CRONUS, an ancient deity, not much worshipped in Greece, probably belonging to the pre-Hellenic population (etymology unknown; ancient explanation = xpOvos, Time, impossible; prob ably not Greek) . His functions are connected with agriculture; in Attica his festival (Kronia, Hekatombaion 12, i.e., harvest time) resembled the Saturnalia (Accius ap. Macrob., Saturn., I, 7, 3 7 ; cf. SATURN) . In art, he is shown as an old man holding a curved implement, probably originally a sickle, but interpreted as the harpe (see below).
In mythology, he is son of Uranus and Ge (Heaven and Earth). Uranus, when his children were born, hid them in the body of Ge, who, unable to bear the pressure longer, begged them to deliver her. Cronus alone consented ; Ge gave him a curved sword (harpe) wherewith he castrated Uranus. Thus (like similar heroes in Maori, Indian and Chinese myth) he separated earth and heaven. He now became the lord of his brothers, the Titans, and shut up the most dangerous (the Hekatoncheires or Hundred handed Ones) in Tartarus. His consort was his sister Rhea. Ge and Uranus warned him that his own child should overthrow him; so he swallowed Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon when they were born. But Rhea hid away the infant Zeus in Crete, and tricked Cronus into swallowing a stone instead, which afterwards was shown and venerated at Delphi. Zeus grew up, made Cronus disgorge his brethren, rebelled, and was victorious. Cronus was imprisoned in Tartarus, or (see the late story in Plutarch, De Defect. Orac., 18) on an island near Britain, and guarded by the Hekatoncheires; or he became lord of Elysium (q.v.). The swallowing myth has savage parallels.
Under the rule of Cronus, men lived in a state of Paradisal in nocence (6 Eiri Kpovov 131os, Saturnia regna), and the earth bore all things untilled. It was the Golden Age. Cronus in time was rationalized into a great and beneficent western king. Hence the late and artificial Italian tale that he came to the future site of Rome, was welcomed there by Janus (also euhemerized into a king), founded a city there, and taught the people navigation, coinage, and other useful things. (See SATURN.) On account his swallowing of his children, Cronus is fre quently identified with foreign gods, notably the Semitic Baal (Baal Saturnus on numerous inscriptions of Roman Africa) and Moloch, to whom human sacrifices, particularly of children, were made.
See Preller-Robert, Griech. Mythologie, p. 46 et seq.; L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, i., chap. i.; M. Meyer in Roscher's Lexikon, s.v.