to thinking, but which require intuition in the case of sensuous objects, from the immediate grasp by thought of intelligible objects or ideas themselves, that is, of ultimate principles, devoid of all presupposition (diavola, vous). To the first gradation of science, that is, of the higher department of thinking, belong principally, though not exclusively, mathematics; and that Plato regarded them (though he did not fully realise this notion) as a necessary means for elevating experience into scientific knowledge, is evident from hints that occur elsewhere. (Comp. Brandis, Handbuch, &c. vol. ii. pp. 269, &c.-274, &c.) The fourfold division which he brings forward, and which is discussed in the De Republica (vi. p. 509, &c.) he appears to have taken up more definitely in his oral lectures, and in the first department to have distinguished perception from experience (alo@nois from dóca), in the second to have distinguished mediate knowledge from the immediate thinking consciousness of first principles (Toтun from vous; see Arist. De Anima, i. 2, with the note of Trendelenburg).

Although, therefore, the carrying out of Plato's dialectics may be imperfect, and by no means proportional to this excellent foundation, yet he had certainly taken a steady view of their end, namely, to lay hold of ideas more and more distinctly in their organic connection at once with one another and with the phenomenal world, by the discovery of their inward relations; and then having done this, to refer them to their ultimate basis. This ought at the same time to verify itself as the unconditional ground of the reality of objects and of the power we have to take cognisance of them, of Being and of Thought; being comparable to the intellectual sun. Now this absolutely unconditional ground Plato describes as the idea of the good (De Rep. vi. p. 505, &c.), convinced that we cannot imagine any higher definitude than the good; but that we must, on the contrary, measure all other definitudes by it, and regard it as the aim and purpose of all our endeavours, nay of all developments. Not being in a condition to grasp the idea of the good with full distinctness, we are able to approximate to it only so far as we elevate the power of thinking to its original purity (Brandis, ibid. pp. 281, &c. 324, &c.). Although the idea of the good, as the ultimate basis both of the mind and of the realities laid hold of by it, of thought and of existence, is, according to him, more elevated than that of spirit or actual existence itself, yet we can only imagine its activity as the activity of the mind. Through its activity the determinate natures of the ideas, which in themselves only exist, acquire their power of causation, a power which must be set down as spiritual, that is, free. Plato, therefore, describes the idea of the good, or the Godhead, sometimes teleologically, as the ultimate purpose of all conditioned existence; sometimes cosmologically, as the ultimate operative cause; and has begun to develope the cosmological, as also the physico-theological proof for the being of God; but has referred both back to the idea of the Good, as the necessary presupposition to all other ideas, and our cognition of them. Moreover, we find him earnestly endeavouring to purify and free from its restrictions the idea of the Godhead, to establish and defend the belief in a wise and divine government of the world; as also to set

aside the doubt that arises from the existence of evil and suffering in the world. (Brandis, Ibid. p. 331, &c.)

But then, how does the sensuous world, the world of phenomena, come into existence? To suppose that in his view it was nothing else than the mere subjective appearance which springs from the commingling of the ideas, or the confused conception of the ideas (Ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. ii. pp. 295, &c. 339, &c.), not only contradicts the declarations of Plato in the Philebus (p. 23, b. 54, a.), Timaeus (pp. 27, e. 48, e. 51), &c., but contradicts also the dualistic tendency of the whole of the ancient philosophy. He designates as the, we may perhaps say, material ground of the phenomenal world, that which is in itself unlimited, ever in a process of becoming, never really existing, the mass out of which every thing is formed, and connects with it the idea of extension, as also of unregulated motion; attributes to it only the joint causality of necessity, in opposition to the free causality of ideas, which works towards ends, and, by means of his mythical conception of the soul of the universe, seeks to fill up the chasm between these opposed primary essences. This, standing midway between the intelligible (that to which the attribute of sameness belongs) and the sensible (the diverse), as the principle of order and motion in the world, according to him, comprehends in itself all the relations of number and measure. Plato had made another attempt to fill up the gap in the development of ideas by a symbolical representation, in the lectures he delivered upon the Good, mentioned by Aristotle and others. In these he partly referred ideas to intelligible numbers, in order, probably, that he might be able to denote more definitely their relation of dependence on the Godhead, as the absolute one, as also the relation of their succession and mutual connection; and partly described the Godhead as the ultimate ground both of ideas and also of the material of phenomena, inasmuch as he referred them both to the divine causality- the former immediately as original numbers, the latter through the medium of the activity of the ideas. But on this Pythagorean mode of exhibiting the highest principles of Plato's doctrine we have but very imperfect information. (Brandis, Ibid. vol. ii. 1, p. 336, &c.)

