Charity tells us even of Guinevere, "that while she
lived, she was a good lover and therefore she had a good end." [6]
The origin of love has exercised philosophers almost as much as the origin
of evil. The Symposium continues with a speech which Plato attributes in
joke to Aristophanes, and of which Jowett observes that nothing in
Aristophanes is more truly Aristophanic.
The original human nature, he says, was not like the present. The Primeval
Man was round, [7] his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four
hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set
on a round neck and precisely alike. He could walk upright as men now do,
backward or forward as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at
a great rate, whirling round on his four hands and four feet, eight in
all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this
was when he wanted to run fast. Terrible was their might and strength, and
the thoughts of their hearts great, and they made an attack upon the gods;
of them is told the tale of Otys and Ephialtes, who, as Homer says, dared
to scale heaven, and would have laid hands upon the gods.
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