Basilides was a Stoic philosopher

Stoicism

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...

 who denied the existence of incorporeal entities.

Nothing is known about the life of Basilides. From a table of contents in one of the medieval manuscripts, we know that he was listed in the missing part of Book VII of Diogenes Laërtius

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...

' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a biography of the Greek philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, written in Greek, perhaps in the first half of the third century AD.-Overview:...

. His position in the table of contents indicates that he lived around the time of Antipater of Tarsus

Antipater of Tarsus

Antipater of Tarsus was a Stoic philosopher. He was the pupil and successor of Diogenes of Babylon as leader of the Stoic school, and was the teacher of Panaetius...

 in the 2nd century BC.

He is known principally from a passage in Sextus Empiricus

Sextus Empiricus

Sextus Empiricus , was a physician and philosopher, and has been variously reported to have lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. His philosophical work is the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman skepticism....

, who notes that "Basilides and his followers thought no incorporeal [entity] exists." The specific context is the Stoic's theory of language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

. The Stoics held that any meaningful utterance will involve three items: the sounds uttered; the thing which is referred to or described by the utterance; and an incorporeal item, the lekton, that which is conveyed in the language. Basilides denied the existence of the lekta.

Another (probably Stoic) philosopher

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 called Basilides of Scythopolis (2nd century AD), is listed in the Chronicle

Chronicon (Jerome)

The Chronicle was a universal chronicle, one of Jerome's earliest attempts in the department of history...

of Jerome

Jerome

Saint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...

, as being as a teacher of Marcus Aurelius.