Plato, the great Athenian philosopher, was born during the early years of the Peloponnesian war, most probably in 427 B.C. Diogenes Laertius (q.v.), in his gossiping Lives of the Philosophers, and other writers of the Christian era have handed down a considerable amount of detail respecting his life, but most of it is of very doubtful value. As time went on, legends gathered round a famous name; and many of the authorities used by Diogenes were in all probability, like Diogenes himself, almost entirely wanting in critical capacity. According to one account Plato was born in Athens itself, according to another in the island of Ægina. He came of an aristocratic family, his father Ariston boasting descent from Codrus the last king of Athens, who was said to be descended from the god Poseidon; whilst the family of his mother, Perictione, claimed kinship with Solon, and through Solon with Nélus, a son of Poseidon. Even this double claim to superhuman ancestry was not sufficient for the admirers of the 'divine' Plato. Diogenes tells us on the alleged authority of (among others) Speusippus, Plato's own nephew and successor in the academy, that the story was current at Athens that his real father was Apollo, and that the god appeared in a vision to Ariston, who thereupon kept away from his wife till her child was born. Plato's birthday was celebrated on the same day (at the end of May) as that of Apollo himself. Bees from Hymettus are said to have fed the infant with their honey. Plato was originally named after his grandfather, Aristocles; but his gymnastic teacher is said to have called him 'Platón,' because of his broad shoulders, though others say he got this name from the breadth of his forehead. There is a story that he wrestled at the Isthmian games. He cannot well have escaped military service during the terrible struggle of Athens in the last years of the Peloponnesian war. In youth he is said to have written poetry, and this we can easily believe: a few epigrams in the 'Anthology' are ascribed to him. With regard to his philosophical education we have the important testimony of Aristotle (Metaph. i. 6), that from his youth he had been familiar with Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus, and that the other philosophic influences under which he came were those of Socrates and of the 'Italic' schools—i.e. Pythagoreans and Eleatics. Critias (afterwards one of the 'Thirty Tyrants') and Charmides were both maternal relatives of Plato, and both belonged to the Socratic circle. Possibly it was through them that Plato came under the decisive influence of Socrates. If Plato was, as Diogenes says, twenty years old when he first became companion of Socrates, his discipleship lasted for eight years. According to his own account in the Phædo, Plato was prevented by illness from being present at the last conversation and death of his master (399 B.C.).
Plato made no attempt to enter on a political career. Through family ties he was connected with the anti-democratic party, who admired Sparta. His youth was passed amid the disasters and failures of the Athenian democracy; and the martyrdom of the teacher who had inspired him would not tend to increase his sympathy with that form of government. After the death of Socrates he seems to have stayed some time at Megara, where Euclides, who had been one of the Socratic circle but belonged also to the Eleatic school, had established himself. Euclides developed the Eleatic philosophy in the direction which Zeno ('the father of logic') had begun—he was chiefly occupied with what, after Aristotle's time, came to be considered logical questions. His school was known as the 'Dialectical' or 'Eristic'—i.e. 'disputatious.' This sojourn at Megara was doubtless an important stage in the development of Plato's thought. How long he stayed at Megara we do not know; nor can we tell with certainty whether he was back at Athens in 394 (he is said to have taken part in a Corinthian campaign), or whether he did not return to Athens till ten or twelve years after the death of Socrates. During this period of his life he is said to have undertaken extensive travels—to have visited Cyrene, Egypt, Italy, and Sicily. The visit to Sicily is almost certain; visits to the Magi and the Persians, the Babylonians, and the Hebrews are undoubtedly fictions of a later age, which supposed that wisdom could only come out of the East. The despotism of the elder Dionysius in Syracuse probably helped to suggest the pictures of the tyrant in the Republic and Gorgias. On his way back from Sicily Plato is said to have been seized by order