Both these departments which form the connecting link between Dialectics and Physics, and the principles of Physics themselves, contain only preliminary assumptions and hypothetical declarations, which Plato describes as a kind of recreation from more earnest search after the really existent, as an innocent enjoyment, a rational sport (Tim. pp. 27, e. 29, b. 59, c.). Inasmuch as physics treat only of the changeable and imitative, they must be contented with attaining probability; but they should aim, especially, at investigating teleologically end-causes, that is, free causality, and showing how they converge in the realisation of the idea of the good. All the determinations of the original undetermined matter are realised by corporeal forms; in these forms Plato attempts to find the natural or necessary basis of the different kinds of feeling and of sensuous perception. Throughout the whole development, however, of his Physiology, as also in the outlines of his doctrine on Health and Sickness, pregnant ideas and clear views are to be met with. (See especially

With the physiology of Plato his doctrine of the Soul is closely connected. Endowed with the same nature as the soul of the world, the human soul is that which is spontaneously active and unapproachable by death, although in its connection with the body bound up with the appetitive, the sensuous; and the Suuós, that which is of the nature of affection or eager impulse, the ground of courage and fear, love and hope, designed, while subordinating itself to the reason, to restrain sensuality, must be regarded as the link between the rational and the sensuous. (Tim. p. 69, d. 71, b., de Rep. iv. p. 435, &c. ix. p. 571.) Another link of connection between the intellectual and sensuous nature of the soul is referred to Love, which, separated from concupiscent desire, is conceived of as an inspiration that transcends mere mediate intellection, whose purpose is to realise a perpetual striving after the immortal, the eternal ;-to realise, in a word, by a close connection with others, the Good in the form of the Beautiful. In the Phaedrus Plato speaks of love under the veil of a myth; in the Lysis he commences the logical definition of it; and in the Symposium, one of the most artistic and attractive of his dialogues, he analyses the different momenta which are necessary to the complete determination of the idea. In these and some of the other dialogues, however, beauty is described as the image of the ideas, penetrating the veil of phenomena and apprehended by the purest and brightest exercise of sense, in relation to colours, forms, actions, and morals, as also with relation to the harmonious combination of the Manifold into perfect Unity, and distinctly separated from the Agreeable and the Useful. Art is celebrated as the power of producing a whole, inspired by an invisible arrangement; of grouping together into one form the images of the ideas, which are everywhere scattered around.

That the soul, when separated from the body,or the pure spirit,— is immortal, and that a continuance, in which power and consciousness or insight are preserved, is secured to it, Socrates, in the Phaedo of Plato, when approaching death, endeavours to convince his friends, partly by means of analogies drawn from the nature of things, partly by the refutation of the opposed hypothesis, that the soul is an harmonious union and tuning of the constituents of the body, partly by the attempt to prove the simplicity of the essential nature of the soul, its consequent indestructibility, and its relation to the Eternal, or its pre-existence; partly by the argumentation that the idea of the soul is inseparable from that of life, and that it can never be destroyed by moral evil, the only evil to which, properly speaking, it is subjected (comp. de Rep. x. p. 609, b. &c., Phaedr. p. 245, c.). Respecting the condition of the soul after death Plato expresses himself only in myths, and his utterances respecting the Transmigration of Souls also are expressed in a mythical form.

