Cronus
The Crooked-Counselled
KROH-nus
The Titan who overthrew his father and was overthrown in turn by his own son, the hinge the whole cosmogony turns on.
The Story
Cronus was the youngest of the twelve Titans and the one bold enough to act when Gaia asked which of her children would move against Uranus. He struck with an adamantine sickle, took the sky's throne, and ruled over what later poets remembered, uneasily, as a golden age.
He also inherited his father's fear. Warned that a child of his would unseat him, he swallowed each one at birth, until Rhea hid the sixth away on Crete. That child was Zeus, and the prophecy kept its appointment.
Did You Know?
- The Romans folded him into Saturn, and Saturnalia, the December festival where slaves were served by their masters and normal order was suspended, was a yearly rehearsal of his golden age.
- The stone Rhea fed him was said to have been set up at Delphi as the omphalos, the navel of the world. Pausanias reports it was still there in the second century AD, anointed with oil daily.
- He is constantly confused with Chronos, the personification of time, on the strength of a similar-sounding name. The two are unrelated in Greek, but the mix-up is why Father Time carries a harvest scythe.