The custom of smearing fetish-stones (which Theophrastus mentions as one of the practices of the superstitious man) is clearly a survival from the savage stage of religion. As a rule, however, among savages, fetish-stones are daubed with red paint (like the face of the wooden ancient Dionysi in Greece, and of Tsui Goab among the Hottentots), not smeared with oil.[1]
The myth of the swallowing and disgorging of his own children by Cronus was another of the stumbling-blocks of Greek orthodoxy. The common explanation, that Time (Κρόνος) does swallow his children, the days, is not quite satisfactory. Time brings never the past back again, as Cronus did. Besides, the myth of the swallowing is not confined to Cronus. Modern philology has given, as usual, different analyses of the meaning of the name of the god. Hermann, with Preller, derives it from κραίνω, to fulfil. The harvest-month, says Preller, was named Cronion in Greece, and Cronia was the title of the harvest-festival. The sickle of Cronus is thus brought into connection with the sickle of the harvester.[2]
Let us now examine the various attempts to explain the myth of Cronus. Mr. Max Müller's explanation of the myth of Cronus (regarded as Time) is ingenious.
"There is no such being as Κρόνος in Sanskrit. Κρόνος did not exist till long after Zeus in Greece. Zeus was called by the Greeks "the son of Time." . . .
