Hermocrates is one of the participants in Plato’s Dialogue Timaeus. Some scholars argue that Plato intended to write a trilogy of dialogues that included Timaeus and Critias with Hermocrates as the third dialogue with the tantalising possibility of further references to Atlantis.

Historically, Hermocrates is believed to have been a Sicilian statesman and the general who defeated an Athenian assault on his native Syracuse circa 414 BC.