HERMOGENES: Of what nature?
SOCRATES: Well, rather ridiculous, and yet plausible.
HERMOGENES: How plausible?
SOCRATES: I fancy to myself Heracleitus repeating wise traditions of antiquity as old as the days of Cronos and Rhea, and of which Homer also spoke.
HERMOGENES: How do you mean?
SOCRATES: Heracleitus is supposed to say that all things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same water twice.
HERMOGENES: That is true.
SOCRATES: Well, then, how can we avoid inferring that he who gave the names of Cronos and Rhea to the ancestors of the Gods, agreed pretty much in the doctrine of Heracleitus? Is the giving of the names of streams to both of them purely accidental? Compare the line in which Homer, and, as I believe, Hesiod also, tells of
“Ocean, the origin of Gods, and mother Tethys (Il.—the line is not found in the extant works of Hesiod.).”
And again, Orpheus says, that