Dialogues of Plato, Vol. 2 (Gorgias, Phaedo, Meno)

They were round, having four hands, four feet, two faces on a round neck, and everything else to correspond. Their strength and swiftness were terrible; they were attempting to scale heaven and attack the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils; the gods were divided between the desire to quell the pride of man and the fear of losing their 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 spoke and split them, as you might split an egg with a hair. When this was done, he told Apollo to twist their faces around and rearrange their persons, removing 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 another’s arms. Then Zeus invented an adjustment of the sexes that enabled them to marry and go about the business of life. Now, the characters of people differ according to whether they are derived from the original man, the original woman, or the original man-woman. Those who come from the man-woman are lascivious and adulterous; those who come from the woman form female attachments; those who are a section of the male follow the male and embrace him, and in him all their desires center. The pair are inseparable and live together in pure and manly affection, yet they cannot explain what they want from one another. But if Hephaestus were to come to them with his instruments and propose that they be melted into one—remaining one here and hereafter—they would acknowledge that this was the very expression of their desire. For love is the desire of the whole, and the pursuit of the whole is called love.

There was a time when the two sexes were only one, but now God has halved them—much as the Lacedaemonians have cut up the Arcadians—and if they do not behave themselves, he will quarter them, and they will hop about with half a nose and face in basso relievo low relief; a sculptural technique where figures project slightly from the background.. Therefore, let us exhort all men to piety so that we may obtain the goods of which Love is the author, be reconciled to God, and find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world. And now, I must beg you not to suppose that I am alluding to Pausanias and Agathon (compare Protagoras 315 E), for my words refer to all mankind everywhere.

Some raillery ensues first between Aristophanes and Eryximachus, and then between Agathon—who fears a few select friends more than 30,000 spectators—and Socrates, who is disposed to begin an argument.