(4 of 4)
Plato capped his story of Atlantis with a stern moral. For generation after generation, he related, the people "easily bore the burden, as it were, of the vast volume of their gold and other goods; and thus their wealth did not make them drunk with pride so that they lost control of themselves." But in the end that was just what did happen. The Atlanteans "lost their comeliness, through being unable to bear the burden of their possessions, and became ugly to look upon, in the eyes of him [Zeus] who has the gift of sight . . . filled as they were with lawless ambition and power." Therefore Zeus destroyed them. As Professor Marinates continues to unearth evidence from his dig on Santorini, Plato's story of Atlantis begins to read more and more like actual history.