Chapter Pizarro to Platonic Bodies of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

St. Chrysostom, and others.

And as when Plato did i’ the cradle thrive,
Bees to his lips brought honey from the hive;
So to this boy [Doridon] they came—I know not whether
They brought or from his lips did honey gather.

Browne: Britannia’s Pastorals, ii. (1613).

Plato and Homer. Plato greatly admired Homer, but excluded him from his ideal republic.

Plato, ’tis true, great Homer doth commend,
Yet from his common-weal did him exile.

Brooke: Inquisition upon Fame, etc. (1554–1628).

Plato despised Poets.

Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,

From his “republic” banished without pity

The poets.

Longfellow: The Poet’s Tale.

Plato of the Eighteenth Century, Voltaire (1694–1778).

The sage Plato of the eighteenth century.—Carlyle: Frederick II. of Prussia, vol. ii. p. 597.

Plato’s Republic, in Greek prose. It is not so much a political treatise, as an ideal of perfect men living in a perfect state. It may be called an ideal of social life. It has been well translated by Davies and Vaughan (1866).

Plato’s Year, 25,000 Julian years.

Cut out more work than can be done
In Plato’s year.
   —S. Butler: Hudibras, iii. 1 (1678).

Platonic Bodies, the five regular geometrical solids described by Plato, all of which are bounded by like, equal, and regular planes. The four-sided, the six-sided, the eight-sided, the twelve-sided, and the twenty-sided; or the tetrahedron, hexahedron or cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron.