Aion (deity)

Aion (Greek: Αἰών) is a Hellenistic deity associated with time, the

orb or circle encompassing the universe, and the zodiac. The "time"
Aion or Aeon
represented by Aion is unbounded, in contrast to Chronos as God of Time, Eternity and Zodiac
empirical time divided into past, present, and future.[1] He is thus a Member of the Primordial Gods
god of the ages, associated with mystery religions concerned with the
afterlife, such as the mysteries of Cybele, Dionysus, Orpheus, and
Mithras. In Latin the concept of the deity may appear as Aevum or
Saeculum.[2] He is typically in the company of an earth or mother
goddess such as Tellus or Cybele, as on the Parabiago plate.[3]

Contents
Iconography and symbolism
Identifications Aion, god of the ages, in a celestial
Roman Empire sphere decorated with zodiacal
References signs, between a green and a
dismantled tree (summer and
Further reading
winter). Before him is the mother-
External links earth Tellus (Roman Gaia) with four
children, the four seasons
personified
Iconography and symbolism
Roman equivalent Aeternitas
Aion is usually identified as the nude
or seminude young man within a circle representing the zodiac, or eternal and
cyclical time. Examples include two Roman mosaics from Sentinum
(modern–day Sassoferrato) and Hippo Regius in Roman Africa, and the
Parabiago plate. But because he represents time as a cycle, he may also be
imagined as an old man. In the Dionysiaca, Nonnus associates Aion with the
Horae and says that he:

changes the burden of old age like a snake who sloughs off the
coils of the useless old scales, rejuvenescing while washing in the
swells of the laws [of time].[4]

Detail from the Parabiago

plate depicting Aion; Tellus
(not shown) appears at the
bottom right of the plate,
which centers on the chariot
of Cybele.
The imagery of the twining serpent is connected to the hoop or wheel through
the ouroboros, a ring formed by a snake holding the tip of its tail in its mouth.
The 4th-century AD Latin commentator Servius notes that the image of a
snake biting its tail represents the cyclical nature of the year.[5] In his 5th-
century work on hieroglyphics, Horapollo makes a further distinction between
a serpent that hides its tail under the rest of its body, which represents Aion,
and the ouroboros that represents the kosmos, which is the serpent devouring
its tail.[6]

Identifications
Martianus Capella (5th century AD) identified Aion with Cronus (Latin
Saturnus), whose name caused him to be theologically conflated with Chronos
("Time"), in the way that the Greek ruler of the underworld Plouton (Pluto) was
conflated with Ploutos (Plutus, "Wealth"). Martianus presents Cronus-Aion as the
consort of Rhea (Latin Ops) as identified with Physis.[7]

In his highly speculative reconstruction of Mithraic cosmogony, Franz Cumont

positioned Aion as Unlimited Time (sometimes represented as Saeculum, Cronus,
or Saturn) as the god who emerged from primordial Chaos, and who in turn
generated Heaven and Earth. This deity is represented as the leontocephaline, the
winged lion-headed male figure whose nude torso is entwined by a serpent. He
typically holds a sceptre, keys, or a thunderbolt.[8] The figure of Time "played a
considerable, though to us completely obscure, role" in Mithraic theology.[9]

Aion is identified with Dionysus in Christian and Neoplatonic writers, but there
are no references to Dionysus as Aion before the Christian era.[10] Euripides,
however, calls Aion the son of Zeus.[11]
Drawing of the
The Suda identifies Aion with Osiris. In Ptolemaic Alexandria, at the site of a leontocephaline figure
dream oracle, the Hellenistic syncretic god Serapis was identified as Aion found at the mithraeum
Plutonius.[12] The epithet Plutonius marks functional aspects shared with Pluto, of C. Valerius Heracles
consort of Persephone and ruler of the underworld in the Eleusinian tradition. and sons, dedicated
Epiphanius says that at Alexandria Aion's birth from Kore the Virgin was 190 AD at Ostia Antica,
celebrated 6 January: [13] "On this day and at this hour the Virgin gave birth to Italy (CIMRM 312)
Aion." The date, which coincides with Epiphany, brought new year's celebrations
to a close, completing the cycle of time that Aion embodies.[14] The Alexandrian
Aion may be a form of Osiris-Dionysus, reborn annually.[15] His image was marked with crosses on his
hands, knees, and forehead.[16] Gilles Quispel conjectured that the figure resulted from integrating the Orphic
Phanes, who like Aion is associated with a coiling serpent, into Mithraic religion at Alexandria, and that he
"assures the eternity of the city."[17]

In the art of the Roman era, he was often conflated with the primordial sky god Uranus.[18]

