Rhea offers to Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, in place of the newbornZeus. Red-figure ceramic vase, c. 460–450 BC,Metropolitan Museum of Art.[1]
Cronus was usually depicted with aharpe,scythe, orsickle, which was the instrument he used tocastrate and depose Uranus, his father. Cronus was likely originally a harvest god, which is why in many regions of Greece the month of the harvest was named Cronion after him.[3] InAthens, on the twelfth day of the Attic month ofHekatombaion, a festival calledKronia was held in honour of Cronus to celebrate the harvest, suggesting that, as a result of his association with the virtuous Golden Age, Cronus continued to preside as apatron of the harvest. Cronus was also identified inclassical antiquity with the Roman deitySaturn.
In an ancient myth recorded byHesiod'sTheogony, Cronus envied the power of his father,Uranus, the ruler of the universe. Uranus drew the enmity of Cronus's mother,Gaia, when he hid the gigantic youngest children of Gaia, the hundred-handedHecatoncheires and one-eyedCyclopes, inTartarus, so that they would not see the light. Gaia createda great stone sickle and gathered together Cronus and his brothers to persuade them to castrate Uranus.[4]
The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn [Cronus], 16th-century oil painting byGiorgio Vasari
Only Cronus was willing to do the deed, so Gaia gave him the sickle and placed him in ambush.[5] When Uranus met with Gaia, Cronus attacked him with the sickle,castrating him and casting histesticles into the sea. From theblood that spilled out from Uranus and fell upon the earth, theGigantes,Erinyes, andMeliae were produced. The testicles produced a white foam from which the goddessAphrodite emerged. For this, Uranus threatened vengeance and called his sonsTitenes[a] for overstepping their boundaries and daring to commit such an act. After the deed was done, Cronus cast his sickle into the waves, and it was concealed under the island ofCorfu, which had been noted since antiquity for its sickle-like shape, and gave it its ancient name, Drepane ("sickle").[6]
While Hesiod seems to imply Cronus never set them free to begin with,Pseudo-Apollodorus says that after dispatching Uranus, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hecatoncheires and the Cyclopes and set the dragonCampe to guard them.[7] He and his older sisterRhea took the throne of the world as king and queen. The period in which Cronus ruled was called theGolden Age, as the people of the time had no need for laws or rules; everyone did the right thing, and immorality was absent. In some authors, a different divine pair,Ophion andEurynome, a daughter of Oceanus, were said to have ruled Mount Olympus in the early age of the Titans. Rhea fought Eurynome and Cronus fought Ophion, and after defeating them they threw them into the waves of the ocean, thus becoming rulers in their place.[8]
After securing his place as the new king of gods, Cronus learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own children, just as he had overthrown his father. As a result, although he sired the godsDemeter,Hestia,Hera,Hades, andPoseidon by Rhea, hedevoured them all as soon as they were born to prevent the prophecy. When the sixth child,Zeus, was born, Rhea sought Gaia to devise a plan to save them and to eventually get retribution on Cronus for his acts against his father and children.
Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus inCrete, and handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, also known as theOmphalos Stone, which he promptly swallowed, thinking that it was his son. According to one Roman author, when Rhea presented the swaddled rock to him, Cronus asked her to nurse the infant one last time before he swallowed him. Rhea pressed her breast against the rock, and the milk that was sprayed across the heavens created theMilky Way galaxy. Cronus then ate the rock.[9]
Rhea kept Zeus hidden in a cave onMount Ida, Crete. According to some versions of the story, he was then raised by a goat namedAmalthea, while a company ofCuretes, armored male dancers, shouted and clanged their shields and spears to make enough noise to mask the baby's cries from Cronus. In theFabulae, Amalthea was anymph who hid Zeus by placing him in a cradle in a tree, so that he was suspended between the earth, the sea, and the sky, all of which were ruled by his father, Cronus. Still other versions of the tale say that Zeus was raised by his grandmother, Gaia. One Cretan myth relates how Cronus once went to Crete himself, and Zeus, in order to hide from his father, transformed himself into a snake, and changed his nymph nurses,Helice andCynosura, into bears, who later became the constellationsUrsa Major andUrsa Minor.[10][11] In another myth, Cronus transformed the Curetes into lions, but Rhea made them her sacred animals and yoked them in her chariot.[12][13]
According to Hesiod, once Zeus had grown up, Cronus was forced to regurgitate his children through Gaia's cunning and Zeus's might. Cronus disgorged first the stone that he had swallowed instead of Zeus, followed by Zeus's siblings. The stone was then placed by Zeus at Pytho onMount Parnassus.[14]
In other versions of the tale,Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the children.[15]
After freeing his siblings, Zeus released the Hecatoncheires and the Cyclopes who gifted him his thunderbolts.[14] In a vast war called theTitanomachy, Zeus and his older brothers and sisters, with the help of the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes, overthrew Cronus and the other Titans. Afterwards, many of the Titans were confined inTartarus. However,Oceanus,Helios,Atlas,Prometheus,Epimetheus, andAstraeus were not imprisoned following the Titanomachy. Gaia bore the monsterTyphon to claim revenge for the imprisoned Titans.
