n Greek mythology, Cronus, Cronos, or Kronos (/ˈkroʊnəs/ or /ˈkroʊnɒs/, US: /-oʊs/,

from Greek: Κρόνος, Krónos), was the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans, the
divine descendants of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth. He overthrew his father and ruled during
the mythological Golden Age, until he was overthrown by his own son Zeus and imprisoned
in Tartarus. According to Plato, however, the deities Phorcys, Cronus, and Rhea were the eldest
children of Oceanus and Tethys.[1]
Cronus was usually depicted with a harpe, scythe or a sickle, which was the instrument he used
to castrate and depose Uranus, his father. In Athens, on the twelfth day of the Attic month
of Hekatombaion, a festival called Kronia 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 a patron of the harvest. Cronus was also identified in classical antiquity with the Roman
deity Saturn.

Contents

 1Mythology
o 1.1Libyan account by Diodorus Siculus
o 1.2Sibylline Oracles
o 1.3Other accounts
 2Name and comparative mythology
o 2.1Antiquity
o 2.2From the Renaissance to the present
o 2.3El, the Phoenician Cronus
o 2.4Roman mythology and later culture
 3Astronomy
 4Genealogy
 5Notes
 6Citations and references
 7References
 8External links

Mythology[edit]
In an ancient myth recorded by Hesiod's Theogony, Cronus envied the power of his father, the ruler
of the universe, Uranus. Uranus drew the enmity of Cronus's mother, Gaia, when he hid the gigantic
youngest children of Gaia, the hundred-handed Hecatoncheires and one-eyed Cyclopes, in Tartarus,
so that they would not see the light. Gaia created a great stone sickle and gathered together Cronus
and his brothers to persuade them to castrate Uranus.[2]

Giorgio Vasari: The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn (Cronus)

Only Cronus was willing to do the deed, so Gaia gave him the sickle and placed him in
ambush.[3] When Uranus met with Gaia, Cronus attacked him with the sickle, castrating him and
casting his testicles into the sea. From the blood that spilled out from Uranus and fell upon the earth,
the Gigantes, Erinyes, and Meliae were produced. The testicles produced a white foam from which
the goddess Aphrodite emerged. For this, Uranus threatened vengeance and called his
sons Titenes[a] for overstepping their boundaries and daring to commit such an act.[b]
After dispatching Uranus, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hecatoncheires, and the Cyclopes and set the
dragon Campe to guard them. He and his sister Rhea took the throne of the world as king and
queen. The period in which Cronus ruled was called the Golden Age, as the people of the time had
no need for laws or rules; everyone did the right thing, and immorality was absent.

Painting by Peter Paul Rubens of Cronus devouring one of his children

Cronus learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own sons, just as
he had overthrown his father. As a result, although he sired the
gods Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades and Poseidon by Rhea, he devoured 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 in Crete, and handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling
clothes, also known as the Omphalos Stone, which he promptly swallowed, thinking that it was his
son.
Rhea kept Zeus hidden in a cave on Mount Ida, Crete. According to some versions of the story, he
was then raised by a goat named Amalthea, while a company of Kouretes, armored male dancers,
shouted and clapped their hands to make enough noise to mask the baby's cries from Cronus. Other
versions of the myth have Zeus raised by the nymph Adamanthea, who hid Zeus by dangling him by
a rope from 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.
Once he had grown up, Zeus used an emetic given to him by Gaia to force Cronus to disgorge the
contents of his stomach in reverse order: first the stone, which was set down at Pytho under the
glens of Mount Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, and then his two brothers and three sisters. In
other versions of the tale, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the children.[4]
After freeing his siblings, Zeus released the Hecatoncheires, and the Cyclopes who forged for him
his thunderbolts, Poseidon's trident and Hades' helmet of darkness. In a vast war called
the Titanomachy, Zeus and his brothers and sisters, with the help of the Hecatoncheires and
Cyclopes, overthrew Cronus and the other Titans. Afterwards, many of the Titans were confined
in Tartarus. However, Oceanus, Helios, Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus and Menoetius were not
imprisoned following the Titanomachy. Gaia bore the monster Typhon to claim revenge for the
imprisoned Titans.
Accounts of the fate of Cronus after the Titanomachy differ. In Homeric and other texts he is
imprisoned with the other Titans in Tartarus. In Orphic poems, he is imprisoned for eternity in the
cave of Nyx. Pindar describes his release from Tartarus, where he is made King of Elysium by Zeus.
In another version,[citation needed] the Titans released the Cyclopes from Tartarus, and Cronus was
awarded the kingship among them, beginning a Golden Age. In Virgil's Aeneid,[5] it is Latium to which
Saturn (Cronus) escapes and ascends as king and lawgiver, following his defeat by his son Jupiter
(Zeus).
One other account referred by Robert Graves,[6] who claims to be following the account of the
Byzantine mythographer Tzetzes, it is said that Cronus was castrated by his son Zeus just like he
had done with his father Uranus before. However the subject of a son castrating his own father, or
simply castration in general, was so repudiated by the Greek mythographers of that time that they
suppressed it from their accounts until the Christian era (when Tzetzes wrote).

The Fall of the Titans, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, 1596-1598

Libyan account by Diodorus Siculus[edit]

In a Libyan account related by Diodorus Siculus (Book 3), Uranus and Titaea were the parents of
Cronus and Rhea and the other Titans. Ammon, a king of Libya, married Rhea (3.18.1). However,
Rhea abandoned Ammon and married her 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' 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).