the exile of winter by the summer months. Schwartz also recognises Cronus as the thunder, when he pursues his wife in the shape of a horse, while she assumes the form of a mare. It will now be plain enough that some scholars must be wrong somewhere. Cronus can scarcely be both time and thunder, both sun and cloud; he cannot be originally Greek and originally Phœnician or Accadian; he can hardly be at once the winter weather and the sun-god.
To these interpretations, and to many others which have exercised or amused the ingenuity of the learned,[1] may now be added the explanation of Dr. C. P. Tiele.[2] "I shall explain what I can," says Dr. Tiele, "but I cannot explain everything." He will not explain the sickle of Cronus as the rainbow, the crescent moon, or the Milky Way. "It is simply the ancient attribute and arm of the Titan, sabre or scimitar." Nor does Dr. Tiele fly for aid to etymology. He prefers to examine the place and character of Cronus in Greek religion and myth, so as to deduce the fundamental idea of the god from the sum of his relations. The main point is that Cronus was worshipped with human sacrifices, which seems in conformity with his character as a "devourer" or "swallower." Again, the Attic festival called Cronia, on the twelfth day after the summer solstice, was at once a harvest-home and a memory of the fabled age of gold, like the Roman Saturnalia. Cronus himself, in Pindar, flourishes in a kind of golden age in the Fortunate Islands.[3] Thus
- ↑ Custom and Myth, "The Myth of Cronus."
- ↑ Revue de l'Hist. des Rel., November–December, 1885.
- ↑ Pindar, Ol., ii. 70–80. Porph. De Abst., iv. 2.
