there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to
them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to
be unrestrained. At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered
a way. He said: 'Methinks I have a plan which will humble their pride and
improve their manners; men 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