Miscellaneous Myth: Cronos - Cover

Miscellaneous Myth: Cronos

Copyright© 2025 by Carlos Santiago

Chapter 1: The Wisdom of Father Time

“ ... Great Kronos swallowed as each came forth from the womb to his mother’s knees with this intent, that no other of the proud sons of Ouranos should hold the kingly office amongst the deathless gods.”Hesiod, The Theogony, c. 730-700 BCE, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914.

Time is a funny thing to most, but for Cronos, it was even more so.

Others get lost in the present, not seeing how important it is. They get senses of nostalgia and of loss, and they find themselves falling into the chasm that is the past. They wish they could change. They cannot see the futility of this exercise. For them, the best and truly only option was not to live in regret, but rather to focus on what they could change in the moment to potentially affect the future.

This was not so for Cronos.

He was the youngest son of Mother Earth and Father Sky. Ouranos had ignored him, and Gaia had seemed caring enough but only in the sense that he was her son. He was no more or less important than any of his siblings.

The reason his parentage mattered was that his great bloodline did not allow for him to be like others. Whether others knew it or not, he was better than his siblings, better his his children, his nephew and nieces, and even better than those foreign deities from other lands.

When he looked at the past, he longed to change things, and he could. He was the only being who could. He was a Titan beholden to himself. He had the power to slow times, undo choices of others, to see minutely into the future.

Those powers, if Cronos had amplified his powers further during the Great War, he might have bested his stupidly foolish children.

Unfortunately for him, he found himself in the deepest, most forsaken reaches of the Underworld. The light of Helos dared not venture into this prison.The very air reeked of putrid sulfur.

The once-great Titan Cronos found himself bound to a wall of jagged bedrock and cold granite. As his massive form hung there, he hunched over in chains. His limbs splayed out in a painful position. He was meant to stand, not be hung against a wall where the discards of the divine were.

His restraints were forged from the unbreakable adamantine. As his memory recalled, the very chains that held him once held the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes, the monstrous children of Gaia and Ouranus.

He might not have been bound up if he had released them like his mother once asked. Why did it all matter? When he had been King of Olympus, there had not been any great struggles. There had been peace. Prometheus and Epimetheus had been free to make their ridiculous creations. Life was abundant, but the Titans sat at the top, as they should have been. If only his Primordial mother had seen this, everything would have stayed the same.

His mother’s siding with his son must have led his sons to the Cyclopes, who must have remade the damn chain binding him and draining his strength.

He recalled the chain being bigger to restrain the greater siblings of the Titans. This metal was thinner, yet unchanged in its restraining might. Cronos assumed it was infused with divine magic of some kind. Hera or Rhea must have helped. He could not put it past either his duplicitous wife or treacherous daughter.

The females that ran through his head. His mother, his wife, his daughter were all reminders as the chains dug into Cronos’ flesh. Each movement sent waves of agony coursing through his body.

As he turned his head, he was reminded of his failure in his brothers: Hyperion, the Titan of Light; Coeus, the Titan of Intellect; and Crius, the Titan of the Constellations. Each powerful in their own right, but nevertheless bound.

This was their eternal punishment. They would never bring their might to bear against the living ever again ... Well that was the intention of the Olympic gods who bound them.

The green flames that surrounded them flickered with a sickly glow. It only made their gaunt faces look worse. The chain coupled with Tartarus’ draining effect had stripped them of their fortuitous fortitude.

By Cronos’ thoughts, the fire seemed to have a life of its own, but what did he know? He had never needed to be in the Underworld. These fires whispered against the rocks, mocking him. Was this Tartarus itself criticizing him for trying for the Throne of Olympus?

Why should they? This was his right! His father had been evil; his wife betrayed him. Cronos deserved his throne! When one such as a king crossed a line, they should be punished. Perhaps they should not be killed, but Ouranos had not deserved the seat of power that he had.

The green flames licked at the edges of the Titan’s feet to return him to his imprisoned existence. Was this Zeus’ power? To inflict a cruelty of torment without ever granting the mercy of death?

Cronos might have been wrong to kill his father, but he was merciful in granting a swift death. Torture for eternity was unjust. Time would not take the other Titans. It would surely never claim Cronos. He was its true master, after all.

