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Plato's "Myth of Er" in the Republic gives an account of the World Spindle, the Axis mundi, operated by the goddess Necessity and her three daughters, the Fates. The afterlife vision of the soldier Er, who died previously in battle and was resurrected, suggests image of a Platonic geocentric universe of eight celestial whorls standing for planetary spheres, the sun, the moon, and the sphere of the fixed stars, each sphere in a different color. A hundred years before Plato classical Greek sources reported on the Persian city of Ecbatana, the capital of the Median King Deiokes, as having seven concentric walls, with battlements colored in accordance to their corresponding walls. It has been pointed out elsewhere that the seven walls of Ecbatana conspicuously match the orbits or spheres of the planets, the sun and the moon. There is thus an apparent parallel between the colored battlements of the seven walls of Ecbatana and the colored world whorls in the "Myth of Er". There also appears to be a match between the concentric plan of Ecbatana, and the concentric plan of Atlantis, inferred in past studies.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-26701-2_7

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