y was then at its prime, and which exercised a
profound influence over him; after ten years' wandering in this way he,
at the age of 40, returned to Athens, and founded his Academy, a
gymnasium outside the city with a garden, which belonged to his father,
and where he gathered around him a body of disciples, and had Aristotle
for one of his pupils, lecturing there with undiminished mental power
till he reached the advanced age of 81; of his philosophy one can give no
account here, or indeed anywhere, it was so unsectarian; he was by
pre-eminence the world-thinker, and though he was never married and left
no son, he has all the thinking men and schools of philosophy in the
world as his offspring; enough to say that his philosophy was philosophy,
as it took up in its embrace both the ideal and the real, at once the
sensible and the super-sensible world (429-347 B.C.).

PLATOFF, MATVEI IVANOVICH, COUNT, hetman of Cossacks, and Russian
commander in the Napoleonic wars; took part in the campaigns of 1805-7,
and scourged the French during their retreat from Moscow in 1812, and
again after their defeat at Leipzig 1813; he commanded at the victory of
Altenburg 1813, and for his services obtained the title of count
(1757-1818).

PLATONIC LOVE, love between persons of different sexes, in which as
being love of soul for soul no sexual passion intermingles; is so named
agreeably to the doctrine of Plato, that a man finds his highest
happiness when he falls in with another who is his soul's counterpart or
complement.

PLATONIC YEAR, a period of 26,000 years, denoting the time of a
complete revolution of the equinox.

PLATT-DEUTSCH or LOW GERMAN, a dialect spoken by the peasantry
in North Germany from the Rhine to Pomerania, and derived from Old Saxon.

PLATTE, the largest affluent of the Missouri, which joins it at
Plattsmouth after an easterly course of 900 m.

PLATTEN-SEE. See BALATON, LAKE.

PLAUEN (46), a town in Saxony, on the Elster, 78 m. S. of Leipzig,
with extensive textile and other manufactures.

PLAUTUS, a Latin comic poet, born in Umbria; came when young to
Rome, as is evident from his mastery of the Latin language and his
knowledge of Greek; began to write plays for the stage at 30, shortly
before the outbreak of the second Punic War, and continued to do so for
40 years; he wrote about 130 comedies, but only 20 have survived, the
plots mostly borrowed from Greek models; they were much esteemed