“There appears,” says Plato in the person of the Eleatic stranger, “to be a sort of war of the giants going on between them because of the dispute concerning οὐσία.  Some of them are dragging all things down from heaven and from the invisible to earth, grasping rocks and oaks in their hands; for of all such things they lay hold, in obstinately maintaining that what can be touched and handled alone has being (εἶναι), because they define ‘being’ and ‘body’ as one; and if any one else says that what is not a body has being, they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body….Therefore their opponents cautiously defend themselves from above out of some invisible world, mightily contending that certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas are the true essence (οὐσίαν) Plato, Sophist. § 246.  “The passage is quoted by Theodoret, Græcarum affectionem Curatio, ii. p. 732.”  (Heindorf.).”