Cronus

Come, then, let us describe the character and disposition of the good king, comprehending it in brief as best we may — the man to whom the son of crooked-counselling Cronus gave the sceptre and the ordinances, that he might take counsel for his people.

And what need to speak of human things, where they dare to say of Uranus, and persuade men, that he was mutilated by Cronus, and Cronus by Zeus?

since the king of the gods, the first and eldest, is bound, as they say—if one must believe Hesiod and Homer and other wise men, who say these things about Cronus—and, by Zeus, not having suffered this unjustly at the hands of an enemy, but at the hands of the most just and most dear, plainly because that one did it as a kingly thing and advantageous to him.

And it might seem, at first hearing, highly irreverent to call him the son of Cronus and reasonable to say that Zeus is the offspring of some great intellect;

The name of Cronus, however, has already been discussed.

Well, don’t you think he who gave to the ancestors of the other gods the names Rhea and Cronus had the same thought as Heracleitus?

That, Socrates, was the life of men in the reign of Cronus;

And again we have often heard the tale of the reign of Cronus.

But was the life in the reign of Cronus, which you mentioned, in that previous period of revolution or in ours?

And Philochorus says that in Tenos Poseidon is honoured as a physician, and that Sicily lies upon Cronus, and that he is buried there.

“Father, son of Cronus, what release will there be from sorrows?

in my judgment, whether he went to Castalia or to the well-wooded hill of Cronus, he would have returned home in finer fashion than the opponents who strove against him, having celebrated the four years’ festival ordained by Heracles, and having crowned his hair with purple wreaths.

But you, son of Cronus and Rhea, who rule over your home on Olympus, and over the foremost of festivals, and over the ford of Alpheus, be warmed by our songs and graciously preserve their ancestral land for their future generations.

With these wreaths and garlands of flowers they entwine their hands according to the righteous counsels of Rhadamanthys, whom the great father, the husband of Rhea whose throne is above all others, keeps close beside him as his partner.

Men believe that Zeus is the best and most just of the gods, and they acknowledge that he put his father in bonds because he wickedly devoured his children, and he in turn had mutilated his father for similar reasons;

And so, Euthyphro, it would not be surprising if, in punishing your father as you are doing, you were performing an act that is pleasing to Zeus, but hateful to Cronus and Uranus, and pleasing to Hephaestus, but hateful to Hera, and so forth in respect to the other gods, if any disagree with any other about it.