of Dionysius and sold as a slave in Ægina, but to have been ransomed by a certain Anniceris of Cyrene. The return to Athens has been variously assigned to the years 389 and 387. Plato now began to teach in the Academy (q.v.), a place of exercise in the western suburb of Athens, planted like a grove, and named from the hero Acadēmus. There and in his own garden, which was adjacent, he gathered round him a band of disciples, teaching them probably, like his master Socrates, mainly by con- versations, and embodying the results of his thinking and teaching in his written Dialogues. Two more visits to Sicily interrupted the quiet of these later years. Soon after the death of the elder Dionysius (368) his friend Dion summoned him to come to Syracuse, in the hope that he might convert the younger Dionysius to philosophy, and so realise the dream of a philosopher-king. The young despot welcomed him warmly, but soon became weary of serious discussions, quarrelled with Dion, and banished him; and Plato had to give up his fruitless task. A third journey to Sicily (about 361) was undertaken in the vain attempt to reconcile Dionysius to Dion. Plato's own life, it is said, was only saved from the tyrant by the intercession of the Pythagorean Archytas. On his return to Athens (360) he again resumed his teaching and writing, till, after a peaceful old age, he died 'in his eighty-first year' at a wedding-feast (347). He was succeeded in the Academy by his sister's son, Speusippus; but his greatest disciple was Aristotle, who must have come under his influence after the return from the second Sicilian voyage.
Of Plato's philosophical writings none apparently have been lost; but along with undoubtedly genuine works there have come down to us others whose authenticity is open to question. Thrasyllus, a scholar of the time of Augustus and Tiberius, considered thirty-six of the works ascribed to Plato to be genuine, rejecting a few quite unimportant writings as spurious. This 'canon of Thrasyllus' probably represents the tradition of the Alexandrian library. Aristophanes, one of the Alexandrian librarians (about 264 B.C.), had arranged several of Plato's dialogues in 'trilogies' (groups of three), following the analogy of Attic dramas. Plato himself suggests at least two such trilogies—viz. Republic, Timæus, Critias (unfinished); Sophist, Statesman, Philosopher (never written). Thrasyllus adopted an arrangement in tetralogies, making nine groups of four, only one of which groups (viz. Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phædo, which give a connected picture of the trial, last days, and death of Socrates) is anything but extremely artificial. Grote accepts all the works in the 'canon of Thrasyllus,' believing that the Alexandrian library had every means of obtaining a genuine collection of Plato's writings from his successors in the Academy; but almost all other modern scholars reject the Epistles, some of which may, however, be very early forgeries. And the authenticity of some ten or more of the dialogues has been very much disputed. Fortunately, the more important works are the least open to question. We have Aristotle's statement that the Laws were written by Plato after the Republic. Beyond that we can only conjecture the order in which the dialogues were written; and the hypotheses of different scholars have varied greatly. We may safely put aside the theory of Schleiermacher (with whom the modern critical study of Plato begins), that Plato quite early in life had formed a complete system of philosophy in his mind, and that the dialogues were published by him in an order intended to unfold this system gradually to the world. It would be more true to say that Plato never had any completely formed system, and during a long life of speculation his opinions must have undergone modification. We cannot, indeed, with complete certainty arrange his dialogues in a series representing exactly his mental development (as K. F. Hermann and others have attempted); but the student may most profitably consider them in groups, suggested by the different influences that acted on him, and especially by his changing attitude towards the teaching of Socrates. First of all would come those short dialogues in which, so far as we can judge by comparing him with
