Hermogenes

Hermogenes moves through Athens as the brother of the wealthy Callias, which places him at the edges of the city's intellectual circles without ever quite commanding them. His defining trait is a willingness to be refuted: he proposes that names are purely conventional, then follows Socrates through a dizzying chain of word-origins without flinching. That stubborn openness makes him the ideal foil in the Cratylus, where the argument over whether language carries truth or merely custom needs someone unafraid to lose.