 This nuanced univocacy of being has been variously determined: scholars have adopted locutions like per prius and per posterius (Menn 2013: 163–167 on Categories, I, 2), “ambiguity of being’s univocity” (Druart 2014), “modulated univocity” (Treiger 2012) and gradual predication or predication according to an arrangement: “gradueller oder ordnungsbezogener Prädikationsmodus” (Koutzarova 2009: 211–258) or even “analogy” (De Haan 2015). Certainly Avicenna attributes existence both to the Principle and to things; he ascribes to existence differences in worth (Categories 10–11; Bertolacci 2011: 43–44)—there is in fact an evident hierarchy governing necessity and possibility (see  Section 4.4);  he modulates existence according to the absolute or relative necessity it expresses, clearly excludes the possibility that existence is a genus or that it is predicated equally (bi-l-tasāwī) of what is beneath it, openly speaks about its anteriority and posteriority within the same pattern of reference to be found in Aristotle (health: Ilāhiyyāt, I, 5, 34, 15–35, 2; other passages suggest a different analogy; Menn 2013) and clearly establishes the starting-point of theology in the analysis of the existent. Existence as such has no graduations but has modes or statutes (Ilāhiyyāt, VI, 3, 276,12–14) and hierarchy is ascribed to reality (Ilāhiyyāt, VI, 3, 277,7–278,8). The necessary cause is more worthy of reality than the effect: the essence of the cause is not necessary in relation to the effect, whereas the essence of the effect is necessary only in relation to the cause. 