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and over in a circle with their eight limbs, like those acrobats who
perform cartwheels by whirling round with their legs straight out.
And they were powerful and very strong. For this reason, Zeus
split them apart with a bolt of lightning, because they had come
to threaten even Olympus itself. Zeus say,
I think I have a plan’, he said, ‘that will allow humans to exist but at
the same time put an end to their outrageous behaviour by making
them weaker. For the present I shall split each one of them in half,
and that will make them weaker, and at the same time they will be
more useful to us by being greater in number. They will walk upright
on two legs, and if they persist in their insolence and refuse to keep
quiet I will split them in half again, and they will have to hop about
on one leg only.
“After the original nature of every human being had been
severed in this way, the two parts longed for each other and tried
to come together again.” They embraced each other, longing for
union once more, „they began to die of hunger and general inactiv¬
ity because they refused to do anything at all as separate beings”,
which is to say they died of hopeless longing. It was all in vain,
they were unable even to make love, as their reproductive organs
were in back, and so they did not take place ,,not in the body after
physical union but, as with cicadas, in the ground.”
Zeus had compassion on them:
By moving their genitals round to the front, Zeus now caused them to
reproduce by intercourse with one another through these organs, the
male penetrating the female. He did this in order that when couples
encountered one another and embraced, if a man encountered a
woman, he might impregnate her and the race might continue, and
if a man encountered another man, at any rate they might achieve
satisfaction from the union and after this respite turn to their tasks
and get on with the business of life. (Plato 2008. 190.a.-191.c )