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These tales as we have them from Diodorus do not represent the Atlantic coast dwellers as invading the Mediterranean; but some such incursions would naturally follow, by way of retaliation, the strenuous proceedings attributed to eastern-Mediterranean commanders, if, indeed, they did not precede and provoke them. We need not picture a host of Atlantides pouring through between the Pillars; but piratical descents of outer seafaring people were probable enough and might be on a rather large scale—subject, of course, to exaggeration by rumor. Nor would any of the threatened people be likely to distinguish closely between forces from a mainland coast and those from some outlying island. The enemy might well embody both elements.

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The location of Atlantis, according to Plato, is fairly clear. It was in the ocean, “then navigable,” beyond the Pillars of Hercules; also beyond certain other islands, which served it as stepping-stones to the continental mass surrounding the Mediterranean. This effectually disposes of all pretensions in behalf of Crete or any other island or region of the inner sea. Atlantis must also have lain pretty far out in the ocean, to allow space for the intervening islands, which may well have been, at least in part, the Canary Islands or other surviving members of the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes; still it could not have been too distant to prohibit the transfer of large forces when means of transportation were slow and scant. This rules out America, apart from the fact that America (like Crete) still exists, whereas Atlantis foundered, and the further fact that America is continental, while Atlantis is described as merely a large island. Besides, what evidence is there that America could send forth armies or navies for the invasion of Europe? Neither the Incas nor the Aztecs nor the Mayas were capable of such aggressions, and we know of nothing greater in this part of the world before the very modern development of the white man’s power.