Chronos

Father Time

Chronos is the original father time – for many he is a god of no origin and no end. He does not exist in the same family tree or is in any way connected to the ancient Greek deities. He lives outside of time.

He is the god we celebrate every New Year’s Eve as he reaches old age only to re-emerge as a babe for the New Year.

He is a god that exists outside of the bounds of time and space in the Greek Mythological world. He does not connect with any other myth but as he is the personification of time, he is always present. He allows destiny and fate to arrive and unravel, he takes us further and further from the past and allows the future to arrive.

Without him, there is no movement, no death, and no life.

From him, we get words such as Chronology, chronometer, and Chronological. 

However, his name and association with time do undergo a transformation of sorts as time has passed. Because of the similarity between the names of this primordial god, Chronos, and the youngest child of Gaia, the Titan King, Cronus, they became more and more associated with one another. This happened so much that many assumed the great Titan was the god of time as well.

Many assumed that because of the similarities between them – such as the use of symbols like the scythe or sickle – that they must have been at some time the same, or become one and the same as time went on.

Chronos and his child by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, National Museum in Warsaw

The Fate of Cronus and Birth of Saturn

After the fall of the Titans, the great battle called the Titanomachy, Cronus was cut into pieces by the Olympians, and his remains were spread throughout Tartarus. Here his influence would be minimal or non-existent. However, after many years and decades, and millennia, Cronus was eventually able to put himself back together little by little.

• In the movie Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters, they do fight Cronus who at that moment was nothing more than a multi-pieced giant that would reconstruct itself and readjust his own pieces.

*it sounds cooler than it was*

Eventually, in this newly reconstructed and weakened state Cronus was able to escape the realm of Tartarus, but instead of seeking out some sort of revenge, he wandered to the west reaching the Italian peninsula and becoming Saturn, a god of time and agriculture for the Romans. This is a combination of the associations between Chronos and Cronus.