{
  "id": "cronus",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Cronus",
  "summary": "Youngest and \"most terrible\" of the Titans, who castrated his father Uranus with Earth's sickle, ruled the gods, swallowed his children by Rhea and was tricked with a stone; overthrown by Zeus after a ten-year war and bound under Tartarus — yet in Works and Days he rules the golden race and the Isles of the Blessed. The Romans called him Saturn.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "greek",
    "deities",
    "titans",
    "kings-of-the-gods",
    "succession-myth"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "child_of",
      "target": "gaia"
    },
    {
      "rel": "child_of",
      "target": "uranus"
    },
    {
      "rel": "consort_of",
      "target": "rhea"
    },
    {
      "rel": "sibling_of",
      "target": "rhea"
    },
    {
      "rel": "sibling_of",
      "target": "oceanus"
    },
    {
      "rel": "sibling_of",
      "target": "hyperion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "sibling_of",
      "target": "iapetus"
    },
    {
      "rel": "sibling_of",
      "target": "themis"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "zeus"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "hera"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "poseidon"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "hades"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "demeter"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent_of",
      "target": "hestia"
    },
    {
      "rel": "equivalent_of",
      "target": "saturn"
    },
    {
      "rel": "fought_in",
      "target": "titanomachy"
    },
    {
      "rel": "defined_by",
      "target": "titan"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "theogony"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "works-and-days"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "iliad"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "bibliotheca"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who is Cronus?",
    "Why did Cronus eat his children?",
    "How did Cronus castrate Uranus?",
    "How was Cronus tricked into vomiting his children?",
    "Where is Cronus now?",
    "Is Cronus the same as Saturn?",
    "Did Cronus rule a golden age?",
    "Who are the children of Cronus?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Cronus is the last of Earth's Titan children: \"After them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire\" (Theog. 137–138); Apollodorus likewise lists him \"youngest of all\" (Apollod. 1.1.3).",
      "sources": [
        "hesiod-theogony",
        "apollodorus-library"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "He alone answered Earth's call: \"Mother, I will undertake to do this deed\", and from ambush \"swiftly lopped off his own father's members\" with the jagged sickle (Theog. 164–182). In Apollodorus the sickle is adamantine, all the Titans but Ocean join the attack, and afterwards they \"committed the sovereignty to Cronus\" (Apollod. 1.1.4).",
      "sources": [
        "hesiod-theogony",
        "apollodorus-library"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "He swallowed Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and would have swallowed Zeus, \"with this intent, that no other of the proud sons of Heaven should hold the kingly office\", because Earth and Heaven had told him \"he was destined to be overcome by his own son\" (Theog. 453–467); Apollodorus repeats the order, Hestia first (Apollod. 1.1.5), and adds that he re-imprisoned his brothers in Tartarus.",
      "sources": [
        "hesiod-theogony",
        "apollodorus-library"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "For Zeus he was given \"a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes\", and later, \"beguiled by the deep suggestions of Earth\", he \"vomited up first the stone which he had swallowed last\", which Zeus set up at Pytho (Theog. 485–500). Apollodorus makes the emetic a drug given by Metis (Apollod. 1.2.1) — Earth's persuasion in Hesiod, Metis's drug in Apollodorus.",
      "sources": [
        "hesiod-theogony",
        "apollodorus-library"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The war lasted \"ten full years\", the Titans fighting from Othrys and the children of Cronus from Olympus (Theog. 629–638); the Hundred-handers hurled the Titans \"beneath the wide-pathed earth\" (Theog. 717–720), and Hesiod later names \"the Titans under Tartarus who live with Cronos\" (Theog. 851). Homer agrees: Zeus \"thrust Cronos down to dwell beneath earth and the unresting sea\" (Il. 14.203–204), where \"abide Iapetus and Cronos\" in deep Tartarus (Il. 8.478–481).",
      "sources": [
        "hesiod-theogony",
        "homer-iliad"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Works and Days gives him another fate. The golden race lived \"in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven\" (WD 111), and the heroes of the fourth race dwell \"in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep-swirling Ocean … far from the deathless gods, and Cronos rules over them\" (WD 167–173). Prisoner in the Theogony, king of the blessed in Works and Days: two Hesiodic pictures.",
      "sources": [
        "hesiod-works-and-days",
        "hesiod-theogony"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The Latin poets tell his story as Saturn's: Ovid's golden age ends \"when Saturn had been banished into night and all the world was ruled by Jove supreme\" (Met. 1.89), and Virgil has Saturn come down \"in flight from Jove's dread arms, his sceptre lost, and he an exiled King\" to hide in Latium, where \"the golden centuries\" were under him (Aen. 8.306). Both the fall to Jupiter and the golden reign are Cronus's.",
      "sources": [
        "ovid-metamorphoses",
        "virgil-aeneid"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "Youngest Titan, sole castrator of Uranus in Hesiod (Theog. 137–182); one of several in Apollodorus.",
    "Swallowed five children on a prophecy from Earth and Heaven; the stone and Earth's guile undid him (Theog. 453–500).",
    "Two Hesiodic endings: under Tartarus with the Titans (Theog. 851), or ruling the Isles of the Blessed (WD 169).",
    "Saturn in Ovid and Virgil carries both halves — exiled by Jove, king of a golden age."
  ],
  "faqs": [
    {
      "q": "Why did Cronus eat his children?",
      "claim": "c3"
    },
    {
      "q": "How did Cronus castrate Uranus?",
      "claim": "c2"
    },
    {
      "q": "How was Cronus tricked into vomiting his children?",
      "claim": "c4"
    },
    {
      "q": "Where is Cronus now?",
      "claim": "c5"
    },
    {
      "q": "Did Cronus rule a golden age?",
      "claim": "c6"
    },
    {
      "q": "Is Cronus the same as Saturn?",
      "claim": "c7"
    }
  ],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "theoretical",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Keeps the Theogony's prisoner and Works and Days' golden king as two claims instead of one blended Cronus, and binds the Saturn equivalence to the Latin lines that make it.",
  "confidence": 0.92,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-03",
  "media": [],
  "x": {
    "myth": {
      "pantheon": "greek",
      "kind": "titan",
      "group": "titan",
      "domains": [
        "kingship of the gods (former)",
        "the golden age"
      ],
      "symbols": [
        "sickle"
      ],
      "wikidata": "Q44204"
    }
  },
  "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/cronus",
  "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/cronus.json",
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    "name": "Cronus",
    "description": "Youngest and \"most terrible\" of the Titans, who castrated his father Uranus with Earth's sickle, ruled the gods, swallowed his children by Rhea and was tricked with a stone; overthrown by Zeus after a ten-year war and bound under Tartarus — yet in Works and Days he rules the golden race and the Isles of the Blessed. The Romans called him Saturn.",
    "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/cronus",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-09-03",
    "citation": [
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}