Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/858

 C. F. Hermann, Geschichte und System, &c. (1839); A. Boeckh, Untersuchungen (1852); Ed. Zeller, ''Geschichte der gr. Philosophie; Fr. Überweg, Untersuchungen (1861); S. Ribbing, Genetische Darstellung (1863); Fr. Susemihl, Genetische Entwicklung (1855-1898); E. Alberti, Geist and Ordnung (1864); C. Schaarschmidt, Die Sammlung der platonischen Schriften (1866); M. Vermehren, Plat. Studien (1870); D. Peipers, Untersuchungen über das System Platons. Teil i., “Die Erkenntnisstheorie” (Leipzig, 1874); O. Apelt, Beiträge zur Geschichte der griechischen Philosophien; L. Spengel, Isocrates und Platon (1863); A. Krohn, Die platonische Frage (1878) E. Teichmüller, Literarische Fehder (1881); H. Bonitz, Platonische Studien (especially valuable) (1886); E. Pfleiderer, Socrates und Platon (1896); H. Windenband, Platon (1900); C. Ritter, Untersuchungen''; Th. Gomperz, Platonische Aufsätze: Griechische Denker, vol. ii.; P. Natorp, Pl. Ideenlehre (1903); C. Ritter, Platon: sein Leben, seine Schriften, seine Lehre (1909), vol. i.; and Neue Untersuchungen (1910). Other references will be found in the volumes named. French: V. Cousin; T. H. Martin, Études sur la Timée (1841). Italian: Felice Tocco.

.—Mitchell's Index to Plato; F. Ast, Lexicon platonicum; E. Abbott, Index to Plato (English, 1875).

.—See especially Bekker's edition; Gaisford's Lectiones platonicae (1820); M. Schanz's edition with critical notes; Jowett and Campbell's Republic, vol. ii.; J. Burnett's Oxford edition. The important Codex Clarkianus in the Bodleian library has been reproduced in facsimile, with a preface by T. W. Allen (1898-1899).

 PLATO, Athenian comic poet of the Old Comedy, flourished between 428-389 According to Suidas, he was the author of thirty comedies. Some of these deal with political matters. Such were the Cleophon and Hyperbolus, directed against the well-known demagogues, and the Symmachia, referring to a coalition formed by Nicias, Alcibiades and Phaeax to get rid of Hyperbolus by ostracism. His later plays treat the vices and failings of mankind in the spirit of burlesque and parody. Such were the Sophistae, akin to the Clouds of Aristophanes; the Cinesias, an attack on a contemporary poet; the Festivals, satirizing the useless expenditure and extravagance common on such occasions; mythological subjects—Adonis, Europe, Io, the Ants (on the Aeginetan legend of the change of ants into men); Phaon, the story of the Lesbian ferryman, who was presented by Aphrodite with a marvellous ointment, the use of which made women madly in love with him.

 PLATON, LEVSHIN (1737-1812), Russian divine, was born at Chashnikovo near Moscow, and educated in the academy of that city. In 1763 the empress Catherine II. invited him to instruct her son Paul in theology, and he became one of the court chaplains. Three years afterwards Platon was appointed archimandrite of the monastery of the Trinity (Troitskaya Lavra) near Moscow, in 1770 archbishop of Tver, and in 1787 archbishop of Moscow and metropolitan. He died in 1812, one of his last acts having been to write an encouraging letter to the emperor Alexander I. in view of the French invasion. Platon was a brilliant and learned man, and the author of several works which enjoyed a high reputation in their time, including A Short History of the Russian Church, which has been translated into English.

 PLATONIC LOVE, a term commonly applied to an affectionate relation between a man and a woman into which the sexual element does not enter. The term in English goes back as far as Sir William Davenant's Platonic Lovers (1636). It is derived from the conception, in Plato's Symposium, of the love of the idea of good which lies at the root of all virtue and truth. Amor platonicus was used, e.g. by Marsilio Ficino (15th century), as a synonym for amor socraticus, referring to the affection which subsisted between Socrates and his pupils.

