the Symposium is that this was an extremely new thing during that time. Most people already had their beliefs set out. They would be passed down through many generations; people had no reason not to believe the old myths. This new myth was well thought out and made a lot of sense, it took into account a lot of what the Greeks believed and experienced in real life. It is for these reasons that this book would have revolutionary for anyone to read it in that period of time. This myth also for the first time took into account that love was natural and explained that love is just the joining of two people to form one being. The genre of the book is a little difficult to pinpoint. Mainly the whole book is a discussion on love and is philosophy. The tale I looked at could be construed as a divine myth however the gods do not play too important of a part in it. For this reason I would classify it as a folktale since it teaches something to the people who read it.The myth takes place as the fourth set of speeches in a total of seven in Plato’s Symposium. It starts off with Aristophanes explaining what human nature was like in the past. It was very different from the present time. He goes on to say that there were three types of human beings on earth. First were the males, no different than now. Second were the females, also no different than the present time. The third was a combination of the two, an androgynous figure. This human was made up of both male and female elements. The shape of these creatures was very different; they were completely round. They had four hands, four legs, two faces, four ears and only one head. The faces were exactly alike. There were also two sets of sexual organs. They walked upright but when they wanted to run they would perform cartwheels using all eight limbs. The reason for there being three kinds was simple. The male was an offspring of the sun. The female was an offspring of the...