Accounts of the fate of Cronus after the Titanomachy differ. The most popular account is that found in theIliad,[16] Hesiod'sTheogony,[17] and Apollodorus,[15] all of which state that he was imprisoned with the other Titans in Tartarus. In two papyrus versions of a passage from Hesiod'sWorks and Days, however, Kronos rules over theIsle of the Blessed, having been released from Tartarus by Zeus.[18][19] This version of Cronus's fate is also found inPindar.[20] In a fragment of an Orphic cosmogony, Zeus intoxicates Cronus with honey, sending him to sleep, and then castrates him.[21]
In a Libyan account related byDiodorus Siculus (Book 3), Uranus and Titaea were the parents of Cronus and Rhea and the other Titans. Ammon, a king ofLibya, married Rhea (3.18.1). However, Rhea abandoned Ammon and married her younger brother Cronus. With Rhea's incitement, Cronus and the other Titans made war upon Ammon, who fled to Crete (3.71.1–2). Cronus ruled harshly and Cronus in turn was defeated by Ammon's son Dionysus (3.71.3–3.73) who appointed Cronus's and Rhea's son, Zeus, as king of Egypt (3.73.4). Dionysus and Zeus then joined their forces to defeat the remaining Titans in Crete, and on the death of Dionysus, Zeus inherited all the kingdoms, becoming lord of the world (3.73.7–8).
Cronus is mentioned in theSibylline Oracles, particularly in book three, wherein Cronus, 'Titan,' andIapetus, the three sons of Uranus and Gaia, each receive a third of the Earth, and Cronus is made king overall. After the death of Uranus, Titan's sons attempt to destroy Cronus's and Rhea's male offspring as soon as they are born. However, atDodona, Rhea secretly bears her sons Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades and sends them toPhrygia to be raised in the care of three Cretans. Upon learning this, sixty of Titan's men then imprison Cronus and Rhea, causing the sons of Cronus to declare and fight the first of all wars against them. This account mentions nothing about Cronus either killing his father or attempting to kill any of his children.
In Hesiod'sTheogony, and Homer'sIliad, Cronus and his Titan brothers are confined to Tartarus, apparently forever,[22] but in other traditions Cronus and the other imprisoned Titans are eventually set free by the mercy of Zeus.[23] Two papyrus versions of a passage of Hesiod'sWorks and Days mention Cronus being released by Zeus, and ruling over the heroes who go to the Isle of the Blessed; but other editions of Hesiod's text make no mention of this, and most editors agree that these lines of text are later interpolations in Hesiod's works.[24]
And they live untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep swirling Ocean, happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing thrice a year, far from the deathless gods, and Cronos rules over them; for the father of men and gods released him from his bonds.[25]
The poetPindar, in one of his poems (462 BC), wrote that although Atlas still "strains against the weight of the sky ... Zeus freed the Titans",[26] and in another poem (476 BC), Pindar has Cronus released from Tartarus and now ruling in theIsles of the Blessed, a mythical land where the Greek heroes reside in the afterlife:[27]
Those who have persevered three times, on either side, to keep their souls free from all wrongdoing, follow Zeus's road to the end, to the tower of Cronus, where ocean breezes blow around the island of the blessed, and flowers of gold are blazing, some from splendid trees on land, while water nurtures others. With these wreaths and garlands of flowers they entwine their hands according to the righteous counsels ofRhadamanthys, whom the great father, the husband of Rhea whose throne is above all others, keeps close beside him as his partner.[28]
Prometheus Lyomenos (Prometheus Unbound), an undated lost play by the playwrightAeschylus (c. 525 – c. 455 BC), features achorus composed of freed Titans as witnesses of Prometheus's freeing from the rock, perhaps including Cronus himself, although the now freed Titans are not individually identified.[29]