Xenophon, Plato does not go beyond what the actual Socrates might have said. Such are the dialogues which deal with some particular virtue; thus, in the Charmides Socrates questions the beautiful and modest youth Charmides as to what the virtue of modesty or 'temperance' is. In the Laches he questions the soldier Laches about courage. The most important of this group is the Protagoras, in which Socrates argues against this famous sophist that all virtue is one, and that it is identical with knowledge. Some of these slighter dialogues may have been composed before the death of Socrates; Diogenes Laertius tells us that Socrates on hearing Plato read the Lysis (which deals with friendship) said: 'O Hercules! what a lot of lies the young fellow has told about me.' Ancient tradition made the Phaedrus the earliest dialogue; but this almost certainly belongs to a later period, though earlier than the Republic. The Apology, or 'Defence of Socrates on his Trial,' has probably more historical accuracy than any other composition of Plato's (Plato tells us he was present at the trial), and may have been written soon after the death of Socrates. The Euthyphro (concerning piety) and the Crito (Socrates in prison) may belong to the same period. The Phaedo, however (the last conversation of Socrates, on the immortality of the soul), is probably of later date, as it implies the theory of ideas, and may be assigned to a time after Plato's visit to Sicily—i.e. after he had come more strongly under Pythagorean influences. Some modern scholars, laying great stress on the 'Megaric' influence, assign the great metaphysical dialogues (Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman) to the time between 399 and 386, when Plato began his teaching at the Academy. Others, with more probability, consider these dialogues and the Philebus to belong to a later period than the Republic, and this opinion is gaining ground. The Phaedrus, Symposium ('Banquet'), Gorgias, Republic, Phaedo, in which (along with the Theaetetus) Plato's literary skill is at its very highest, may perhaps be all assigned to the period of his life after forty, but before his old age. In these dialogues the personal characteristics ascribed to Socrates are probably represented with historical and, at least, with dramatic truth; but theories are introduced which betray strong Pythagorean influences. We must of course remember that while Plato idealises Socrates, and makes him more of a metaphysician than in all probability he was, Xenophon, who has a very unphilosophical mind, most certainly understates him, and makes him more of a commonplace moralist than he must have been in order to stimulate Greek thought as he did. In the Timæus Plato would have felt it inappropriate to make Socrates the exponent of theories about the physical universe, and after a short introductory conversation the dialogue form is deserted, and Timæus, a Pythagorean, expounds the cosmogony of his school. In the Sophist and Statesman 'an Eleatic stranger' is the chief speaker; in the Parmenides the youthful Socrates is criticised by the great Eleatic philosopher. In the Laws Socrates does not appear at all, the leading speaker being 'an Athenian stranger' (Plato himself?). May we not regard this as an indication that in his later years Plato felt himself farther away from his master? These later dialogues, in fact, seem like a transition from the Plato of the Phaedrus and of the Republic to Aristotle.
It is customary to treat of Plato's philosophy under the three heads of dialectic (or logic), physics, and ethics. But, it must be remembered, these divisions did not exist for Plato himself, nor, in fact, had he, strictly speaking, a 'system' of philosophy. Plato's philosophy may most correctly be regarded as a development of the teaching of Socrates, but containing elements derived from the earlier philosophies from which Socrates had purposely turned away. Aristotle's philosophy is, however, a development of Plato's; and we, knowing what becomes of Plato's suggestions in the hands of his pupil, are able and apt to see a greater amount of system than Plato himself would have recognised.
The dialogue was to Plato much more than a mere literary form into which he chose to fit his thoughts. The 'conversations of Socrates' gave to Plato his conception of the method of philosophy. 'Dialectic' comes from a word which means 'to converse,' 'to discuss;' and it is significant that Athenian philosophy originated not in the meditations of the solitary recluse, but in the discussions of a city of talkers. It is said that Zeno the Eleatic used the dialogue for philosophical writing before Plato, but this is very doubtful. In many of the later dialogues the chief speaker has so much of the talking to himself that the dialogue becomes a rather empty form, and is evidently yielding place to the lecture as the vehicle of philosophical exposition.
