Chronos

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File:Pierre Mignard (1610-1695) - Time Clipping Cupid's Wings (1694).jpg

Time Clipping Cupid's Wings (1694), by Pierre Mignard

Chronos (Template:IPAc-en; Template:Langx; {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, Modern Greek: {{#invoke:IPA|main}}), also spelled Chronus, is a personification of time in Greek mythology, who is also discussed in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature.<ref>LSJ s.v. Κρόνος.</ref>

Chronos is frequently confused with, or perhaps consciously identified with, the Titan, Cronus, in antiquity, due to the similarity in names.<ref>LSJ s.v. Κρόνος; Meisner, p. 145.</ref> The identification became more widespread during the Renaissance, giving rise to the iconography of Father Time wielding the harvesting scythe.<ref>Macey, p. 209.</ref>

Greco-Roman mosaics depicted Chronos as a man turning the zodiac wheel.<ref>Delaere, p. 97.</ref> He is comparable to the deity Aion as a symbol of cyclical time.<ref>Levi, p. 274.</ref> He is usually portrayed as an old callous man with a thick grey beard, personifying the destructive and stifling aspects of time.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Name

File:Romanelli Chronos and his child.jpg

Chronos and His Child by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, National Museum in Warsaw, a 17th-century depiction of Chronos as Father Time, wielding a harvesting scythe

During antiquity, Chronos was occasionally interpreted as Cronus.<ref>LSJ s.v. Κρόνος.</ref> According to Plutarch, the Greeks believed that Cronus was an allegorical name for Chronos.<ref>Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, 32.</ref>

Mythology

In the Orphic tradition, the unaging Chronos was "engendered" by "earth and water", and produced Aether, Chaos, and an egg.<ref>West, p. 178.</ref> 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 {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("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.<ref>Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, pp. 24, 56.</ref>

See also

• Kairos

References

• Delaere, Mark, Unfolding Time: Studies in Temporality in Twentieth-century Music, Leuven University Press, 2009. Template:ISBN.
• Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, M. Schofield. The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. Cambridge University Press; 2 edition (February 24, 1984). Template:ISBN.
• Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon, revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1940. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Levi, Doro, "Aion," Hesperia 13.4 (1944).
• Macey, Samuel L., Encyclopedia of Time, Routledge. Template:ISBN.
• Meisner, Dwayne A., Orphic Tradition and the Birth of the Gods, Oxford University Press, 2018. Template:ISBN. Online version at Oxford University Press. Google Books.
• Plutarch, Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris. The E at Delphi. The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse. The Obsolescence of Oracles. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt. Loeb Classical Library No. 306. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936. Template:ISBN. Online version at Harvard University Press.
• West, M. L. (1983), The Orphic Poems, Clarendon Press. Template:ISBN.