Kronos
King of the Titans who ruled during the mythological Golden Age. Kronos overthrew his father Ouranos and was in turn overthrown by his son Zeus.
The Myth of Kronos
Kronos was the youngest of the twelve Titans, children of Ouranos and Gaia. When Ouranos imprisoned Gaia's monstrous children, she fashioned an adamantine sickle and asked her sons to rebel. Only Kronos had the nerve. He ambushed his father and castrated him, seizing the cosmos. From the blood sprang the Erinyes and the Giants; from the severed flesh cast into the sea, Aphrodite was born. Under Kronos the world knew a Golden Age of peace. But a prophecy haunted him: his own children would overthrow him. He swallowed each — Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon — as they were born. His wife Rhea saved the youngest, Zeus, substituting a stone in swaddling clothes. Zeus grew in secret on Crete, returned to free his siblings, and waged the Titanomachy. After ten years of war, Kronos and the Titans fell and were imprisoned in Tartarus, guarded by the Hundred-Handed Ones.
Parents
Ouranos and Gaia
Symbols
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Kronos
🏔 titanTitan king of the Golden Age
The king of the Titans who ruled during the Golden Age and devoured his children to prevent prophecy of his overthrow.
Cronus
🏔 titanharvest, time, ruler of the Titans
Ruler of the Titans and father of the first Olympians, who swallowed his children to prevent being overthrown.
Metis
🏔 titanWisdom, Cunning Counsel
The Titaness of wisdom and first wife of Zeus, swallowed whole by the king of the gods when a prophecy warned that her child would surpass him.
Rhea
🏔 titanTitaness of fertility, motherhood, the mountain wilds
Mother of the Olympian gods and wife of Kronos. Rhea saved the infant Zeus from being devoured by his father, enabling the rise of the Olympians.
Menoetius
🏔 titanHubris, Recklessness
A second-generation Titan struck down by Zeus for his violent pride during the war between gods and Titans.
Eurynome
🏔 titanPastures, Wide Rule
A Titaness who in some traditions ruled Olympus alongside her husband Ophion before being overthrown by Cronus and Rhea in a divine coup.
Clymene
🏔 titanFame, Renown
An Oceanid-Titaness best known as the mother of Prometheus, Atlas, and the other sons of Iapetus who shaped humanity's early story.
Coeus
🏔 titanTitan of intellect
Coeus was the Titan of rational intelligence and the celestial axis — grandfather of Apollo and Artemis through his daughter Leto.
Crius
🏔 titanTitan of constellations
Crius was the Titan associated with the constellations — one of four brothers who held Uranus at the corners of the earth during his castration.
Titan War
🏔 titanThe cosmic war between Titans and Olympians
The ten-year war between the Titans and the Olympians that reshaped the cosmos and established Zeus's rule.
Hyperion
🏔 titanTitan of heavenly light, observation
Titan of light and father of the sun, moon, and dawn. Hyperion was one of the original twelve Titans, embodying the celestial light that preceded the Olympians.
Golden Age
🏔 titanParadise, Primordial Innocence
The mythical era of peace and plenty under Cronus's rule, before Zeus and the Olympians brought the current order of toil and mortality.