M. Cumont’s theory, as given in his magnificent work on the _Mystères de Mithra_ and elsewhere, is that the figure represents that Zervan Akerene or Boundless Time whom he would put at the head of the Mithraic pantheon, and would make the father of both Ormuzd and Ahriman[895]. M. Cumont’s opinion, on a subject of which he has made himself the master, must always command every respect, and it may be admitted that the notion of such a supreme Being, corresponding in many ways to the Ineffable Bythos of the Gnostics, did appear in the later developments of the Persian religion, and may even have been known during the time that the worship of Mithras flourished in the West[896]. It has been shown elsewhere, however, that this idea only came to the front long after the cult of Mithras had become extinct, that M. Cumont’s view that the lion-headed monster was represented as without sex or passions has been shown to be baseless by later discoveries, and that the figure is connected in at least one example with an inscription to Arimanes or Ahriman[897]. M. Cumont has himself noted the confusion which a Christian, writing before the abolition of the Mithras worship, makes between the statues of Hecate, goddess of hell and patroness of sorcerers, and those of the lion-headed monster[898], and Hecate’s epithet of Περσείη can only be explained by some similar association[899]. At the same time, M. Cumont makes it plain that the Mithraists did not regard these infernal powers Ahriman and Hecate with the horror and loathing which the reformed Zoroastrian religion afterwards heaped upon the antagonist of Ormuzd[900]. On the contrary the dedications of several altars and statues show that they paid them worship and offered them sacrifices, as the Greeks did to Hades and Persephone, the lord and lady of hell, of whom the Mithraists probably considered them the Persian equivalents. From all these facts, the conclusion seems inevitable that the lion-headed monster represents Ahriman, the consort of Hecate[901].