and the chief of the four national Greek festivals (the other three being the Isthmian, Pythian, and Nemean), were encouraged by the whole of Greece as a bond of union for all the states, a general casting aside of petty provincial jealousies that all might meet on the same ground under the same influences-the sentiments of patriotism and nationality.

Then petty differences-whether Sparta, or Attica, or any other state were superior-were swallowed up by the great fact that they were all Greeks.

Plato, like most of the other philosophers, laid stress upon physical development and exercise by gymnastics. At the Olympian games, although there were religious ceremonies-sacrifices to Jupiter, Olympius, Apollo, whose worship went hand in hand with that of Jupiter and Hercules the trials of bodily skill and strength were the principal attraction. The contentions in poetry, music, and eloquence were secondary in interest to the horse and foot races, the leaping, throwing, wrestling, and boxing.

These sports were held in a stadium, a racecourse, in the sacred grove Altis, where there were also a temple to Jupiter and the statues of celebrated victors of past celebrations. This grove was in the small plain, containing temples and public buildings, which gave its name (Olympia) to the festivals.

It was a beautiful spot. Beyond were the blue mountains Cronius and Olympus; on one side flowed the river Alphæus, on the other the Cladeus.

The stadium, a course of some 606 feet in length, was at one end bounded by a marble wall, under which stood a statue of Endymion,—and at the other by a semicircular area, with rows of seats rising from the ground to the summit of the wall. Rows of seats were also erected around, wherever space permitted.

Here Plato was received by the throngs of excitable Greeks with a very fury of welcome. That he was the

"greatest man in Greece" was but one of the epithets that echoed among the enthusiastic crowd.

While his susceptibility to natural beauty and to all that instinctively commands admiration must have been gratified, the philosophic calm he had given his very life to attain, as well as the natural quietude of his age, prevented his being overpowered by his reception, overwhelming as it must have been to his nature, tuned to the hush of meditation in the quiet groves of the Academy.

Doubtless, as year by year afterwards he declined into tranquil old age, while his body was sleeping on his simple couch in his quiet country home, memory took his mind back to the grandeur of Dionysius' court, with its noisy ceremonies, and to the stadium at the foot of Olympus, where the many voices of countless throngs seemed as one-the voice of Greece herself crying, “Hail, my noblest son; hail, Plato!"

"Verily, he had his reward." In life he was acknowledged, in death he was honoured.

Somewhat of the human kindliness and gentle dignity which were such powerful attractions to the sensitiveness of gifted youths (for while most clever people are sensitive, they are most so when their mental powers are undeveloped)—is to be traced in the only authentic portrait extant. Many ancient busts were supposed to be likenesses of Plato, and were proved to be those of Dionysius or Asclepius.

This medallion or bust (which no longer exists, but which was fortunately copied) may have been taken from the statue by Silanion, which Diogenes Laërtius states to have been presented by Mithridates, a Persian, and placed in the temple erected to the Muses in the Academy garden by Xenophon.

Or it may have been a copy of a statue or bust, which Diogenes Laërtius describes as placed over his tomb. This tomb Pausanius, the clever historian who lived in the second century of the Christian era and wrote a voluminous

account of Greece, alludes to as being situated north of the Academy, by the tower of Timon, and not far from the hill of Colonus.

The portrait is in profile. The head is finely shaped, and although the forehead recedes, the brow is clearly cut and prominent. The nose is large, of the pronounced aquiline type; the chin is hidden by a beard. The mouth is large; the lips are full, but curved into an expression of sweetness. The face is that of one by nature passionate and enthusiastic in the extreme, but governed by the selfcontrol bred of a powerful will and reason.

One or two anecdotes show that his equable temper, the "philosophic calm," was acquired.

When some of the reports to his disadvantage which were constantly in circulation were repeated to him, although they touched him to the quick, he merely remarked, "My life shall contradict them."

A slave had disobeyed orders, most likely with annoying pertinacity. At last Plato was thoroughly angered, but he said, "I would punish you were I not angry."

When some bold spirit, perhaps a rejected pupil, asked him sneeringly "how long he intended to study?" Plato, looking him full in the face, replied, "As long as I have need to grow better and wiser."

He died, some say, when he was eighty, others eightyone, others eighty-two. One biographer declares that death overtook him suddenly at a wedding banquet where he was the honoured guest. Others state that he fell into his last sleep, writing.

In any case, it may be presumed that death stole upon him stealthily and suddenly. The bonds knitting a spirit whose earthly passage was a long series of brave struggles to reach the infinite, must have needed but a slight snip from the scissors clasped in the bony fingers of the great emancipator of humanity.

The grief of his pupils was sharp and bitter. But they found that their master had arranged everything for them

in his will, in which he named his nephew Speusippuswho unfortunately proved himself anything but a worthy relation of his illustrious uncle-his immediate successor.

His praises were sung, altars were erected to him. By many he was doubtless invoked as a god, and the anniversary of his birth was held as a solemn festival.

But his lasting monument was made by himself alone. In his writings Plato will live to the end of the world.

CHAPTER XII.

PLATO-concluded.

THE writings of Plato have been discussed and debated and argued about until they have become a very intellectual puzzle. When they were written, how they were written, and why; how many are genuine or how many spurious; whether indeed any are spurious, or what actual proof remains that Plato ever wrote them at all; whether he himself believed in the theories he inculcated, or whether all the time he was writing he was laughing in his sleeve at and secretly enjoying the credulity of his readers; whether he wrote in dialogue, making his opinions emanate from others because he disowned them, or because he was modest, or because dialogue was the form best calculated to show them off . . .

These and many other suggestions have been maintained, fought over, and, metaphorically speaking, torn to pieces-in print and out of print, in almost every dead and living language—until the student of Plato approaches the master with suspicion and dismay; for if he follow any one of the quarrelsome commentators, he will find himself in an intellectual maze, where few have ever reached the centre,-where the philosopher, as it were, sits smiling at the folly of his later disciples, who have spent their time following the shadow instead of the substance. The fact is, that of the writings of Plato there remain to us only some thirty dialogues and twelve epistles or letters. The passion for material destruction which is constantly and invariably shown by the young, by humanity in its

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