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5 November 2025 - 5 November 2025

10:00AM - 6:00PM

Pennington Room, Grey College

  • Free

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Join us as the UKRI-funded Aristoteles Pezographos project and the Durham Centre for Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (DCAMP) host a workshop dedicated to the Atlantis story in Plato's works.

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On Wednesday 5 November, the UKRI-funded Aristoteles Pezographos project and the Durham Centre for Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (DCAMP) will be hosting a workshop dedicated to the Atlantis story in Plato's works at Grey College, Durham University. 
We shall be asking whether Plato intended to complete the Critias and compose a Hermocrates, or whether he left the "trilogy" beginning with Timaeus purposively unfinished. Several questions will be investigated: What would Zeus' speech have contained? Why did Plato choose Hermocrates as a guest? What is the supposed date at which the dialogues were set? Who is the "fourth man"? Critical approaches to the material will be interdisciplinary: literary, philosophical, historical, philological, and even creative.
The workshop is in-person and hybrid. If you are planning to attend, could you please email Edith Hall (edith.hall@durham.ac.uk) indicating your intent by, at the latest, Monday 3 November at 12noon GMT? Those planning to attend in person should also indicate whether they would like to go to dinner. Hybrid attendees will receive a Teams link prior to the start of the workshop. 
Schedule (all times GMT):
10:00             Chair: Edith Hall (Durham)
          Phil Horky (Durham)        
                        'Plato’s Hermocrates and Hermocrates of Syracuse'
10:45              Chair: Judy Quinn (Durham) 
              Federico Petrucci (Turin)
           'The Philosophical Function of the Critias itself with 
            respect to the Timaeus'
11:30              Coffee
12:00             Chair: Giulia Bernardini (Durham)
             Christopher Gill (Exeter)  
          Keynote: 'Why Plato did not Finish the Atlantis story - 
            Eco-utopia and Political Vision'
13:00                Lunch
14:00                Chair: Wenhao Yang (Durham) 
           Thibaut Lejeune (Leuven)
           'Plato’s Golden Mean: Strategic Silence in the Critias and 
            the Limits of Speech in the Hermocrates'
14:45               Chair: Phillip Horky (Durham)   
              Eran Almagor (Independent Scholar)
           'Unfinished Projects: Plato’s Critias in Plutarch’s Solon'
15:30         Chair: George Gazis (Durham)
                    Azzan Yadin-Israel (Rutgers)
            'Is the Atlantis Story an Interpolation?'
16:15              Tea
16:45              Chair: Federico Petrucci (Turin)   
             Alessandro Vatri, George Gazis and Edith Hall (Durham)
             'What Might Plato’s Zeus Have Said?'
17:30              General Discussion chaired by Harold Tarrant (Newcastle 
           Australia)
18:00                Wine/Pub
19:30                Dinner (for in-person participants)

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Free