Roman Empire
This syncretic Aion became a symbol and guarantor of the perpetuity of Roman rule, and emperors such as
Antoninus Pius issued coins with the legend Aion,[19] whose female Roman counterpart was Aeternitas.[20]
Roman coins associate both Aion and Aeternitas with the phoenix as a symbol of rebirth and cyclical
renewal.[21]

Aion was among the virtues and divine personifications that were part of late Hellenic discourse, in which they
figure as "creative agents in grand cosmological schemes."[22] The significance of Aion lies in his malleability:
he is a "fluid conception" through which various ideas about time and divinity converge in the Hellenistic era,
in the context of monotheistic tendencies.[23]

References
 1. Doro Levi, "Aion," Hesperia 13.4 (1944), p. 274.
2. Levi, "Aion," p. 274.
3. Levi, "Aion," p.
4. Nonnus, Dionysiaca 41.180ff., as cited by Levi, "Aion," p. 306.
5. Servius, note to Aeneid 5.85, says that "according to the Egyptians, before the invention of the
alphabet the year was symbolized by a picture, a serpent biting its own tail, because it recurs
on itself" (annus secundum Aegyptios indicabatur ante inventas litteras picto dracone caudam
suam mordente, quia in se recurrit), as cited by Danuta Shanzer, A Philosophical and Literary
Commentary on Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii Book 1 (University of
California Press, 1986), p. 159.
6. Horapollo, Hieroglyphica 1.1 and 1.2 in the 1940 edition of Sbordone, as cited by Shanzer, A
Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella, p. 154.
7. Schanzer, A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella, p. 137.
8. Summarized by Jaime Alvar Ezquerra, Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation, and Ethics
in the Cults of Cybele (Brill, 2008), p. 78.
9. Ezquerra, Romanising Oriental Gods, p. 128.
10. Guthrie, W.K.C. (1979). A history of Greek philosophy: The earlier presocratics and the
Pythagoreans (https://archive.org/details/historygreekphil00guth_506). Cambridge University
Press. p. 478 (https://archive.org/details/historygreekphil00guth_506/page/n496). ISBN 978-0-
521-29420-1.
11. Euripides, Heracleidae 899f.
12. Pseudo-Callisthenes, I.30–33, as cited by Jarl Fossum, "The Myth of the Eternal Rebirth:
Critical Notes on G.W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity," Vigiliae Christianae 53.3
(1999), p. 309, note 15. On the oracle and for the passage in which Aion Plutonius is named,
see Irad Malkin, Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece (Brill, 1987), p. 107, especially
note 87.
13. Fossum, "The Myth of the Eternal Rebirth," pp. 306–307.
14. Gilles Quispel, "Hermann Hesse and Gnosis," in Gnostica, Judaica, Catholica: Collected
Essays (Brill, 2008), p. 258; Gary Forsythe, Time in Roman Religion: One Thousand Years of
Religious History (Routledge, 2012), p. 122.
15. Fossum, "The Myth of the Eternal Rebirth," p. 309.
16. Fossum, "The Myth of the Eternal Rebirth," pp. 306–307, 311.
17. Quispel, "Hermann Hesse and Gnosis," p. 258.
18. https://www.windows2universe.org/mythology/planets/Uranus/uranus.html
19. Fossum, "The Myth of the Eternal Rebirth," p. 314.
20. Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 310–
311.
21. Levi, "Aion," pp. 307–308.
22. J. Rufus Fears, "The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology," Aufstieg und Niedergang
der römischen Welt II.17.2 (1981), p. 939.
23. Levi, "Aion," pp. 307–308 et passim.

Further reading
Kákosy, László (1964). "Osiris-Aion". Oriens Antiquus 3.
Nock, Arthur Darby (Jan 1934). "A Vision of Mandulis Aion". The Harvard Theological Review
27 (1).
Zuntz, Günther (1989). Aion, Gott des Römerreichs (in German). Carl Winter Universitatsverlag.
ISBN 3533041700.
 Zuntz, Günther (1992). AIΩN in der Literatur der Kaiserzeit (in German). Verlag der
Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. ISBN 3700119666.

External links
Suda On Line, entries naming Aion (https://archive.today/20130705020938/http://www.stoa.org/
sol-bin/search.pl?db=REAL&search_method=QUERY&login=guest&enlogin=guest&user_list=
LIST&page_num=1&searchstr=Aion&field=any&num_per_page=100)
Views of the Aion mosaic at Munich Glyptothek (http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/munichglyp
totek&page=7)
Images of Aion in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/vpc/V
PC_search/subcats.php?cat_1=9&cat_2=72&cat_3=520&cat_4=6163)

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