Of Mithraic eschatology or the view that the worshippers of Mithras held as to the end of the world, we know rather less than we do of their ideas as to its beginning. The Persian religion, after its reform under the Sassanid kings, taught that it would be consumed by fire[888]; and, as this doctrine of the Ecpyrosis, as the ancients called it, was also held by the Stoics, whose physical doctrines were then fashionable at Rome, it is probable enough that it entered into Mithraism also. But of this there is no proof, and M. Cumont’s attempt to show that a similar conflagration was thought by the Mithraic priests to have taken place before the Tauroctony, and as a kind of paradigm or forecast of what was to come, is not very convincing[889]. Yet some glimpse of what was supposed to happen between the creation of the world and its destruction seems to be typified by a monstrous figure often found in the ruined chapels once used for the Mithraic worship, where it seems to have been carefully guarded from the eyes of the general body of worshippers. This monster had the body of a man[890] with the head of a lion, while round his body is twined a huge serpent, whose head either appears on the top of the lion’s or rests on the human breast. On the monster’s back appear sometimes two, but generally four wings, and in his hands he bears upright two large keys, for one of which a sceptre is sometimes substituted; while his feet are sometimes human, sometimes those of a crocodile or other reptile. On his body, between the folds of the serpent, there sometimes appear the signs of the four quarters of the year, _i.e._ Aries and Libra, Cancer and Capricorn[891], and in other examples a thunderbolt on the breast or on the right knee[892]. The figure is often mounted on a globe which bears in one instance the two crossed bands which show that it is intended for our earth, and in one curious instance he appears to bear a flaming torch in each hand, while his breath is kindling a flame which is seen rising from an altar beside him[893]. It is possible that in this last we have a symbolical representation of the Ecpyrosis. Lastly, in the Mithraic chapel at Heddernheim, which is the only one where the figure of the lion-headed monster was found _in situ_, it was concealed within a deep niche or cell so fashioned, says M. Cumont, that the statue could only be perceived through a little conical aperture or peep-hole made in the slab of basalt closing the niche[894].