roughly the first half of the Republic for his companions, Critias says that such an ideal city as Socrates had described once actually existed. Its history was still known among the priests of Egypt. Critias proposes that before he tells them the story, Timaeus, an astronomer, describe for them the generation of the natural world, going down to the generation of human beings. Then with this setting, he, Critias, will take the city Socrates described in the Republic as an ideal and show it in actual