Kronos

Kronos (Cronus), the Roman Saturn, is the youngest and mightiest of the Titans, who overthrew his father Ouranos and ruled the cosmos in the fabled Golden Age, when men lived without toil or strife. Warned that he in turn would be overthrown by his own child, he swallowed each of his offspring at birth — until his wife Rhea hid the infant Zeus, who grew to depose him and free his siblings.

The Romans, identifying him with Saturn, kept the memory of his blessed reign in the festival of the Saturnalia. The Greek philosophers, playing on his name, linked Kronos to koros nous — 'the fullness of intellect' — and so the Neoplatonists made him a figure of the pure, self-contained Intellect, the intelligible realm that stands between the first cause and the demiurgic Zeus. His devouring of his children they read as the way Intellect holds all things gathered within itself.

Epithets

• Ankylometes Ἀγκυλομήτης — of crooked counsel
• Saturn Lat. — Roman god of the golden age and the sowing