In this period the epigram almost disappears, overwhelmed apparently by the greater forms of poetry which were then in their perfection. Between Simonides and Plato there is not a single name on our list; and it is not till the period of the transition, the first half of the fourth century B.C., that the epigram begins to reappear. About 400 B.C. a new grace and delicacy is added to it by PLATO (B.C. 428-347; the tradition, in itself probable, is that he wrote poetry when a very young man). Thirty-two epigrams in the Anthology are ascribed, some doubtfully, to one Plato or another; a few of obviously late date to a somewhat mythical PLATO JUNIOR ({o Neoteros}), and one to PLATO THE COMEDIAN (fl. 428-389), the contemporary and rival of Aristophanes. In a note to i. 5 in this selection something is said as to the authenticity of the epigrams ascribed to the great Plato [omitted in this text--JB.] He was included in the /Garland/ of Meleager, who speaks, ll. 47-8, of "the golden bough of the ever- divine Plato, shining everywhere in excellence"--one of the finest criticisms ever made by a single phrase, and the more remarkable that it anticipates, and may even in some degree have suggested, the mystical golden bough of Virgil. To the same period belongs PARRHASIUS of Ephesus, who fl. 400 B.C., the most eminent painter of his time, in whose work the rendering of the ideal human form was considered to have reached its highest perfection. Two epigrams and part of a third ascribed to him are preserved in Athenaeus. DEMODOCUS of Leros, a small island in the Sporades, is probably to be placed here. Nothing is known as to his life, nor as to his date beyond the one fact that an epigram of his is quoted by Aristotle, /Eth. N./ vii. 9. Four epigrams of his, all couplets containing a sarcastic point of the same kind, are preserved in the Palatine Anthology. III. Period of the great Alexandrian monarchies; from the accession of Alexander the Great to the annexation of Syria by the Roman Republic, B.C. 336-65.