct and separate. 
   Moreover, the military class here, [24b] as no doubt you have noticed, is kept apart from all the other classes, and are commanded by the law to devote themselves solely to military pursuits. 
   A further feature is the character of their equipment with shields and spears; for we were the first of the peoples of Asia to adopt these weapons, it being the Goddess (Athena) who instructed us, as in your part of the world first to you.

   Again, with regard to wisdom, you perceive, no doubt, the law here -- how much attention [24c] it has devoted from the very beginning to the Cosmic Order, by discovering all the effects which the divine causes produce upon human life, down to divination and the art of medicine which aims at health, out of these divine elements deriving what was needful for human life, and adding every sort of knowledge which was akin to them. 
   All this order and arrangement the Goddess (Athena) first imparted to you when establishing your city; and she chose the spot of earth in which you were born, because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasons in that land would produce men of supreme wisdom.

   [24d] So it was that the Goddess (Athena), being herself both a lover of war and a lover of wisdom, selected and first of all settled that spot which was the most likely to produce men most like unto herself, and this first she established. 
   Wherefore you lived under the rule of such laws as these, and still better ones, and you excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became the children and disciples of the Gods.
   Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your State in our histories.

   Socrates: What other story should we adopt, Critias, in preference to this? For this story will be admirably suited to the festival of the Goddess (Athena) which is now being held, because of its connection with her; and has the very great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction. How, indeed, or where shall we discover other stories if we abandon this? Nay, it is impossible. You, therefore, must now deliver your discourse (and may Good Fortune attend you!), while I, in return for my yesterday's discourse will now rest and be a listener.