Chronos

Not to be confused with Cronus, a Titan. For other uses, see Chronos (disambiguation)

Greek deities series
Titans and Olympians
Aquatic deities
Chthonic deities
Personified concepts
Other deities
Primordial deities
Aether Ananke Chaos Chronos Erebus Eros Gaia	Hemera Nyx Phanes Pontus Tartarus Thalassa Uranus

Chronos, sleeping on the grave of Georg Wolff, a merchant of unknown notabilities.

In Greek mythology, Chronos (Ancient Greek: Χρόνος) in pre-Socratic philosophical works is said to be the personification of time. His name in Greek means "time" (and can also mean "year" in Modern Greek) and is alternatively spelled Chronus (Latin spelling) or Khronos.

Chronos was imagined as an incorporeal god, serpentine in form, with three heads—those of a man, a bull, and a lion. He and his consort, serpentine Ananke (Inevitability), circled the primal world egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky. He is not to be confused with the Titan Cronus.

He was depicted in Greco-Roman mosaics as a man turning the Zodiac Wheel. Often the figure is named Aeon (Eternal Time), a common alternative name for the god.

Chronos is usually portrayed through an old, wise man with a long, gray beard, such as "Father Time". Some of the current English words whose etymological root is khronos/chronos include chronology, chronometer, chronic, anachronism, and chronicle.

Mythical cosmogonies

In the Orphic cosmogony the unageing Chronos produced Aither and Chaos, and made a silvery egg in the divine Aither. It 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 and produced the first generation of gods.^[1]

References

1. ^ G.S.Kirk,J.E.Raven and M.Schofield (2003). The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge University Press. pp. 24, 56. http://www.books.google.com/books?id=kFpd86J8PLsC&printsec.