[1] Aristotle also credited him with some of the metaphysical doctrines on Nous that were more commonly attributed to Anaxagoras.
The best evidence for Hermotimus' potential historical existence is a tradition that the people of Clazomenae erected a temple for him, which is related by Pliny the Elder,[2] Lucian,[3] Apollonius, and Plutarch.
[5] Sextus Empiricus places him with Hesiod, Parmenides, and Empedocles, as belonging to the class of philosophers who held a dualistic theory of a material and an active principle being together the origin of the universe.
Diogenes Laërtius records a story that Pythagoras remembered his earlier lives, one being Hermotimus, who had validated his own claim to recall earlier lives by recognizing the decaying shield of Menelaus in the temple of Apollo at Didyma.
His wife betrayed the oddity and his enemies came and burned his body while he was asleep, his soul returning too late.