Cronus (Kronos)

In ancient Greek myth, Cronus (Kρóνοζ = Kronos) is the youngest brother of the titans and son of Uranus, the god of the sky, and Gaia, the goddess of the earth. In connection with Chronos, the personification of time, he plays an important role in time perception in ancient Greek myth. Later he was associated by the Romans with Saturn, god of the planets and of agriculture.

Cronus' father Uranus so hated his children that he banished them to Tartarus, below the earth. Consequently his wife Gaia gave birth to her children secretly. Eventually she put her son up to fight against his father. Cronus took a sickle, castrated Uranus, and threw the genitals into the sea. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, grew out of the sea's arising foam and was therefore called Aphrodite (the foam-born). Furies, giants, and nymphs emerged from Uranus's blood that dripped on the ground. Cronus liberated his brothers and sisters, and they proclaimed him their ruler. A prophecy told him that a fate similar to his father's would strike him. To prevent this prediction from coming true, he swallowed all children to which his wife Rhea gave birth, but she planned to deceive him to protect her son Zeus. She delivered Zeus in the secret place Lyktos and instead of the child, Rhea gave her husband a stone to eat, which was wrapped up in clothes. Zeus, successfully hidden by his mother, grew up, and when he was a young man, cunningly castrated his father, bound him, and forced him to spit out the swallowed children.

The further destiny of Cronus is unclear. According to Homer's opinion, Cronus once again sits in Tartarus; Hesiod, on the other hand, describes him as a friendly king of the dead heroes on the isle of the blessed at the edge of the universe. Under the supremacy of Cronus, the people were believed to have lived in happiness, without worries and fears. They did not have to work, ate wild fruits and honey, and did not age. As a result, this period is described as the Golden Age.

Cronus is usually represented as an old, weakly, grumpy, melancholic man with a sickle, which became a scythe in the Middle Ages, the attribute of death. However, this imagination of the god gained meaning only with the modern age. In connection with time, the sickle often gained other meanings, too. It could be an allusion to the castration of Uranus. It is also a symbol of time because the sickle is able to cut out and into something. But it could also refer to Cronus as the god of harvest. Although he was not worshipped like the other gods, once a year a kind of harvest celebration [Page 249]took place in his honor; it was called Krönten. Plutarch describes the celebration as cheerful and merry, and one in which social differences were abolished and servants also could feast.

Nevertheless, in ancient Greek representations, Cronus had no special characteristics. In the second part of the 5th century BCE he was described as a man of mature age with hair, a beard, and a coat that covered the back of the head. The Orphies saw Cronus as a dragon with the heads of bulls and lions on its hips.

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