In one version of Typhon's origins, after the defeat of theGiants, Gaia in anger slandered Zeus to Hera, and she went to Cronus. Cronus gave his daughter two eggs smeared with his own semen and told her to bury them underground, so that they would produce a creature capable of dethroning Zeus. Hera did so, and thus Typhon came to be.[30]
Cronus was said to be the father of the wisecentaurChiron by theOceanidPhilyra, who was subsequently transformed into a linden tree.[31][32][33] The god lay with the nymph, but his wife Rhea discovered them fornicating; in order to escape, Cronus transformed into a stallion and galloped away, hence the half-human, half-equine shape of their offspring.[34][35] This episode was said to have taken place on MountPelion.[36]
Two other sons of Cronus and Philyra may have beenDolops[37] and Aphrus, the ancestor andeponym of the Aphroi, i.e. the nativeAfricans.[38] In some accounts, Cronus was also called the father of theCorybantes.[39]
Cronus is featured in one of the works of satirical writerLucian ofSamosata,Saturnalia, where he talks with one of his priests about his festival Saturnalia,[b] with a central theme being the mistreatment of the poor by the rich during festival-time.[40] In the dialogue, Cronus rejects the Hesiodic tradition of him eating his children and then being overthrown, and instead claims that he peacefully abdicated the throne in favour of his youngest son Zeus, although he still resumes rulership for seven days each year (his festival) in order to remind humanity of the plenteous, toil-free and luxuriant life they enjoyed under his reign before the Olympians took over.[41]
During antiquity, Cronus was occasionally interpreted asChronos, the personification of time.[42] The Roman philosopherCicero (1st century BC) elaborated on this by saying that the Greek name Cronus is synonymous tochrónos (time) since he maintains the course and cycles of seasons and the periods of time, whereas the Latin nameSaturn denotes that he is saturated with years since he was devouring his sons, which implies that time devours the ages and gorges.[43]
The Greek historian and biographerPlutarch (1st century AD) asserted that the Greeks believed that Cronus was an allegorical name forχρόνος (time).[44] The philosopher Plato (3rd century BC) in hisCratylus gives two possible interpretations for the name of Cronus. The first is that his name denotes κόρος (kóros), "the pure" (καθαρόν) and "unblemished" (ἀκήρατον)[45] nature of his mind.[46] The second is that Rhea and Cronus were given names of streams: Rhea fromῥοή (rhoē) "river, stream, flux" and Cronus fromχρόνος (chronos) "time".[47]Proclus (5th century), theNeoplatonist philosopher, makes in his Commentary on Plato'sCratylus an extensive analysis of Cronus; among others he says that the "One cause" of all things is "Chronos" (time) that is also equivalent to Cronus.[48]
In addition to the name, the story of Cronus eating his children was also interpreted as an allegory to a specific aspect of time held within Cronus's sphere of influence. As the theory went, Cronus represented the destructive ravages of time which devoured all things, a concept that was illustrated when the Titan king ate the Olympian gods—the past consuming the future, the older generation suppressing the next generation.[49]
TheGnostic textPistis Sophia (3rd–4th century) references the name Cronus, portraying the deity as a great ruler over others within theaeons.[50]
During theRenaissance, the identification of Cronus and Chronos gave rise to "Father Time" wielding the harvesting scythe.
H. J. Rose in 1928[51] observed that attempts to give the nameΚρόνος a Greek etymology had failed. Recently, Janda (2010) offers a genuinely Indo-European etymology of "the cutter", from the root*(s)ker- "to cut" (Greekκείρω (keirō), cf. Englishshear), motivated by Cronus's characteristic act of "cutting the sky" (or the genitals of anthropomorphic Uranus). The Indo-Iranian reflex of the root is*kar-, but Janda argues that the original meaning "to cut" in a cosmogonic sense is still preserved in some verses of theRigveda pertaining toIndra's heroic "cutting", like that of Cronus resulting in creation:
RV 10.104.10ārdayad vṛtram akṛṇod ulokaṃ he hitVrtra fatally, cutting [> creating] a free path. RV 6.47.4varṣmāṇaṃ divo akṛṇod he cut [> created] the loftiness of the sky.
