CHRÓNOS. — It is the personification of time among the ancient Greeks. It had no importance either in mythology or in cult; it was instead exploited by Orphic cosmogony, which made it the origin of all things, called it the son of Selene or of Heracles, and father of Aion, Eros (Love), the Winds, and the Seasons.
In the relief of the apotheosis of Homer, it is depicted on the side holding in its hand the two scrolls of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The ancients, followed by some modern scholars, wished to identify C. with Cronus, but the hypothesis does not hold.
BIBL.: Roscher, s.V. in W. H. Roscher, *Lexicon*, I, 1, cols. 899 ff.; Waser, s.V. in Pauly-Wissowa, III, 11, col. 248; Luisa Banti