According to a well-known sentence of Aristotle, the germs of logical doctrine which may be ascribed to Socrates are 'the inductive method' and the endeavour to get 'general definitions.' When people spoke about persons or acts as just or beautiful, Socrates would insist on asking 'What is justice?' 'What is beauty?' and would test every definition brought forward by applying it to particular instances, content to remove error even where complete truth could not be obtained. This is the procedure of Plato in the earlier dialogues. In the Theaetetus, however, the Platonic Socrates asks the profounder question, 'What is knowledge?'—i.e. true or scientific knowledge. It is not 'sensation' (or 'perception'), as Protagoras and his followers suggest: sensation alone gives us no objective certainty, valid for every one. Nor is it 'opinion.' Opinion may be true, but has no certainty. A man only 'knows' when he has got at the reasons or causes of things, when he sees facts not in an isolated way, but connected by the 'chain of causation' (Meno): he must be dealing with what is permanent and universal. What then is this? Plato's answer comes to be found in the theory of 'Ideas.' (The word means properly 'forms' or 'shapes,' and so 'kinds.' The analogy of sculpture may help one to understand how the Greeks came to regard 'the form,' in contrast to the 'material,' as the essential element.) This theory, following Aristotle's guidance, we may consider a development of the Socratic 'universal conception,' and also of the Pythagorean doctrine of 'numbers.' By this theory Plato seeks to reconcile the opposing views of the Heracliteans and of the Eleatics (q.v.). According to Plato, both the one, the permanent, and the manifold, the changing, have their place in the universe, the former in the world of ideas, the intelligible world, with which 'science' deals, the latter in the world of sense, with which mere 'opinion' is content. In the Republic Plato elaborates this theory of knowledge, and gives a symbolical representation of it in the famous image or 'myth' of 'the Cave.' The majority of mankind are pictured by him as prisoners in a subterranean cavern, chained with their backs to a fire, looking at the shadows thrown by it on the rocky wall and mistaking them for realities. The turning round of some of these prisoners to the light, and the toilsome ascent up the steep slope to the mouth of the cave, and the gradual training of their eyes bewildered in the sunlight to see the real things in the upper world, and finally to look up to the sun itself—this represents the education of the philosopher. Education is 'a turning round of the eye of the soul.' Learning, according to the more startling language of the Meno and Phædrus, is 'recollecting': the soul in a previous existence has beheld the 'ideas,' and knowledge is possible just because the mind does not acquire something alien to it, but recovers what is its own. The way from the life of the senses and of mere vague opinion to the highest or philosophical knowledge is through the mathematical sciences. Mathematics, being the only science which had then outgrown the merest infancy, is to the Greeks the type of science in general. (Plato is said to have had the words 'Let no one ignorant of geometry enter' inscribed on the door of his school.) In the conceptions of mathematics we have a clue to the understanding of Plato's theory of ideas. The geometrician looks at a particular triangle, but he speaks not of this, but of the triangle. The triangles we see are triangles only by 'participating in' ('imitating,' the Pythagoreans would have said) the triangle. And it remains true for us still that we can only scientifically know anything in so far as we can find in it a universal element, which manifests itself or 'is present' (in Platonic language) in the particular. The botanist, for example, knows a particular plant only as a specimen of a species (the Latin equivalent of Plato's 'idea'). But the philosopher must not remain in the region of the various special sciences: he has the passion for unity and universality. Plato has a vision of the true science which is above all particular sciences, and is the unity and 'coping-stone' of them all: and this he calls in a special sense 'dialectic,' which does not like mathematical thinking need the help of sensible images, but deals with 'ideas' alone in their relation to one another and to the highest of all, 'the idea of the good.' These ideas are not mere concepts of our minds: they are, in Plato's phrase, 'the most real existences.' The extreme form of mediæval 'Realism,' according to which universals are prior to and more real than particular things, is a crude version of Plato's doctrine. It is indeed an adaptation of Platonic philosophy to Christian theology, for which Plato gives no sanction, if the ideas are called 'the thoughts of God'; but the phrase is perhaps less misleading than many others which have been used about them. Plato does speak (in Republic, x.) of God having 'made' the ideas, as a human artificer makes things in imitation of them; but he is there talking in pictorial language. God in Plato's system is rather the 'idea of the good,' the good-in-itself, which is the cause alike of knowing and of being, as the sun in the visible world is the cause both of light and of life. In the Timæus the world is said to be fashioned by the Creator or Artificer after the pattern of the ideas; but here also the language is figurative. Plato's 'ideas' must, however, be thought of both as 'real kinds' and as archetypes. Plato's presentation of his theory varies: most probably the theory itself underwent modification. In the Parmenides some of the objections made to it are the same as were afterwards urged by Aristotle—a remarkable instance of a philosopher criticising himself.
