[191d]
in mankind, reassembling our early estate and endeavoring to combine two in one and heal the human sore.“Each of us, then, is but a tally1 of a man, since every one shows like a flat-fish the traces of having been sliced in two; and each is ever searching for the tally that will fit him. All the men who are sections of that composite sex that at first was called man-woman are woman-courters; our adulterers are mostly descended from that sex,
1 A tally, or notched stick matching another, is the nearest English equivalent for σύμβολον, which was a half of a broken die given and kept as a token of friendship; see below, Plat. Sym. 193a (λίσται).
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.
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