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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 inactivity 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 )