The relation of the hierarchy of the ideas to the supreme idea of the good is nowhere worked out by Plato. Dialectic remains only an ideal science. The true dialectician is he who will see things in their unity (compare Mr Herbert Spencer's definition of philosophy as 'completely unified knowledge'): he will also 'divide things rightly according to their kinds.' The method of philosophy is a bringing together and a dividing (synagôgê and diairesis). In this we may recognise the germ of Aristotle's 'induction and deduction.'
The Timæus is the one work which Plato has devoted to the philosophy of nature; and though it has exercised directly and indirectly an enormous influence over the ancient and mediæval world, as it has specially attracted mystical and theosophical commentators, in Plato's own view it occupies a very subordinate position. We are again and again warned by him not to expect strict truth, but only approximations and figurative statements ('myths') in dealing with such subjects. The notion of 'emanations,' which plays so great a part in later philosophy is latent in the Timæus. The Cosmos, or order of the universe, is the 'one only-begotten' image of God, its father and creator (Deiourgos—i.e. 'artificer'). The Creator was good, and wished to make the world as like himself as possible; but no created or visible thing can be perfect. The material out of which the orderly world is made introduces imperfection into it. (This conception of matter as evil had a potent influence in later times, especially when combined with Oriental ideas—e.g. in Gnosticism, q.v.) So, too, the eternal Creator could not make the world eternal like himself, and in making it made Time, 'the moving image of eternity.' To the obscure details of Plato's cosmology and physics it would be unprofitable to refer here. Cosmology is again introduced, but briefly, and with similar warnings that it is to be treated as mythical, in connection with the immortality of the soul in the Phædo and Republic. The soul of man (like the 'soul of the universe') is intermediate between the ideas and the corporeal. The human soul, as it exists in the body, has three parts or elements: (1) the rational; (2) the spirited element; (3) the appetitive. The rational element alone, which is the soul in its true being as it is apart from mixture with body, is properly immortal. The doctrine of immortality (i.e. the pre-existence of the soul as well as its existence after death) is introduced in the Phædrus, Republic, and Phædo, and is the main subject of the third. In all Plato makes use of the Pythagorean notion of transmigration. What he says must be taken as largely mythical and figurative. His whole philosophical thinking implies the eternity of Reason, but how far he believed in what is now understood by personal immortality has been and may be doubted. Wordsworth's famous Ode on Immortality is generally considered 'Platonic'; but it turns on a misapplication of Plato's doctrine of 'reollection.' Plato would certainly not hold that the new-born infant is nearer perfection than the aged philosopher.
