Cronus: Titan, Reaper, Father
Time... Crow?
By Dan Norder, ©1999, all rights
reserved.
 Chronos (or Chronus) is
the personification of time, which is what the word means. It
is used in "chronology" and other modern words. It
was used originally in a solely poetic sense. There isn't a god
or goddess directly associated with time per se in Greek myth.
But there may have been a Titan of time...
Cronus (or Kronos) was the father of Zeus and his siblings.
He was part of a group of beings called Titans that existed before
the Greek gods.
His parents were Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth). They had
many children, but Uranus was fearful of them and kept them confined
inside of Gaia. She didn't like this much. She gave Cronus a
sickle, and he castrated his father the next time he came near.
When this happened the blood that was spilled formed creatures
like the Giants and the Furies, and the genitals of Uranus were
thrown into the sea and would eventually produce Aphrodite.
With Uranus out of the way, Cronus married his sister Rhea
and ruled the Titans. Cronus was afraid that one of his children
would overthrow him as he had overthrown his father, so as each
child was born he swallowed them one by one. He had already disposed
of Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Hestia and Demeter in this fashion
before Zeus was born. This time Rhea had Zeus hidden and tricked
Cronus into swallowing a stone instead.
When Zeus was old enough to take care of himself, Rhea got
Cronus to release the children he had swallowed, either by talking
him into it or by giving him a potion that induced vomiting.
When the other gods were free they joined Zeus to fight the Titans
and overthrew them.
From these stories and other facts it is believed that Cronus
was a harvest god from long ago, worshipped by a culture before
the Greeks. His sickle is a tool used in harvesting grain. Many
people believe that the story of his overthrow by Zeus represents
the overthrow of the culture that worshipped Cronus and the old
gods by the people who worshipped Zeus and the other more familiar
Greek gods.
The Romans identified Cronus with their god Saturn. Saturn,
the Sower, was also a god of agriculture. The Roman god's festival,
called the Saturnalia, was held from the 17th to the 19th of
December and was quite popular.
Cronus and Saturn were also identified with time. Harvest
and time might be related in the first place, but some suspect
this relationship may have happened because of a confusion between
the words Cronus and Chronus.
Harvest was also associated with death because of the end
of growing season. Kronos eating his children was used in a poetic
sense for time devouring all things, as in the old saying "nothing
lasts forever."
 Our concepts of Father
Time (usually found in cartoons around New Year's Eve these days,
but historically found as part of the Saturnalia festival when
it was pushed to the first of the new year to avoid conflict
with Christmas) and the Grim Reaper carrying a scythe are directly
derived from Cronus. Both of these more modern figures are sometimes
accompanied by a crow. Robert Graves wrote that the word Cronos
and the god may have actually meant "crow," but once
again it could just be a result of confusion with the similar-sounding
words for crow (Latin "cornix" or Greek "corone").
The three Greek words that were either related originally
or related through confusion later were: Chronus (meaning "time"),
Cronus (the god of harvest before the Greek gods took over),
and corone (meaning "crow"). Sometimes just
having words similar to each other is enough to mix stories up
with one another. Whether they are connected because they sound
similar or because they have similar roots is unknown.
All three words are definitely now linked in some fashion.
Images of the Grim Reaper in engravings in the Middle Ages that
show a skeletal figure holding a scythe and hourglass with a
crow nearby show this connection. (You can go to the Grim
Reaper picture page to see some of these images.)
Also note that the origins of words in Ancient Greek are uncertain.
It could be that Chronus and Cronus were supposed to be the same
thing originally, or that Cronus originally did mean crow. We
don't have enough information on the beliefs of the pre-Greeks
to know if Cronus was intended to be a crow or not. Many people
think the three words coming together was just a silly coincidence,
but there's no firm proof one way or another.
Crows were sometimes associated with fertility figures in
other cultures, but that doesn't necessarily prove anything.
Also, crows could be associated with death (by going after corpses)
as well as harvest (by going after grain).
Like most things in mythology, the concepts go back so far
in time that we can't trace the origins reliably.
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