As a true disciple of Socrates, Plato devoted all the energy of his soul to ethics, which again are closely connected with politics. He paves the way for a scientific treatment of ethics by the refutation of the sophistical sensualistic and hedonistic (selfish) theories, first of all in the Protagoras and the three smaller dialogues attached to it (see above), then in the Gorgias, by pointing out the

hand that wrong actions are uglier than right ones but more useful, on the other that the only right recognised by nature is that of the stronger, are involved. In this discussion the result is deduced, that neither happiness nor virtue can consist in the attempt to satisfy our unbridled and ever-increasing desires (de Rep. i.). In the Menon the Good is defined as that kind of utility which can never become injurious, and whose realisation is referred to a knowledge which is absolutely fixed and certain,-a knowledge, however, which must be viewed as something not externally communicable, but only to be developed from the spontaneous activity of the soul. Lastly, in the Philebus, the investigation respecting pleasure and pain, which was commenced in the Gorgias, as also that on the idea of the Good, is completed; and this twofold investigation grounded upon the principles of dialectics, and brought into relation with physics. Pain is referred to the disturbance of the inward harmony, pleasure to the maintenance, or restoration of it; and it is shown how, on the one hand, true and false, on the other, pure and mixed pleasure, are to be distinguished, while, inasmuch as it (pleasure) is always dependent on the activity out of which it springs, it becomes so much the truer and purer in proportion as the activity itself becomes more elevated. In this way the first sketch of a table of Goods is attained, in which the eternal nature of Measure, that is, the sum and substance of the ideas, as the highest canon, and then the different steps of the actual realisation of them in life, in a regular descending scale, are given, while it is acknowledged that the accompanying pure (unsensuous) pleasure is also to be regarded as a good, but inferior to that on which it depends, the reason and the understanding, science and art. Now, if we consider that, according to Plato, all morality must be directed to the realisation of the ideas in the phenomenal world; and, moreover, that these ideas in their reality and their activity, as also the knowledge respecting them, is to be referred to the Godhead, we can understand how he could designate the highest good as being an assimilation to God. (Theaet. p. 176, a., de Rep. x. 613; comp. Wyttenbach, ad Plut. de Ser. Num. Vind. p. 27.)

In the Ethics of Plato the doctrine respecting virtue is attached to that of the highest good, and its development. That virtue is essentially one, and the science of the good, had been already deduced in the critical and dialectical introductory dialogues; but it had been also presupposed and even hinted that, without detriment to its unity, different phases of it could be distinguished, and that to knowledge there must be added practice, and an earnest combating of the sensuous functions. In order to discover these different phases, Plato goes back upon his triple division of the faculties of the soul. Virtue, in other words, is fitness of the soul for the operations that are peculiar to it (de Rep. i. p. 353, d. x. p. 601, d.), and it manifests itself by means of its (the soul's) inward harmony, beauty, and health (Gorg. pp. 504, b. 506, b., Phaedo, p. 93, e., de Rep. iv. pp. 444, d. viii. 554, e.). Different phases of virtue are distinguishable so far as the soul is not pure spirit; but just as the spirit should rule both the other elements of the soul, so also should wisdom, as the inner development of the spirit, rule the

commenced in 1827 an elaborate edition of Plato, which is not yet quite completed. This is perhaps the best and most useful edition which has appeared. The edition of J. G. Baiter, J. C. Orelli, and A. G. Winckelmann (one vol. 4to. Zürich, 1839) deserves especial mention for the accuracy of the text and the beauty of the typography.

the characteristics of the old, the middle, and the new comedy, especially the two first, and the causes of the various points of difference. The remarks are brief, but judicious. [W. M. G.]

PLATOR. 1. The commander of Oreum for Philip, betrayed the town to the Romans, B. C. 207 (Liv. xxviii. 6). He is probably the same Plator whom Philip sent with some Illyrians, about the commencement of the Second Punic war, to the assistance of the Cretans. (Polyb. iv. 55.)

2. The brother of Gentius, the Illyrian king, who is called Plator by Livy (xliv. 30), but Pleuratus by Polybius. [PLEURATUS.]

3. Of Dyrrhacium, was slain by Piso, proconsul in Macedonia, B. C. 57, although he had been hospitably received in the house of Plator. (Cic. in Pison. 34, comp. de Harus. Resp. 16.)

PLATORI'NUS, a cognomen of the Sulpicia gens, which occurs only upon coins, one of which is annexed. The obverse represents the head of Augustus with the legend CAESAR AVGVSTVS, the reverse the head of M. Agrippa, with the legend PLATORINVS HIVIR. M. AGRIPPA (Eckhel, vol. v. p. 317.)