Plato is so far true to the example of Socrates that, though he has metaphysical interests which were alien to his master, yet the practical interest always predominates. Philosophy is to him not mere intellectual speculation, but a habit of mind and a manner of living. As we have seen, the highest of the ideas is 'the good.' He cannot accept the Cyrenaic view that pleasure is the good; but neither does he agree with the Cynics that all pleasure is evil. Pleasures are good or bad, high or low, according to the part of the soul to which they belong. Socrates had identified virtue and knowledge, had asserted that virtue was one, and that virtue could be taught. All these doctrines Plato accepted; but modifications gradually appear. In the Republic, the dialogue in which all the various elements of his philosophy are united more than in any other, Plato accepts without proof the popular distinction of four 'cardinal virtues' (as they afterwards came to be called), and fits them in with his psychology. Wisdom is the virtue of the reason, Courage of the spirited element, Temperance (i.e. Moderation, Self-control in general) is the virtue of the lower parts in their relation to the higher, while Justice
('Righteousness' would perhaps be a better word) is not the virtue of any special part, but of the whole soul, and is defined as 'every part doing its own work and not interfering with the others.' To arrive at the nature of Justice (the professed object of the discussion) the Platonic Socrates has turned 'from the small to the large letters'—i.e. from the individual to the state, where human nature can be seen 'writ large.' Wisdom is the virtue of the rulers, Courage of the warriors, Temperance or Moderation is the harmony resulting from the obedience of the lower to the higher, and Justice is the virtue of the whole state. A perfect state would require a special ruling caste, and the only true rulers in Plato's opinion are philosophers. Plato allows that there may be ordinary virtues resulting from custom or right opinion (cf. Meno and Phædo), but the highest type of conduct must be bound up with the highest type of knowledge. Those alone who have the philosophic nature (which is sometimes described by him as the passionate love of truth) are the proper rulers in a perfect state, and in the philosophic nature all virtues are united. In this ideal commonwealth (the parent of so many 'Utopias'), besides the paradox of the philosopher-king, the other paradoxes by which Plato startled his contemporaries were (1) that men and women should have the same education and the same pursuits, and (2) that private property and the family should be abolished. All things were to be in common; and the breeding and rearing of the citizens was to be entirely under the control of the philosopher-rulers. Just as in his theory of knowledge Plato's ideal is unity, so his political ideal is that the state should be as much as possible one, one as a family is one, or rather as one individual is. All are to be 'members of one body.' Some of the features in Plato's ideal state were doubtless suggested to him by the Pythagorean brotherhoods, many of them by the actual institutions of Sparta. In fact, Plato's ideal state might be described as a combination of philosophy with Spartan military discipline. Without the philosophy we have an inferior form—the Spartan state, or 'timocracy,' in which not philosophy but military honour is the ruling principle. Inferior to that comes oligarchy, of which the ruling principle is wealth. Lower still is democracy, the equality of good and bad alike; and worst of all is tyranny, the rule of the 'wild-beast element in man.' In the Statesman Plato gives a rather different classification of constitutions, recognising both a better and a worse form of democracy, and placing both below aristocracy, but above oligarchy: in the true state the number of the rulers matters not, if only they have 'the science of ruling.' In the Laws he elaborates a second-best state, giving up communism as too difficult of attainment, and proposing a complete equalisation of property. In the Laws also he praises 'mixed government.'
In the earlier part of the Republic Plato discusses the place of art in education. Homer and Hesiod were the Greek 'Bible;' but Plato objects to much in the poets and in the popular religion as false and immoral. Music and poetry should be simple (here again the complex, the manifold, is of the nature of evil), and should imitate only what is good, hence dramatic art is especially objected to. Towards the end of the dialogue he goes further, and objects to all 'imitation,' whether in painting or in words, as being only a copy of the so-called real things, which are themselves only a copy of the true reality—the ideas: and so he drives the poets from his ideal state. Aristotle's Poetics may be regarded as in part a 'Defence of Poesy' against Plato's criticism. Why, it has often been asked, has Plato, himself so great an artist, dealt so Puritanically and so unsympathetically with art? Partly, perhaps, because the first steps in reflection about art, as about religion, imply a certain withdrawal from the sway of that which is to be criticised and understood. But the Republic gives only one side of Plato's thought on art. In the Symposium (in which the banqueters praise Love in turn) and in the Phædrus 'the beautiful' occupies the same place that 'the good' does in the Republic. Plato is after all a true Athenian, and thinks of the good under the form of the beautiful. ('Beautiful-and-good' is the Greek equivalent of 'noble' or 'gentleman' in its best sense.) 'All that is good is beautiful,' he says in the Timæus. The true lover is akin to the philosopher, and loves the beauty of the soul rather than the beauty of the body, and ascends from the love of the many beautiful to the love of absolute beauty. There is indeed a strain of asceticism in Plato's view of life; but there is none of the Cynic contempt for the beauty of the human form and for the graces of social intercourse. In the Phædo Socrates speaks of the body as 'the prison-house of the soul,' and of philosophy as 'the practising of death.' But Socrates at the banquet speaks somewhat differently from Socrates awaiting his end: and in the Republic the body has to be carefully trained that it may be a fit servant of the soul, and the young are to grow up amid fair sights and sounds.
