Of the second
pair of twins he called one Ampheres, and the other Evaemon. To
the elder of the third pair of twins he gave the name Mneseus,
and Autochthon to the one who followed him. Of the fourth pair of
twins he called the elder Elasippus, and the younger Mestor. And
of the fifth pair he gave to the elder the name of Azaes, and to
the younger that of Diaprepes. All these and their descendants
for many generations were the inhabitants and rulers of divers
islands in the open sea; and also, as has been already said, they
held sway in our direction over the country within the Pillars as
far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia.
Now Atlas had a numerous and honourable family, and they
retained the kingdom, the eldest son handing it on to his eldest
for many generations; and they had such an amount of wealth as
was never before possessed by kings and potentates, and is not
likely ever to be again, and they were furnished with everything
which they needed, both in the city and country. For because of
the greatness of their empire many things were brought to them
from foreign countries, and the island itself provided most of
what was required by them for the uses of life. In the first
place, they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found there,
solid as well as fusile, and that which is now only a name and
was then something more than a name, orichalcum, was dug out of
the earth in many parts of the island, being more precious in
those days than anything except gold. There was an abundance of
wood for carpenter's work, and sufficient maintenance for tame
and wild animals. Moreover, there were a great number of
elephants in the island; for as there was provision for all other
sorts of animals, both for those which live in lakes and marshes
and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on
plains, so there was for the animal which is the largest and most
voracious of all. Also whatever fragrant things there now are in
the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or essences which
distil from fruit and flower, grew and thrived in that land; also
the fruit which admits of cultivation, both the dry sort, which
is given us for nourishment and any other which we use for food-we
call them all by the common name pulse, and the fruits having a
hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments, and good
store of chestnuts and the like, which furnish pleasure and
amusement, and are fruits which spoil with keeping, and the
pleasant kinds of dessert, with which we console ourselves after
dinner, when we are tired of eating-all these that sacred island
which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth fair and
wondrous and in infinite abundance. With such blessings the earth
freely furnished them; meanwhile they went on constructing their
temples and palaces and harbours and docks. And they arranged the
whole country in the following manner:
First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which
surrounded the ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the
royal palace. And at the very beginning they built the palace in
the habitation of the god and of their ancestors, which they
continued to ornament in successive generations, every king
surpassing the one who went before him to the utmost of his
power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size
and for beauty. And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of
three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and
fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the
outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which
became a harbour, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the
largest vessels to find ingress. Moreover, they divided at the
bridges the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, leaving
room for a single trireme to pass out of one zone into another,
and they covered over the channels so as to leave a way
underneath for the ships; for the banks were raised considerably
above the water. Now the largest of the zones into which a
passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the
zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two
zones, the one of water, the other of land, were two stadia, and
the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in
width. The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter
of five stadia. All this including the zones and the bridge,
which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they surrounded
by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates on the
bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which was used in the
work they quarried from underneath the centre island, and from
underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side. One
kind was white, another black, and a third red, and as they
quarried, they at the same time hollowed out double docks, having
roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their buildings were
simple, but in others they put together different stones, varying
the colour to please the eye, and to be a natural source of
delight. The entire circuit of the wall, which went round the
outermost zone, they covered with a coating of brass, and the
circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third,
which encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of
orichalcum.
