The father of Zeus was Cronus, the Titan who ruled the cosmos during the Golden Age, before the rise of the Olympian gods. Cronus was the son of the sky-god Ouranos and the earth-goddess Gaia, and he was the husband of his sister Rhea. He became the ruler of the cosmos by overthrowing his father with a sickle, and he was in turn overthrown by his own son Zeus, who would become the king of the Olympian gods. The myth of Cronus is in Greek religion, a story of generational conflict that would shape the rest of Greek mythology.
The Birth of Cronus
Cronus was born to the sky-god Ouranos and the earth-goddess Gaia, at the very beginning of the cosmos. He was the youngest of the twelve Titans, the six male and six female children of Ouranos and Gaia. His brothers were Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, and Iapetus. His sisters were Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. The Titans were the second generation of Greek gods, after the primordial beings, and they ruled the cosmos for many ages.
Cronus’s name is thought to mean “the horned one” or “the ripener,” and he was associated with time, harvest, and the agricultural cycle. The Roman version of the god, Saturn, was associated with sowing, agriculture, and the Golden Age. The festival of Saturnalia, celebrated in December, was the Roman equivalent of the Greek festival of Cronus.
The Castration of Ouranos
Cronus became the ruler of the cosmos by overthrowing his father, Ouranos. The myth is told in Hesiod’s Theogony, one of the foundational texts of Greek mythology.
According to the myth, Ouranos was a cruel father. He hated his children, particularly the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires, the hundred-handed giants, and he imprisoned them in the depths of the earth, in Tartarus. This caused his mother Gaia great pain, and she plotted revenge. She fashioned a great sickle of grey flint and gave it to her youngest son, Cronus, asking him to overthrow his father.
When Ouranos next came to lie with Gaia, Cronus ambushed him and castrated him with the sickle, throwing the severed genitals into the sea. From the blood that fell on the earth were born the Furies, the Giants, and the Meliae, the ash-tree nymphs. From the sea foam that gathered around the severed genitals, Aphrodite was born.
After the castration, Ouranos withdrew from the earth, becoming the sky. The severed genitals of Ouranos, thrown into the sea, gave rise to Aphrodite, who emerged from the foam near Cyprus.
The Rule of Cronus
After overthrowing his father, Cronus became the ruler of the cosmos. He took his sister Rhea as his wife, and he ruled with her from Mount Othrys in Thessaly. The age of Cronus was the Golden Age, the first and best age of the cosmos, when humans lived in peace, without toil, without sorrow, without old age.
But Cronus was a tyrant, like his father before him. He imprisoned the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires in Tartarus, just as Ouranos had done. And he was warned by a prophecy that he would be overthrown by one of his own children, just as he had overthrown his father.
The Children of Cronus and Rhea
Cronus and Rhea had six children: three daughters, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, and three sons, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. But Cronus, fearing the prophecy, swallowed each of his children as they were born.
Rhea, unable to bear more children being lost, devised a plan to save her youngest son, Zeus. She gave birth to him in secret, on the island of Crete, in a cave on Mount Ida or Mount Dicte (sources differ). She hid him in the cave, and she gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he swallowed, believing it to be the baby.
The Return of Zeus
Zeus was raised in secret on Crete, nursed by the goat Amalthea and tended by the nymphs. When he reached adulthood, he decided to free his brothers and sisters and overthrow his father. With the help of the Titaness Metis, he gave Cronus a potion that made him vomit up the stone, and then his children: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon.
Cronus, enraged, prepared for war. The Titanomachy, the great war between the Titans and the Olympians, began. It lasted for ten years, and at one point the Titans nearly won. The tide was turned when Zeus freed the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires from Tartarus. The Cyclopes forged for Zeus the thunderbolt, the weapon that would allow him to defeat the Titans, and the Hecatoncheires, with their hundred hands, hurled mountains at the enemy.
The Titans were defeated, and Cronus was cast into Tartarus, where he was guarded by the Hecatoncheires. The age of the Titans was over, and the age of the Olympians had begun.
The Roman Saturn
The Romans identified Cronus with their own god Saturn, who was a god of agriculture, sowing, and abundance. Saturn was said to have ruled Italy during a Golden Age, and the festival of Saturnalia, held in December, was Roman holidays. During Saturnalia, the normal social order was reversed, slaves were treated as equals, gifts were exchanged, and feasts were held.
The planet Saturn, the second largest in our solar system, is named for the Roman version of Cronus. The rings of Saturn, which are made of ice and rock, were unknown to the Greeks and Romans, who imagined the planet as a slow-moving, time-bound deity.
The Legacy of Cronus
The myth of Cronus is in Western culture. The figure of the tyrant-father, who devours his children to maintain his power, has been used by philosophers, psychologists, and political theorists to describe the dynamics of power in human societies. The phrase “Chronos” (time) is sometimes confused with Cronus, and the two have been linked in later tradition, with Cronus being seen as a personification of time, which devours all things.
The myth of Zeus overthrowing his father, and of being in turn threatened by his own children, is a powerful expression of the Greek understanding of the generational struggle. The Greek gods, like the Greek mortals, were caught in cycles of violence and revenge that they could not escape.
For more on the broader context, see our profile of Zeus, our guide to the Olympian gods, and our profile of Ouranos. For more on the cultural legacy, see our guide to Greek mythology in modern culture.