KRONOS (or Cronus) was
the Titan god of time and the ages, especially time where regarded as
destructive and all-devouring. He ruled the cosmos during the so-called Golden
Age, after castrating and deposing his father Ouranos (the Sky). In fear of a
prophecy that he would be in turn be overthrown by his own son, Kronos
swallowed each of his children as soon as they were born. Rhea managed to save
the youngest, Zeus, by hiding him away on the island of Krete, and fed Kronos a
stone wrapped in the swaddling clothes of an infant. The god grew up, forced
Kronos to disgorge his swallowed offspring, and led the Olympians in a ten year
war against the Titanes, before driving them defeated into the pit of Tartaros.
Many human generations
later, Zeus released Kronos and his brothers from this prison, and made the old
Titan king of the Elysian Islands, home of the blessed dead. Kronos was
essentially the same as Khronos, the primordial god of time in the Orphic
Theogonies.
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