Nature, Custom, and the Missing Half
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Aristophanes — παιδεραστοῦσι καὶ πρὸς γάμους καὶ παιδοποιίας οὐ προσέχουσι τὸν νοῦν φύσει, ἀλλʼ ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου ἀναγκάζονται. ἀλλʼ ἐξαρκεῖ αὐτοῖς μετʼ ἀλλήλων καταζῆν ἀγάμοις. πάντως μὲν οὖν ὁ τοιοῦτος παιδεραστής τε καὶ φιλεραστὴς γίγνεται, ἀεὶ τὸ συγγενὲς ἀσπαζόμενος. ὅταν μὲν οὖν καὶ αὐτῷ ἐκείνῳ ἐντύχῃ τῷ αὑτοῦ ἡμίσει καὶ ὁ παιδεραστὴς καὶ ἄλλος πᾶς, τότε καὶ θαυμαστὰ ἐκπλήττονται φιλίᾳ τε καὶ
They are boy-lovers, and pay no attention by nature to marriage and procreation, but are compelled by custom. Still, it is enough for them to live out their lives with one another, unmarried. In every case, then, such a man becomes a lover of boys and a lover of lovers, always embracing what is akin to him. So whenever the boy-lover or anyone else, happens on that very person who is his own half, then they are struck marvelously, with affection and—
Continuing directly from 192a: Aristophanes has just said that the boys who are cut pieces of the male grow up to be the best of their generation. Now he describes what these men become as adults — pederasts uninterested in marriage or fathering children by nature, though custom compels some toward it; content instead to live out their lives paired, unmarried. The unit closes on the recognition scene: when such a man meets the very person who is his own half, he and any other are struck out of their senses with affection — the sentence runs on into 192c.
Aristophanes fills in what becomes of the ‘cut pieces of the male’ from 192a once they reach manhood. He states plainly that they are pederasts and, by nature (physei), take no interest in marriage or begetting children — they are driven to it only by nomos, law or custom. This is the nature/convention antithesis the sophists had made current in Aristophanes’ own theatrical lifetime — Antiphon’s papyrus fragments argue it at length, and Callicles erupts over it in the Gorgias — and here it does real work: a naturalistic account of sexual preference set against the felt weight of Athenian marital duty, offered without a verdict on which side should win. Left alone, he says, it is enough (exarkei) for such men to live out their lives together, unmarried. The double coinage that follows — such a man becomes paiderastēs te kai philerastēs, ‘a lover of boys and a lover of lovers’ — names both directions of the same disposition together: the one who loves the boy, and later, the one who welcomes love returned.
Then Aristophanes turns to the recognition itself. The verb he reaches for, ekplēttontai, describes something closer to a blow than a feeling — struck out of one’s wits. It is close kin to the shock the Phaedrus assigns to the sight of beauty, though Socrates there supplies a cause for it — memory of the forms glimpsed before birth — that Aristophanes’ comedy withholds entirely; here the astonishment needs no explanation beyond the missing half finally found. The sentence breaks off mid-list, philia te kai, ‘affection and—’: Aristophanes is still counting what floods the pair at the meeting, and the next unit finishes naming it.
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