Basilides

1. A priest, who predicted success to Vespasian as he was sacrificing on mount Carmel. (Tac. Hist. 2.78.)

2. An Egyptian of high rank, who is related to have appeared miraculously to Vespasian in the temple of Jupiter Serapis at Alexandria. (Tac. Hist. 4.82; Sueton. Vesp. 7.) Suetonius calls him a freedman; but the reading is probably corrupt.

a jurist, contemporary with Justinian, and one of a commission of ten employed by the emperor to compile the first code, which was afterwards suppressed, and gave place to the Codex repetitae praelectionis. In the first and second prefaces to the code the names of the commissioners are mentioned in the following order:-- Joannes, Leontius, Phocas, Basileides, Thomas, Tribonianus, Constantinus, Theophilus, Dioscurus, Praesentinus. From the same sources it appears that before 528, Basileides had been praefectus praetorio of the East, and invested with the dignity of patricius, and that in 529 he was PP. of Illyricum. [J.T.G]

(Βασιλείδης). The father of Herodotus (q.v.).