There is a similar harmony or disagreement in the course of the seasons and
in the relations of moist and dry, hot and cold, hoar frost and blight; and
diseases of all sorts spring from the excesses or disorders of the element
of love. The knowledge of these elements of love and discord in the
heavenly bodies is termed astronomy, in the relations of men towards gods
and parents is called divination. For divination is the peacemaker of gods
and men, and works by a knowledge of the tendencies of merely human loves
to piety and impiety. Such is the power of love; and that love which is
just and temperate has the greatest power, and is the source of all our
happiness and friendship with the gods and with one another. I dare say
that I have omitted to mention many things which you, Aristophanes, may
supply, as I perceive that you are cured of the hiccough.

Aristophanes is the next speaker:--

He professes to open a new vein of discourse, in which he begins by
treating of the origin of human nature. The sexes were originally three,
men, women, and the union of the two; and they were made round--having four
hands, four feet, two faces on a round neck, and the rest to correspond.
Terrible was their strength and swiftness; and they were essaying to scale
heaven and attack the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils; the
gods were divided between the desire of quelling the pride of man and the
fear of losing the sacrifices. At last Zeus hit upon an expedient. Let us
cut them in two, he said; then they will only have half their strength, and
we shall have twice as many sacrifices. He spake, and split them as you
might split an egg with an hair; and when this was done, he told Apollo to
give their faces a twist and re-arrange their persons, taking out the
wrinkles and tying the skin in a knot about the navel. The two halves went
about looking for one another, and were ready to die of hunger in one