The parties in the Arian controversy became greatly divided in the course of the conflict. Speaking broadly, there were still two groups, of which one was composed of all those who regarded the Son as a creature and so not eternal and not truly God; and the other, of those who regarded Him as uncreated and in some real sense eternal and truly God, yet without denying the unity of God. The former were the various Arian parties tending to constant division. The latter can hardly yet be comprised under one common name, and might be called the anti-Arian parties, were it not that there was a positive content to their faith which was in far better harmony with the prevailing religious sentiment of the East and was constantly receiving accessions. In the second generation after Nicæa, a new group of theologians came to the front, of whom the most important were Eustathius of Sebaste, Cyril of Jerusalem, and the three Cappadocians, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, most of whom had at least sympathized with the Homoiousian party. Already at the synod of Ancyra, in 358, an approach was made toward a reconciliation of the anti-Arian factions, in that, by a more careful definition, homoousios was rejected only in the sense of identity of being, and homoiousios was asserted only in the sense of equality of attributes in the not identical subjects which, however, shared in the same essence. Homoiousios did not mean mere similarity of being. (Anathemas in Hahn, § 162; Hefele, § 80.) The line of development ultimately taken was by a precise distinction between _hypostasis_ and _ousia_, whereby _hypostasis_, which never meant person in the modern sense, which later is represented by the Greek _prosopon_, was that which subsists and shares with other _hypostases_ in a common essence or _ousia_. Additional source material: Athanasius, _De Synodis_ (PNF); Basil, _Epp._ 38, 52, 69, 125 (PNF, ser. II, vol. VIII); Hilary of Poitiers, _De Synodis_, cc. 87-91 (PNF, ser. II, vol. IX); Socrates, _Hist. Ec._, III, 25. Council of Alexandria A. D. 362. _Tomus ad Antiochenos_. (MSG, 26:797.)