Kronos- Greek TitanTitan"King of the Titans"

The Castration of Ouranos

Kronos was the youngest of the twelve Titans, children of Gaia and Ouranos. Hesiod calls him "the most terrible of children," one who hated his father with a hatred that matched Ouranos's cruelty. Ouranos forced certain of his children back into Gaia's body each time they sought the light: the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires, held in the earth while their mother groaned under the weight. Gaia fashioned a great sickle of grey adamant and called on her Titan children to punish their father. Only Kronos volunteered.

When Ouranos came at nightfall to cover Gaia, spreading himself over the earth as sky covers ground, Kronos struck. He reached with his left hand, seized his father's genitals, and severed them with a single stroke. The blood that fell on Gaia spawned the Erinyes and the Giants. The severed parts drifted in the sea, and from the foam that gathered around them Aphrodite was born near Cyprus. Ouranos called his sons Titenes, "overreachers," a curse that prophesied they would pay for their presumption.

The Golden Age

With Ouranos deposed, Kronos took sovereignty over the cosmos. He freed his Titan siblings but locked the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires back in Tartarus. He feared their power and set the she-dragon Kampe as their warden.

Kronos married his sister Rhea. In the Works and Days, Hesiod describes their reign as a Golden Age: the first mortals lived without labor or sorrow, remaining young until death came upon them gently, like sleep. The earth gave grain and fruit without cultivation. No ship had yet crossed the sea.

During this reign, Kronos lay with the Oceanid Philyra far from Rhea's sight. When Rhea discovered them, Kronos turned himself into a horse to escape. From this coupling Philyra bore Chiron, half-man and half-horse, the wisest of the centaurs. Philyra, horrified by her child's form, was changed into a linden tree.

The Devouring Father

Gaia and the maimed Ouranos prophesied that Kronos would be overthrown by his own son. Kronos devised a terrible solution: he swallowed each child as it was born. Rhea bore him Hestia, then Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon. Each time, Kronos seized the infant and swallowed it whole. The children, being immortal, lived on in their father's belly, trapped in darkness.

After five had been consumed, Rhea went to Gaia and begged for help saving her last child.

The Stone and the Hidden Child

When Zeus was about to be born, Gaia spirited Rhea to Crete. The infant was given to the nymphs and to Amaltheia, the divine goat whose milk nourished him and whose broken horn became the cornucopia. The Curetes, armed youths sacred to Rhea, clashed their bronze shields and shouted war cries around the cave to drown out the baby's wailing.

Rhea wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and presented it to Kronos. He swallowed it without suspicion. The stone, later called the Omphalos, would be disgorged and set at Delphi as the navel-stone of the world. Pausanias saw it there, anointed with oil and crowned with unspun wool.

The War in Heaven

Zeus grew to maturity in secret on Crete. When he came of age, he forced Kronos to vomit up the swallowed children in reverse order: first the stone, then Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia, all alive and fully grown. In Apollodorus, the Oceanid Metis prepared the emetic.

The ten-year Titanomachy followed. Kronos led the Titans from Mount Othrys while Zeus commanded the Olympians from Mount Olympus. Nine years of deadlock ended when Zeus freed the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires from Tartarus. The Cyclopes forged Zeus's thunderbolts. The Hecatoncheires hurled three hundred boulders at a time. The combined assault broke the Titans. Kronos and his allies were cast into Tartarus, guarded by the very beings he had kept imprisoned.

The King of the Blessed

Pindar offers a gentler ending. Zeus eventually released Kronos from Tartarus and made him king of the Isles of the Blessed, the realm where favored heroes dwelt after death. The old Titan presided over a second Golden Age, ruling the paradise of the dead as he had once ruled the living world. In Athens, the Kronia festival recalled his reign: slaves and free men feasted together, and for one day, masters served their slaves and Kronos's world returned.