Of separate dialogues, or collections of dialogues, the editions are almost endless. Those of the Cratylus and Theaetetus, of the Euthyphro, Apologia, Crito, and Phaedo, of the Sophista, Politicus and Parmenides, and of the Philebus and Symposium by Fischer; of the Lysis, Charmides, Hip-❘ pias Major, and Phaedrus, of the Gorgias and Theaetetus, of the Cratylus, Euthydemus and Parmenides, of the Phaedo, and of the Protagoras and Sophistes by Heindorf (whose notes exhibit both acuteness and sound judgment); of the Phaedo by Wyttenbach; of the Philebus, and of the Parmenides by Stallbaum (in the edition of the latter of which the commentary of Proclus is incorporated), are most worthy of note. Of the trans- | lations of Plato the most celebrated is the Latin version of Marsilius Ficinus (Flor. 1483-1484, and frequently reprinted). It was in this version, which was made from manuscripts, that the writings of Plato first appeared in a printed form. The translation is so extremely close that it has almost the authority of a Greek manuscript, and is of great service in ascertaining varieties of reading. This remark, however, does not apply to the later, altered editions of it, which were published subsequently to the appearance of the Greek text of Plato. There is no good English translation of the whole of Plato, that by Taylor being by no means accurate. The efforts of Floyer Sydenham were much more successful, but he translated only a few of the pieces. There is a French translation by V. Cousin. Schleiermacher's German translation is incomparably the best, but is unfortunately incomplete. There is an Italian translation by Dardi Bembo. The versions of separate dialogues in different languages are too numerous to be noticed.

PLAUTIA GENS, plebeian. The name is also written Plotius, just as we have both Clodius and Claudius. The first person of this gens who obtained the consulship was C. Plautius Proculus in B. c. 358; and from that time down to the imperial period many of the Plautii held at different intervals the highest offices in the state. Under the republic we find the cognomens of DECIANUS, HYPSAEUS, PROCULUS, SILVANUS, VENNO, VENOX: and to these there were still further additions in the time of the empire, a list of which is given below. A few of the Plautii occur without any surname; and of them an account is also given below. Those persons whose names are usually written Plotius are spoken of under this form. The only cognomens occurring on coins are Hypsaeus and Plancus; and the latter surname does not properly belong to the Plotii, but was retained by Munatius Plancus after he had been adopted by L. Plautius. [PLANCUS, No. 5.]

We have space to notice only the following out of the very numerous works written in illustration of Plato:-Platonis Dialogorum Argumenta Exposita et Illustrata, by Tiedemann (Bip. 1786); System der Platonischen Philosophie, by Tennemann (4 vols. 8vo. Leipz. 1792-5); Initia Philosophiae Platonicae, by P. G. Van Heusde (ed. ii. Lugd. Bat. 1842); Platons Leben und Schriften, by G. A. F. Ast (Leipz. 1816); Geschichte und System der Platonischen Philosophie, by C. F. Hermann (Heidelb. 1838); Platonis de Ideis et Numeris Doctrina ex Aristotele illustrata, by F. A. Trendelenburg (Lips. 1826); Platonische Studien, by E. Zeller (Tübing. 1839). There are also numerous smaller treatises by Böckh, C. F. Hermann, Stallbaum, &c., which may be consulted with profit. Schleiermacher's introductions to some of the dialogues have been translated and published in a separate form in English. [C. P. M.] PLATONIUS (Пarάvios), a grammarian, of whom all that we know is that a treatise bearing his name is generally prefixed to the editions of Aristophanes. It is entitled Περὶ διαφορᾶς kwμdiv. The subject is the difference between

volumes containing the various readings, and portions of the commentary of Proclus on the Cratylus, edited by Boissonade.

PLAUTIA URGULANILLA, the first wife of the emperor Claudius, who divorced her on account of her lewd conduct, and of her being suspected of murder. She bore two children during her marriage, Drusus, who died at Pompeii in A. D. 20 [DRUSUS, No. 23], and Claudia, whom she had by a freedman of Claudius. and who was therefore exposed by command of the emperor. (Suet. Claud. 26, 27.)

PLAUTIA NUS, L. (or C.) FU/LVIUS, an African by birth, the fellow-townsman and probably a connection of Septimius Severus. He served as praefect of the praetorium under this emperor, who loaded him with honours and wealth, deferred to his opinion upon all important