Chronos
Ancient Greek personification of time
Chronos (/ˈkroʊnɒs, -oʊs/; Ancient Greek: Χρόνος, romanized: Khronos, lit. 'Time'; [kʰrónos], Modern Greek: ['xronos]), also spelled Chronus, is a personification of time in Greek mythology, who is also discussed in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature. His consort is the goddess Ananke.
Chronos is frequently confused with, or perhaps consciously identified with, the Titan Cronus in antiquity, due to the similarity in names. The identification became more widespread during the Renaissance, giving rise to the iconography of Father Time wielding the harvesting scythe.
Greco-Roman mosaics depicted Chronos as a man turning the zodiac wheel. He is comparable to the deity Aion as a symbol of cyclical time. He is usually portrayed as an old, callous man with a thick grey beard, personifying the destructive and stifling aspects of time.
01Name
02Mythology
In the Orphic tradition, the unaging Chronos was "engendered" by "earth and water", and produced Aether, Chaos, and an egg. The egg produced the hermaphroditic god Phanes who gave birth to the first generation of gods and is the ultimate creator of the cosmos.
Pherecydes of Syros in his lost Heptamychos ("The seven recesses"), around 6th century BC, claimed that there were three eternal principles: Chronos, Zas (Zeus) and Chthonie (the chthonic). The semen of Chronos was placed in the recesses of the Earth and produced the first generation of gods.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Chronos”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Apotheosis Homer BM 2191.jpg by Archelaos of Priene (signed), Public domain
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