Cronos’s eyes dulled momentarily. Eons of suffering were to be his future. He knew this to be true even without having the power to try and peer into the future. He had some limited success in that matter; that is what allowed him to burn with defiance, but his reality always stripped him of his resolve. He felt the pull of the adamantine chains on his arms and legs, which did more than sap his power. They were his son’s way of stealing Cronos’ will.

The acrid stench of sulfur filled his nostrils. He turned his head, trying to create a breeze to remove that foul odor. How his brothers and sisters slept, he could not tell. He was the one to struggle. Was this because he was more powerful? Was it because he had been king?

Oppressive as the weight of the Underworld was, nothing pressing down on Cronos could explain his awakened state. He should have been like his brothers. He knew that. Crius was the physically strongest. It was the fact that Ouranos had broken his hands and forearms in the clash against him that had made Crius less of a threat than Cronos. Hyperion wielded greater magical might. The creation of the great flame was proof of that, but he lacked the hunger to want to be king. In that way, Coeus was the same; though, his gift was the mind.

Those brothers hung beside him in silent agony. Their eyes were shut closed with chests heaving up and down in their exhausted unconsciousness. Hyperion’s golden hair was hung lanky and low accompanied by filth from the Underworld all over his face. This was unworthy of the creator of the Great Flame. Coeus’ face was the epitome of weary despair. Crius’s powerful form sagged in his bonds, his muscles wasted away from centuries of disuse.

They had once been the rulers of the cosmos, the masters of their realm, but to be brought so low as to be locked away, chained up prisoners in an eternal tomb, all of their great deeds might as well be worth nothing.

This was how Cronos’ mind wandered back to the days of his reign. The gods of Olympus may paint him as one who had ruled with an iron fist, swallowing child after child.

However, he had been a true king, a Titan among gods. His time was tranquil, boring, filled with creation. If any were to write of his time, they could say nothing happened, and it would have been a blessing to write so, but still, this was not good enough for his offspring. It was they that had brought calamity to the lands.

Now he knew the memory of his reign would be that of a father who had failed his sons and daughters.

Of course that meant there was only one he could form his ire towards: Zeus. The very son who had overthrown him, who had cast him down into this pit of despair, was surely ruling in his throne. Cronos knew that Zeus had followed Rhea somehow, and that she had secured him a position of power, and for what? Her love of Ouranos? His wife’s sick and twisted relationship with their father.

It was all like a twisted branch. They were gnarled and tied up in one another. Cronos could see that. He had not been brought down by one piece or another. It was the entirety of multitudes that had undone him.

But what did that matter when Zeus ruled the heavens and the earth?

The thought of his treacherous son filled him with a cold, burning rage that would not be dimmed by the centuries. Time, which had been Cronos’ ally, would only fan the flames of his loathing for his thundering child.

Rage can do much to battle hopelessness. For one such as Cronos, there felt like there was this intangible sense of inevitability. While he was beaten currently, he was not broken. There was no manner of escape from the Underworld, but chains could not hold one such as Cronos forever. That was for lesser beings like the Hecatoncheires, Cyclopes, or even the gods of Olympus.

The green flames that flickered and danced in the shadows were casting a light onto his brothers once more. If Cronos needed confirmation of his superiority, he had it in the weakness that he did not share with his brothers. Perhaps they had been rulers together to some degree, but they were echoes of a quickly forgotten age while Cronos was timeless.

He wondered if they were thinking of the past, or how they might change things. Surely not. If they were, they would be fighting against their bonds. No. they had resigned themselves to their fate. No. They were his brothers, but they were not like Cronos. Cronos was a Titan apart and above even his brethren.

The green flames flickered again, and Cronos closed his eyes. He would not slumber like his siblings. He would allow the darkness to wash over him momentarily, but he would focus and endure for his survival.

Time had ever been his ally. It was what allowed him to defeat Ouranos. It was what held Zeus at bay. If he knew anything about the reality created by Chaos, it was that nothing lasted forever, not his father, not his son, not even the reign of the gods.

The heavy silence of Tartarus was broken by a low, rumbling shaking that started deep in the ground. It spread through the Underworld like a ripple in water.

Cronos’ head jerked up quickly. While his brothers barely moved, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. Had Zeus come to finish them off? Perhaps he felt leaving the powerful Titans locked up was a mistake.

The faint tremor beneath the soles of his feet quickly escalated into a violent quake that shook the very bedrock to which he was chained. How his brothers could keep sleeping, Cronos could not know. They barely stirred beside him even as their chains rattled against the granite walls.

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