This may point to an olderIndo-European mytheme reconstructed as*(s)kert wersmn diwos "by means of a cut he created the loftiness of the sky".[52] The myth of Cronus castrating Uranus parallels theSong of Kumarbi, whereAnu (the heavens) is castrated byKumarbi. In theSong of Ullikummi,Teshub uses the "sickle with which heaven and earth had once been separated" to defeat the monsterUllikummi,[53] establishing that the "castration" of the heavens by means of a sickle was part of acreation myth, in origin a cut creating anopening or gap between heaven (imagined as adome of stone) and earth enabling the beginning of time (chronos) and human history.[54]
A theory debated in the 19th century, and sometimes still offered somewhat apologetically,[55] holds thatΚρόνος is related to "horned", assuming a Semitic derivation from*qrn.[56]Andrew Lang's objection, that Cronus was never represented horned in Hellenic art,[57] was addressed by Robert Brown,[58] arguing that, in Semitic usage, as in theHebrew Bible,qeren was a signifier of "power". When Greek writers encountered the Semitic deityEl, they rendered his name as Cronus.[59]
When Hellenes encountered Phoenicians and, later, Hebrews, they identified the SemiticEl, byinterpretatio graeca, with Cronus. The association was recorded c. 100 AD byPhilo of Byblos's Phoenician history, as reported inEusebius'sPræparatio Evangelica I.10.16.[60] Philo's account, ascribed by Eusebius to the semi-legendary pre-Trojan WarPhoenician historianSanchuniathon, indicates that Cronus was originally aCanaanite ruler who foundedByblos and was subsequently deified. This version gives his alternate name asElus orIlus, and states that in the 32nd year of his reign, he emasculated, slew and deified his father Epigeius or Autochthon "whom they afterwards called Uranus". It further states that after ships were invented, Cronus, visiting the 'inhabitable world', bequeathedAttica to his own daughterAthena, andEgypt toTaautus the son ofMisor and inventor of writing.[61]
While the Greeks considered Cronus a cruel and tempestuous force of chaos and disorder, believing the Olympian gods had brought an era of peace and order by seizing power from the crude and malicious Titans,[citation needed] the Romans took a more positive and innocuous view of the deity, by conflating their indigenous deitySaturn with Cronus. Consequently, while the Greeks considered Cronus merely an intermediary stage between Uranus and Zeus, he was a larger aspect ofRoman religion. TheSaturnalia was a festival dedicated in his honour, and at least onetemple to Saturn already existed in the archaicRoman Kingdom.
His association with the "Saturnian" Golden Age eventually caused him to become the god of "time", i.e., calendars, seasons, and harvests—not now confused withChronos, the unrelated embodiment of time in general. Nevertheless, amongHellenistic scholars in Alexandria and during theRenaissance, Cronus was conflated with the name ofChronos, the personification of "Father Time",[42] wielding the harvesting scythe.
As a result of Cronus's importance to the Romans, his Roman variant, Saturn, has had a large influence onWestern culture. The seventh day of the Judaeo-Christian week is called inLatinDies Saturni ("Day of Saturn"), which in turn was adapted and became the source of theEnglish wordSaturday. Inastronomy, theplanet Saturn is named after the Roman deity. It is the outermost of theClassical planets (the astronomical planets that are visible with the naked eye).
In Greco-Roman Egypt, Cronus was equated with the Egyptian godGeb, because he held a quite similar position in Egyptian mythology as the father of the godsOsiris,Isis,Seth andNephthys as Cronus did in the Greek pantheon. This equation is particularly well attested inTebtunis in the southernFayyum: Geb and Cronus were here part of a local version of the cult ofSobek, thecrocodile god.[62] The equation was shown on the one hand in the local iconography of the gods, in which Geb was depicted as a man with attributes of Cronus and Cronus with attributes of Geb.[63] On the other hand, the priests of the local main temple identified themselves in Egyptian texts as priests of "Soknebtunis-Geb", but in Greek texts as priests of "Soknebtunis-Cronus". Accordingly, Egyptian names formed with the name of the god Geb were just as popular among local villagers as Greek names derived from Cronus, especially the name "Kronion".[64]
A star (HD 240430) was named after him in 2017 when it was reported to have swallowed its planets.[65] The planetSaturn, named after the Roman equivalent of Cronus, is still referred to as "Cronus" (Κρόνος) in modern Greek.
