From the book
Symposium
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe myth’s bodily repair combines surgical, tailoring and leather-working images.
- In the SymposiumZeus divides; Apollo turns the face and neck toward the wound, gathers the skin like a purse, ties the central opening and smooths most wrinkles with a shoemaker-like implement.
- In this editionThe edition translates the concrete comparisons directly.
- A place to readDivision, repair and a visible memorial precede the new reproductive arrangement.
Meaning
The myth’s bodily repair combines surgical, tailoring and leather-working images. The navel is not only a scar but an intended reminder.
Use in the book
Zeus divides; Apollo turns the face and neck toward the wound, gathers the skin like a purse, ties the central opening and smooths most wrinkles with a shoemaker-like implement. Some wrinkles remain around the belly and navel so the old suffering will not be forgotten. The different agents and tasks matter: Apollo does not devise the original punishment, and the later relocation of genitals belongs to Zeus’ second remedy. Looking at the wound is supposed to induce orderliness, making anatomy part of the myth’s moral education.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The edition translates the concrete comparisons directly. “Memorial” should not be promoted into a technical doctrine of recollection; it is the lasting bodily reminder specified by the story.
βαλλάντιον (ballantion)
ballantion — A purse or bag, whose drawn-together mouth supplies the model for gathering skin.
- 190e — τὰ σύσπαστα βαλλάντια. The drawstring-purse comparison.
καλάπους (kalapous)
kalapous — A shoemaker’s last, around which leather is smoothed; the tool-image explains Apollo’s shaping.
- 191a — τὸν καλάποδα. The last used in the comparison with leather-working.
μνημεῖον (mnēmeion)
mnēmeion — A memorial or reminder, here deliberately embodied in the repaired surface.
- 191a — μνημεῖον. The retained wrinkles remind humans of their old suffering.
ὀμφαλός (omphalos)
omphalos — The navel, figured as the gathered opening of repaired skin and left as a memorial of the former wound.
τομή (tomē)
tomē — A cut or cutting surface, made into an object of sight so that the divided human may become more orderly.
- 190e — πρὸς τὴν τομήν. Apollo turns the face toward the cut.