6 After he was defeated and overthrown by the Olympians, though, Cronus wound up in Tartarus, the deepest pit of the Underworld, where he was imprisoned for the rest of eternity.
In the Theogony, the poet Hesiod characterizes him as “Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of children.” 5Ĭronus and his Titan cronies ruled the cosmos, it seems, from Mount Othrys in central Greece, south of Mount Olympus. As shrewd as he was strong, Cronus was powerful enough to outmatch the great Uranus. Cronus himself had seized the throne from his own father Uranus, the embodiment of the heavens. # Attributes # Functions and CharacteristicsĪs the predecessor of Zeus, Cronus ruled over the cosmos before the Olympians wrested power from him and the other Titans. Plato’s Cronus is therefore “he of pure intellect.” 4 However, this etymology should be regarded as merely philosophically provocative, rather than linguistically or historically accurate.Ĭronus’ chief epithet, used a few times in Hesiod’s Theogony, was ἀγκυλομήτης ( ankylomêtēs), meaning “crooked-counseling.” This distinctive epithet highlights Cronus’ wily but cruel nature. For example, Plato conceived of “Cronus” as a kind of compound of the Greek words κοῦρος ( koûros, “youth, young man”), καθαρός ( katharós, “pure”), and νοῦς ( noûs, “mind, intellect”). Other fanciful etymologies for Cronus’ name were suggested by Plato in his philosophical dialogue Cratylus. It emerged as a product of the similarities between the name Cronus and the Greek word χρόνος ( chrónos), meaning “time.” The myth in which Cronus swallows his children can thus be understood as a metaphor for time, which “devours the ages and gorges insatiably with the years that are past.” 3 1Īnother suggestion, no longer fashionable today, traces Cronus’ name to the Semitic root qrn, meaning “horn.” This etymology would make Cronus “the horned one.” 2Ĭronus’ association with time, first popularized by the Greek Orphics and later taken up by Renaissance Europeans, was purely coincidental. keírō), meaning “to cut.” Such an origin would likely allude to Cronus’ severing of his father’s genitals, but may also refer to the “cutting” process by which the cosmos was created in some Indo-European mythologies. One theory has suggested a connection with the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)ker- (via the Greek verb κείρω, translit. The origin of the name “Cronus” (Greek Κρόνος, translit. In the Roman world, Cronus was known as Saturn. The Greeks of ancient Attica and Ionia celebrated Cronus during the Cronia, a harvest festival marked by indulgent consumption of food and drink and the mixing of social classes. In Greek art, Cronus was often depicted wielding a sickle, a symbol of his rebellion against his father as well as his ties to fertility and agriculture. Insatiably cruel and hungry for power, Cronus was ultimately deposed by his son Zeus, who ushered in the era of the Olympians. He fathered the first of the Olympian deities, including Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Poseidon and Zeus. Cronus was symbolized by the scythe or sickle, which he was said to have used to castrate his father Uranus.Ĭronus, the second ruler of the Greek cosmos, was a Titan known primarily for his cruelty and for usurping his father Uranus.
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