Plato's influence on human thought has been even more widely diffused, but is more difficult to measure than that of Aristotle. The various schools of the Old, Middle, and New Academy caught only a small portion of his spirit. The Stoics, especially the later Stoics, borrowed much from him. Perhaps no school of Greek philosophy was unaffected by him. In Alexandria Jewish thinkers fell under his fascination (see PHILO); and Christian theology is largely Platonic. But the Alexandrian Platonists and the Neoplatonists (q.v.) differ from Plato himself in making the Timæus the centre of his system. The writings ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus and Dionysius the Areopagite belong to the Neoplatonic period. The latter was translated by Erigena in the 9th century, and Platonism reached the western world in the middle ages through the medium of those mystical writers. The Italian Renaissance and the revolt against Scholastic Aristotelianism revived the study of Plato's own writings; but the enthusiasm for Plato in the 15th century at Florence and the less important 'Cambridge Platonism' of the 17th century were both after the Neoplatonic manner, and, like the mediæval 'Aristotelianism,' brought more veneration than understanding to the interpretation of the philosopher. Of all Plato's disciples (to adapt a famous saying) perhaps only one had understood him—Aristotle—and he did not. His criticisms are often strangely unsympathetic. Yet Aristotle's whole system gives a more trustworthy clue to Plato's real philosophical significance than is to be got from mystical interpreters whose zeal was not always according to knowledge (see ARISTOTLE).
The first printed edition of the Greek text of Plato is the Aldine (Venice, 1513). Plato is constantly cited according to the pages of the edition printed by H. Stephanus (Paris, 1578). The best and most convenient texts are those of Stallbaum, of Baiter, Orelli and Winckelmann, and of K. F. Hermann. The critical edition by Schanz is not yet completed (1891). Plato was first printed in the Latin translation by Ficino (Flor. 1483), which was the best outcome of the Platonic revival, and is the basis of the ordinary Latin versions. A complete English translation was published by Thomas Taylor, 'the Platonist'—i.e. Neoplatonist, in 1804 (including nine dialogues translated by Sydenham about 1759). The poet Shelley translated the Symposium (included along with other fragments of Platonic translations in Mr Buxton Forman's edition of his Works). Professor Jowett has made Plato an English classic (Trans. with Introductions, 2d ed. 5 vols. 1875; The Republic, separately, 3d ed. revised 1888). In the 'Golden Treasury' series are included translations of The Republic by Davies and Vaughan, of the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phædo (under title Trial and Death of Socrates), by F. J. Church, and of the Phædrus, Lysis, and Protagoras, by Josiah Wright. Among more important English editions of separate dialogues may be named the Apology, by Riddell; Phædrus and Gorgias, by Thompson; Philebus, by Badham and by Poste; Theætetus, Sophist, Statesman, by Campbell; Phædo and Timæus, by Archer-Hind; Phædo, by Geddes; and the Republic, by Jowett and L. Campbell (1894). Among works on Plato's philosophy may be named Grote's Plato; Whewell's Platonic Dialogues (1860); Zeller's Plato; W. Pater's Plato and Platonism (1893); T. B. Strong's Platonism (1896); Bussell's The School of Plato (1896); and the relevant sections in the Histories of Philosophy by Schwegler, Ueberweg, Erdmann. Lutoslawski in The Origin of Plato's Logic (1897) rearranged the order of Plato's works on the ground of style alone, the doctrine of the ideas as objective existences being, he asserts, but a passing phase. For Plato's influence on Christian theology, see Hatch's Hibbert Lectures (1888); Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria (1886). For the Cambridge Platonists, see the articles LATITUDINARIANS, CUDWORTH, MORE, SMITH (JOHN), WHICHCOTE.