DICTIONARIES AND INDICES  .—Mitchell'S

Index to Plato; F . Ast, Lexicon platonicum; E . Abbott, Index to Plato°(English, 1875) . ON THE MSS.—See especially Bekker's edition; Gaisford'sLeatimes platonicae (182o); M . Schanz's edition with critical notes; Jewett 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) . (L . C.) PLATO„Athenian comic poet of the Old Comedy, flourished between 428-389 B.C . 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 Phaeaxto 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-4donis, Europe, lo, 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 . See T . Kock, Comicorum atticorum fragmenta, i . (188o) ; A . Meineke, Poetarum tomicorum graecorumfragmenta (1855) .