Cratylus

Hermogenes. I do not know how to answer you, Socrates; nevertheless it is not easy to change my conviction suddenly. I think you would be more likely to convince me, if you were to show me just what it is that you say is the natural correctness of names.

Socrates. I, my dear Hermogenes, do not say that there is any. You forget what I said a while ago, that I did not know, but would join you in looking for the truth. And now, as we are looking, you and I, we already see one thing we did not know before, that names do possess a certain natural correctness, and that not every man knows how to give a name well to anything whatsoever. Is not that true?

Hermogenes. Certainly.

Socrates. Then our next task is to try to find out, if you care to know about it, what kind of correctness that is which belongs to names.

Hermogenes. To be sure I care to know.

Socrates. Then investigate.

Hermogenes. How shall I investigate?

Socrates. The best way to investigate, my friend, is with the help of those who know; and you make sure of their favour by paying them money. They are the sophists, [*](Truth was the title of a book written by Protagoras.) of Protagoras altogether, should desire what is said in such a Truth, as if it were of any value.

Socrates. Then if you do not like that, you ought to learn from Homer and the other poets.

Hermogenes. Why, Socrates, what does Homer say about names, and where?

Socrates. In many passages; but chiefly and most admirably in those in which he distinguishes between the names by which gods and men call the same things. Do you not think he gives in those passages great and wonderful information about the correctness of names? For clearly the gods call things by the names that are naturally right. Do you not think so?

Hermogenes. Of course I know that if they call things, they call them rightly. But what are these instances to which you refer?

Socrates. Do you not know that he says about the river in Troy which had the single combat with Hephaestus,[*](Hom. Il. 21.342-380)

1. whom the gods call Xanthus, but men call Scamander

Hom. Il. 20.74?

Hermogenes. Oh yes.

Socrates. Well, do you not think this is a grand thing to know, that the name of that river is rightly Xanthus, rather than Scamander? Or, if you like, do you think it is a slight thing to learn about the bird which he says

1. gods call chalcis, but men call cymindis,

Hom. Il. 14.291 that it is much more correct for the same bird to be called chalcis than cymindis? Or to learn that the hill men call Batieia is called by the gods Myrina’s tomb,[*](Hom. Il. 2.813 f) and many other such statements by Homer and other poets? But perhaps these matters are too high for us to understand; it is, I think, more within human power to investigate the names Scamandrius and Astyanax, and understand what kind of correctness he ascribes to these, which he says are the names of Hector’s son. You recall, of course: the lines which contain the words to which I refer.

Hermogenes. Certainly.

Socrates. Which of the names of the boy do you imagine Homer thought was more correct, Astyanax or Scamandrius?

Hermogenes. I cannot say.

Socrates. Look at it in this way: suppose you were asked, Do the wise or the unwise give names more correctly?

Hermogenes.The wise, obviously, I should say.

Socrates. And do you think the women or the men of a city, regarded as a class in general, are the wiser?

Hermogenes. The men.

Socrates. And do you not know that Homer says the child of Hector was called Astyanax by the men of Troy;[*](Hom. Il. 22.506) so he must have been called Scamandrius by the women, since the men called him Astyanax?

Hermogenes. Yes, probably.

Socrates. And Homer too thought the Trojan men were wiser than the women?

Hermogenes. I suppose he did.

Socrates. Then he thought Astyanax was more rightly the boy’s name than Scamandrius?

Hermogenes. So it appears.

Socrates. Let us, then, consider the reason for this. Does he not himself indicate the reason most admirably? For he says—

1. He alone defended their city and long walls.

Hom. Il. 22.507[*](But the verb is in the second person, addressed by Hecuba to Hector after his death.) Therefore, as it seems, it is right to call the son of the defender Astyanax (Lord of the city), ruler of that which his father, as Homer says, defended.

Hermogenes. That is clear to me.

Socrates. Indeed? I do not yet understand about it myself, Hermogenes. Do you?

Hermogenes. No, by Zeus, I do not.