Pickstock points to this passage on the Cratylus, where Socrates connects heroes with desire through an etymological connection with Eros: “All of them sprang either from the love of a God for a mortal woman, or of a mortal man for a Goddess; think of the word in the old Attic, and you will see better that the name heros is only a slight alteration of Eros, from whom the heroes sprang: either this is the meaning, or, if not this, then they must have been skillful as rhetoricians and dialecticians, and able to put the question ( erotan ), for eirein is equivalent to legein . And therefore, as I was saying, in the Attic dialect the heroes turn out to be rhetoricians and questioners. All this is easy enough; the noble breed of heroes are a tribe of sophists and rhetors. But can you tell me why men are called anthropoi?”
