shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will
be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the
advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright
on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will
split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.' He spoke and
cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or
as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut them one after
another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn
in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself: he would
thus learn a lesson of humility. Apollo was also bidden to heal their
wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled
the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called
the belly, like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth at
the centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the
navel); he also moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles,
much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last; he left a few,
however, in the region of the belly and navel, as a memorial of the
primeval state. After the division the two parts of man, each desiring
his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one
another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they
were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they
did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and
the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as
we call them,--being the sections of entire men or women,--and clung to
that. They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of them invented a
new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the front, for this
had not been always their position, and they sowed the seed no longer as
hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another; and after
the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the
mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might
continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and
go their ways to the business of life: so ancient is the desire of one
another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making
one of two, and healing the state of man. Each of us when separated,
having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man,
and he is always looking for his other half. Men who are a section
of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of
women; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women
who lust after men: the women who are a section of the woman do not care
for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this
sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while
they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men