He goes on using for the most part the singular [Greek: phaesin], but sometimes inserting the plural [Greek: kat' autous].

Accordingly, it has been urged that quotations which are referred to the head of the school really belong to his later followers, and the attempt has further been made to prove that the doctrines described in this section of the work of Hippolytus are later in their general character than those attributed to Basilides himself.

This latter argument is very fine drawn, and will not bear any substantial weight.

It is, however, probably true that a confusion is sometimes found between the 'eponymus,' as it were, of a school and his followers.

Whether that has been the case here is a question that we have not sufficient data for deciding positively.