It is said that all over Africa, belief in a trinity of gods is found, the same to-day as has prevailed at least for forty centuries, and perhaps for very much longer. Chaldaea, Assyria, and the temple of Erektheus, on the Acropolis of Athens, honoured and sacrificed to Zeus (the Sun, Hercules, or Phallic idea) the Serpent and Ocean; and Africa still does so to the Tree-Stem or Pole, the Serpent, and the Sea or Water; and this Trinity is one god, and yet serves to divide all gods into three classes, of which these are types. Important and interesting notices relative to the nature of the deities worshipped by the ancients are to be found in the treatise of Julius Firmicus Maternus, "De Errore Profanarum Religionum ad Constantium, et Constantem Angg." Firmicus attributes to the Persians a belief in the androgynous nature of the deity [naturam ejus (jovis) ad utriusque sexus transferentes]. No doubt this doctrine has always been recognised, by many writers, as being held by the philosophers of India and Egypt, and that it constituted a part of the creed of Orpheus, but its connection with Persia has not been so generally acknowledged. Firmicus, after speaking of the two-fold powers of Jupiter (that is, the deity being both male and female) adds, "when they choose to give a visible representation of him, they sculpture him as a female." Again, they represent him as a female with three heads. It was a figure adorned with serpents of a monstrous size. It was venerated under the symbol of fire. It was called Mithra. It was worshipped in secret caverns. The rites of Mithra were familiar to the Romans, but they worshipped them in a manner different from the Persian ceremonies. Firmicus had seen Mithra sculptured in two different ways: in one piece of sculpture he was represented as a female with three faces, and infolded with serpents; and in another piece of sculpture he was represented as seizing a bull.