Chapter XII. How the Woman is Said to Have Been Taken Out of the Man

AGAIN Moses had said, ‘But for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And God caused a trance to fall upon Adam, and cast him into a sleep, and He took one of his ribs, and filled up the flesh instead thereof. And the Lord God builded the rib, which He had taken from Adam, into a woman.’ [1]

Plato, though he did not understand in what sense the story is told, was evidently not ignorant of it. But he assigns it to Aristophanes, as a comedian accustomed to scoff even at holy things, introducing him in the Symposiumas speaking thus:

‘Now you must first become acquainted with human nature and its affections. For our original nature of old was not the same as now, but of a different kind. In the first place the sexes of mankind were three, not two as now, male and female, but there was also a third combining them both, of which the name remains now, but the thing itself has disappeared. For Hermaphrodite was then both a real form and a name combined of both, the male and the female.’ [2]

Then after his usual sarcasms, he adds:

‘After this speech his Zeus proceeded to cut the men in two, like those who cut sorb-apples for pickling, or eggs with hairs. And of each whom he cut he bade Apollo turn round the face and half of the neck towards the cutting, that by contemplating the section of himself the man might be more obedient to order: he also bade him heal the other parts.’ [3]