Aristophanes — the myth of the split halves

Aristophanes warns the others that he is going to give a different kind of speech. He is the comic playwright; he will tell a comic story; but it is one they have not heard before, and they should listen carefully. Once, the human race was different. There were three sexes, not two. There was male, descended from the sun. There was female, descended from the earth. And there was a combined sex, the androgynous, descended from the moon, made of one half of each. Each of these beings was a sphere — round body, four arms, four legs, two faces looking opposite directions on a single neck. They could run by tumbling, like acrobats. They were immensely strong, and proud enough to climb up to heaven and attack the gods.

Zeus considered destroying them with thunderbolts but decided he would lose the worship he received from them. Instead, he said, I will cut them in half, and they will be weaker and twice as numerous — twice the worshipers. Apollo split each one down the middle, turned the face around toward the wound, and pulled the skin together over the belly and tied it at what we now call the navel. The halves, finding themselves alone, would do nothing but throw their arms around any other half they could find and try to grow back together; they refused to eat, refused to work, and were dying. Zeus took pity and moved their reproductive organs to the front so that, in their embracing, they could at least conceive — and find some satisfaction.

Every one of us, Aristophanes says, is one of these halves. The men cut from the all-male sphere love men. The women cut from the all-female love women. Those cut from the androgynous love the opposite sex. What we call love is the longing to find our other half and become whole again. If Hephaestus stood over a pair of lovers with his welding tools and asked them whether they wanted to be permanently fused into one being, they would say yes without hesitation — that is what they have wanted all their lives, only without knowing it. Behave well, Aristophanes warns at the end, or Zeus may cut us in half again. The speech is greeted with affection and applause.