^Most editors take these lines to be a laterinterpolation.Gantz, Timothy (1993).Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. The Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 46–47.ISBN0-8018-4410-X.
^Kirk, Raven, and Schofield.pp. 59–60 no. 52; Ogden 2013b,pp. 36–38; Fontenrose,p. 72; Gantz, pp. 50–51, Ogden 2013a,p. 76 n. 46. Ogden 2013a, p. 150, n. 6, seems to conclude from the fact that the eggs were buried underground, that Earth (Gaia) was therefore considered to be the mother.
^"We would like to consider whether the Semitic stemqrnmight be connected with the name Kronos," suggests A. P. Bos, as late as 1989, inCosmic and Meta-cosmic Theology in Aristotle's Lost Dialogues, 1989:11, note 26.
^As in H. Lewy,Die semitischen Fremdwörter in Griechischen, 1895:216, and Robert Brown,The Great Dionysiak Myth, 1877, ii.127. "Kronos signifies 'the Horned one'", the Rev.Alexander Hislop had previously asserted inThe Two Babylons; or, The papal worship proved to be the worship of Nimrod and his wife, Hislop, 2nd ed. 1862 (p. 46), with the note "Fromkrn, a horn. The epithetCarneus applied toApollo is just a different form of the same word. In theOrphic Hymns, Apollo is addressed as 'the Two-Horned god'".
^Brown,Semitic Influence in Hellenic Mythology, 1898:112ff.
^"Philôn, who of course regarded Kronos as an Hellenic divinity, which indeed he became, always renders the name of the Semitic god Îl or Êl ('the Powerful') by 'Kronos', in which usage we have a lingering feeling of the real meaning of the name" (Brown 1898:116).
^Walcot, "Five or Seven Recesses?",The Classical Quarterly, New Series,15.1 (May 1965), p. 79. The quote stands as Philo, Fr. 2.
^Eusebius of Caesarea:Praeparatio Evangelica Book 1, Chapter 10.
^Kockelmann, Holger (2017).Der Herr der Seen, Sümpfe und Flußläufe. Untersuchungen zum Gott Sobek und den ägyptischen Krokodilgötter-Kulten von den Anfängen bis zur Römerzeit. Vol. 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. pp. 81–88.ISBN978-3-447-10810-2.
^Rondot, Vincent (2013).Derniers visages des dieux dʼÉgypte. Iconographies, panthéons et cultes dans le Fayoum hellénisé des IIe–IIIe siècles de notre ère. Paris: Presses de lʼuniversité Paris-Sorbonne; Éditions du Louvre. pp. 75–80,122–27,241–46.
^Sippel, Benjamin (2020).Gottesdiener und Kamelzüchter: Das Alltags- und Sozialleben der Sobek-Priester im kaiserzeitlichen Fayum. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. pp. 73–78.ISBN978-3-447-11485-1.
^According toHesiod,Theogony927–929, Hephaestus was produced by Hera alone, with no father, see Gantz, p. 74.
^According toHesiod'sTheogony886–890, of Zeus' children by his seven wives, Athena was the first to be conceived, but the last to be born; Zeus impregnated Metis then swallowed her, later Zeus himself gave birth to Athena "from his head", see Gantz, pp. 51–52, 83–84.
^According toHesiod,Theogony183–200, Aphrodite was born from Uranus' severed genitals, see Gantz, pp. 99–100.
Gantz, Timothy,Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes:ISBN978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1),ISBN978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).
Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, M. Schofield,The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts, Cambridge University Press, Dec 29, 1983.ISBN978-0-521-27455-5.
The Hymns of Orpheus. Translated by Taylor, Thomas (1792). University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.Online version at the theoi.com
Ogden, Daniel (2013a),Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Oxford University Press, 2013.ISBN978-0-19-955732-5.
Ogden, Daniel (2013b),Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and early Christian Worlds: A sourcebook, Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-992509-4.
Oppian, in Oppian, Colluthus, and Tryphiodorus. Translated by A. W. Mair. Loeb Classical Library 219. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928.
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