And now the fortunes of war
began to turn, and victory smiled on Zeus. Cronus and his army were completely
overthrown, his brothers despatched to the gloomy depths of the lower world,
and Cronus himself was banished from his kingdom and deprived for ever of the
supreme power, which now became vested in his son Zeus. This war was called the
Titanomachia, and is most graphically described by the old classic poets.
With the defeat of Cronus and
his banishment from his dominions, his career as a ruling Greek divinity
entirely ceases. But being, like all the gods, immortal, he was supposed to be
still in existence, though possessing no longer either influence or authority,
his place being filled to a certain extent by his descendant and successor,
Zeus.
Cronus is often represented as
an old man leaning on a scythe, with an hour-glass in his hand. The hour-glass
symbolizes the fast-fleeting moments as they succeed each other unceasingly;
the scythe is emblematical of time, which mows down all before it.