Hermocrates (dialogue)

"Hermocrates" is a hypothetic dialogue, assumed to be the third part of Plato's late trilogy along with "Timaeus" and "Critias". Since Plato never completed the "Critias" for an unknown reason, it is quite certain that he never began writing the "Hermocrates". In any case, the persons that would have appeared are very likely be the same as in "Timaeus" and "Critias", though the unnamed stranger mentioned at the beginning of the "Timaeus" might have unveiled his identity.

Hermocrates, the name giver of this dialogue, had only a small share of the conversation in the previous dialogues. Since Critias recounted the story of the ideal state in ancient Athens of nine thousand years ago — and why it was able to repel the invasion from the imperialist naval power Atlantis — by referring on prehistoric accounts via Solon and the Egyptians, it might have been Hermocrates' task to tell how the imperialist naval power that Athens of Plato's lifetime had turned into had suffer a bitter defeat in the Sicilian expedition against Syracuse and eventually in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta — since he was a Syracusan strategos during the time of the Sicilian expedition.

References

*cite book |chapter=The Plan of Plato’s "Critias" |title=Interpreting the Timaeus-Critias |series=International Plato Studies |volume=9 |last=Clay |first=Diskin |authorlink= |editor=Calvo, Tomás; Brisson, Luc (Edd.) |year=1997 |publisher=Acedemia |location=Sankt Augustin |isbn=3896650041 |pages=49–54
*cite journal | last = Eberz | first = J. | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = 1910 | title = Die Bestimmung der von Platon entworfenen Trilogie Timaios, Kritias, Hermokrates | journal = Philologus | volume = 69 | pages = 40–50 |issn=00317985
*cite book |last=Forsyth |first=Phyllis Young |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Atlantis. The making of myth |year=1980 |publisher=McGill-Queens Univ. Press |location=Montréal |isbn=0709910002