him, the Menandrians, continued to exist for a considerable length of time. Simonian influences continued through Menander's own followers who included Saturninus of Antioch and Basilides, the latter identified by Ireneus with the further development of his predecessors ideas. Carpocrates practised in the tradition of Basildes, and his own follower, Marcellina, became one of the few female leaders of early Christianity in 2nd century Rome. Doctrine The Great Declaration In the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, Simon's doctrine is recorded according to his reputed work, The Great Declaration, as it existed in the 2nd century. As Hippolytus himself in more than one place points out, it is an earlier form of the Valentinian doctrine, but there are things reminiscent of Aristotelian and Stoic physics. Outline The whole book is a mixture of Hellenism and Hebraism, in which the same method of allegory is applied to Homer and Hesiod as to Moses. Starting from the assertion of Moses that God is "a devouring fire" (Deuteronomy 4:24), Simon combined therewith the philosophy of Heraclitus which made fire the first principle of all things. This first principle he denominated a "Boundless Power," and he declared it to dwell in the sons of men, beings born of flesh and blood. But fire was not the simple thing that the many imagined, and Simon distinguished between its hidden and its manifest qualities, maintaining that the former were the cause of the latter. Like the Stoics he conceived of it as an intelligent being. From this ungenerated being sprang the generated world of which we know, whereof there were six roots, having each its inner and its outer side, and arranged as follows: These six roots, Mind, Voice, Reason, Reflection, Name, and Thought, are also called six powers. Commingled with them all was the great power, the "Boundless Power." This was that which "has stood, stands, and will stand," the seventh power (root) corresponding to the seventh day after the six days of creation. This seventh power existed before the world, it is the Spirit of God that moved upon the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2). It existed potentially in every child of man, and might be developed in each to its own immensity. The small might become great, the point be enlarged to infinity. This indivisible point which existed in the body, and of which none but the spiritual knew, was the Kingdom of Heaven, and