Cronus
（
Κρόνος). In Greek mythology, the youngest son of Uranus
and Gaea, who mutilated
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Cronus. (Pompeian Painting.)
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and overthrew his father, and, with the assistance of the Titans, made himself
sovereign of the world. He took his sister Rhea to wife, and became by her father of Hestia,
Demeter, Heré, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. But his mother prophesied that one of his
children would overthrow him. He accordingly swallowed them all except Zeus, whom Rhea saved
by a stratagem. (See
Zeus.) Zeus, when grown up,
obtained the assistance of the Ocean-nymph Thetis in making Cronus disgorge his children, and
then, with the help of his kinsfolk, overpowered Cronus and the Titans. According to one
version of the fable, Cronus was imprisoned in Tartarus with the Titans; according to another,
he was reconciled with Zeus, and reigned with Rhadamanthus on the Islands of the Blessed.
Cronus seems originally to have been a god of the harvest; whence it happens that in many
parts of Greece the harvest month was called Cronion. His name being easily confused
with that of Chronos (
Χρόνος, “Time”),
he was afterwards erroneously regarded as the god of time. In works of art he was represented
as an old man, with a mantle drawn over the back of his head and holding a sickle in his hand.
The Romans identified him with Saturnus, their god of sowing. See
Saturnus.
