One Leg, Hopping
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Aristophanes — γενόμενοι. νῦν μὲν γὰρ αὐτούς, ἔφη, διατεμῶ δίχα ἕκαστον, καὶ ἅμα μὲν ἀσθενέστεροι ἔσονται, ἅμα δὲ χρησιμώτεροι ἡμῖν διὰ τὸ πλείους τὸν ἀριθμὸν γεγονέναι· καὶ βαδιοῦνται ὀρθοὶ ἐπὶ δυοῖν σκελοῖν. ἐὰν δʼ ἔτι δοκῶσιν ἀσελγαίνειν, καὶ μὴ ʼθέλωσιν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, πάλιν αὖ, ἔφη, τεμῶ δίχα, ὥστʼ ἐφʼ ἑνὸς πορεύσονται σκέλους ἀσκωλιάζοντες. ταῦτα εἰπὼν ἔτεμνε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους δίχα, ὥσπερ οἱ τὰ ὄα τέμνοντες
...having become weaker. For now, he said, I will cut them, each one, in two: at once they'll be weaker, and more useful to us, because they will have grown more in number; and they'll walk upright on two legs. But if they still seem bent on being unruly and are unwilling to keep still, I will cut them in two again, he said, so that they'll go hopping on one leg. Having said this, he began cutting the humans in two, the way people cut sorb-apples—
Zeus finishes explaining his plan, continuing directly from 190c: the proto-humans, once cut in two, will be weaker but more numerous and useful, and will walk upright on two legs. He adds a second threat — a further cutting, condemning the still-unruly to hop forever on one leg — and then begins the cutting itself, comparing his own action to the ordinary kitchen work of halving sorb-apples for pickling.
Zeus's second threat turns on one specific verb: ἀσκωλιάζοντες, built on ἀσκός, a wineskin. The noun ἀσκωλιασμός named a real game played at the rural festivals of Dionysus — hopping on one foot on an oiled, inflated skin without falling, a familiar image of comic loss of balance. Aristophanes wrote comedies performed at exactly those festivals, and here he borrows their own game to describe what happens to a human being cut a second time: not a tragic maiming but a life spent hopping like the losing contestant in a children's party trick. Nothing in the diction marks this as terrible; Zeus's remedies get smaller and more ridiculous each time he has to repeat himself.
The simile attached to the cutting itself works the same way. ὥσπερ οἱ τὰ ὄα τέμνοντες, 'the way people cut sorb-apples,' compares the literal splitting of the human race to a kitchen procedure — halving a small, tart fruit before pickling or drying it, a task any household did without ceremony. The next unit pushes the same technique further, to an egg sliced with a hair, and across both similes the myth never once describes its own violence directly; it only ever borrows an implement from ordinary life. The unruliness Zeus punishes here, ἀσελγαίνειν and the refusal μὴ θέλωσιν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν ('unwilling to keep still'), is the same charge Socrates later brings against the appetite-driven black horse of the Phaedrus, a creature also unwilling to hold still and controlled only by force in that dialogue's chariot image.
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