The tale in Plato's “Convivium,” that man at first was male and female, and that, though Jupiter cleft them asunder, there was a natural love towards one another, seems to be only a corruption of the account in Genesis of Eve's being made from Adam's rib.
Corneille has these lines in one of his tragedies;
Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez vous en eau—
La moitié de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau
which may be thus translated,
Weep, weep, my eyes! it is no time to laugh
For half myself has buried the other half.
Over the iron gate of a prison at Ferrara is this inscription—“Ingresso alla prigione di Torquato Tasso.”
Hedelin, a Frenchman, in the beginning of the 18th century, denied that any such person as Homer ever existed, and supposed the Iliad to be made up ex tragediis, et variis canticis de trivio mendicatorum et circulatorum—à la maniere des chansons du Pontneuf.