 PLATOON (Fr. peloton, from Fr. pelote, a ball or pellet; cf. Ger. Haufe, heap), a small group of soldiers. In the early 17th century it was a definite tactical unit of infantry, corresponding to the modern section or half company. In the 18th century the battalion, irrespective of its organization into companies, was told off on parade into six, eight or ten platoons of equal strength. "Platoon fire" was the systematic and regulated fire of platoon volleys, the platoons firing one after the other. Hence a "platoon" sometimes means a volley.

The fire of a long line of infantry was as a rule conducted on the same principles, each battalion of the front line employing platoon fire, which is often picturesquely described as a "rolling platoon fire," or "rolling volleys." The word is obsolete in the British army, but is used in the United States, and, in various forms, in the armies of France and other Latin nations.

 PLATT, THOMAS COLLIER (1833-1910), American politician, was born in Owego, Tioga county, New York, on the 15th of July 1833. He studied in 1849-1852 at Yale, from which he received the honorary degree of A.M. in 1876. He made money in lumbering out West, and returning to Owego became a banker and railway director. He helped to organize its Republican party in Tioga county, and in 1873-1877 was a representative in Congress. In 1877 he was chairman of the state Republican Convention at Rochester. On the 18th of January 1881 he was elected United States senator, but resigned, with his colleague, Roscoe Conkling, on the 16th of May following, chiefly because President Garfield, in spite of their protest, had appointed as collector of the port of New York, Judge William H. Robertson, a political opponent. Within ten years he became the acknowledged Republican &ldquo;boss&rdquo; of the state, and he again served in the United States Senate from 1897 to 1909. But his power waned steadily after about 1903. He died in New York City on the 6th of March 1910.

 PLATTE (so named, from the French, because of its shallowness), or, a river system of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska, tributary to the Missouri river, which it enters immediately north of Plattsmouth, Nebraska, 18 m. below Omaha, in about 41&deg; 3' N. lat. Including the North Platte it is about 900 m. long from its headwaters, with a drainage basin for the entire system of 90,000 sq. m. The Platte proper is formed by the junction of the North Platte and the South Platte, sometimes called the North and South Forks of the Platte, immediately below the city of North Platte in Lincoln county, Nebraska. The North Platte and South Platte rise respectively in North Park and South Park in Colorado. The tributaries of the main stream all flow in from the north; the most important being the Loup, which empties immediately east of Columbus in Platte county, and the Elkhorn, which joins the Platte in Douglas county, due west of Omaha.

 PLATTNER, KARL FRIEDRICH (1800-1858), German metallurgical chemist, was born at Kleinwaltersdorf, near Freiberg in Saxony, on the 2nd of January, 1800. His father, though only a poor working miner, found the means to have him educated first at the Bergschule and then at the Bergakademie of Freiberg, and after he had completed his courses there in 1820 he obtained employment, chiefly as assayer, in connexion with the royal mines and metal works. Having taken up the idea of quantitative mouth-blowpipe assaying, which was then almost unknown &mdash; except that E. Harkort (1797-1835) in 1827, while a student in Freiberg Academy, had worked out a blowpipe assay for silver &mdash; he succeeded in devising trustworthy methods for all the ordinary useful metals; in particular his modes of assaying for nickel and cobalt quickly found favour with metallurgists. He also devoted himself to the improvement of qualitative blowpipe analysis, and summed up his experience in a treatise Die Probierkunst mit dem Löthrohr (1835), which became a standard authority. In 1840 he was made chief of the royal department of assaying. Two years later he was deputed to complete a course of lectures on metallurgy at the Bergakademie in place of W. A. Lampadius (1772-1842), whom he subsequently succeeded as professor. He died at Freiberg on the 22nd of January 1858.

<section end="Plattner, Karl Friedrich" /> <section begin="Plattsburg" />PLATTSBURG, a city, port of entry and the county-seat of Clinton county, New York, U.S.A., situated on the west shore of Lake Champlain, at the mouth of the Saranac river, 168 m.<section end="Plattsburg" />