 Each of these theses possesses a certain intuitive appeal. But taken together, they are inconsistent, and so at least one has to be given up. This does not entirely force our hand, however, since any two of the three are mutually consistent. So there is still room for disagreement among the disputants. As we have seen, some 5th century thinkers, including Parmenides himself (on some interpretations) chose to maintain (A) and (B), and reject (C). But if this seems too costly, as it does to most people, one would need to reject one of the other two theses instead. An obvious candidate for rejection is (A), that thought consists in a direct relation to what is thought about. But there are different ways of going about it. Someone could simply (i) reject a relational analysis altogether. But one could also reject (A) while continuing to accept a relational analysis, so long as (ii) it involves a relation to something else other than what is thought about. Much of the subsequent discussion in ancient philosophy can be seen as an attempt to pursue the latter strategy, (ii), by finding a suitable intermediary: for example, certain Platonists appeal to Forms; Aristotle appeals to changes within our body that serve as internal representations; the Stoics from Chrysippus onwards appeal to abstract semantic objects like propositions; and Epicurus appeals to parts of the surfaces of bodies. A third main option, though, would be to retain the direct relational model in (A) unchanged, while also preserving the phenomenological intuition in (C), and instead abandon the metaphysical assumption in (B), as the earliest Stoics did. Whenever one thinks, these Stoics insist, there is something that one is thinking about; but it needn’t be anything that exists or obtains. On this Stoic view, there are things that do not exist or obtain, which can serve as intentional objects of thought and other mental states.