Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

496 Themis [ch.
therefore closely linked with Gaia. It has been already 1 shown
how on the slopes of the hill Kronion at Olympia was the sanctuary
of the Mother and Child, Sosipolis and Eileithyia. The same
conjunction obtains at Athens. When the cult of Olympian Zeus
was brought by Peisistratos to Athens, with him came Kronos and
Rhea, and with him came Gaia 2 , for Rhea is but the Mountain
Mother, the Asia Minor wilder form of Gaia.
As king, Kronos is also daimon of the year. He stands for
the cycle of reincarnation. Plato, in the Politicus 3 , makes a most
instructive comparison between the Age of Kronos and his own
age, the Age of Zeus. His account of the Age of Kronos seems
haunted by reminiscences not only of totemism but of matrilinear
social structure. Above all things, it is the age of the Earth-Men,
sown and re-sown 4 .
' There were divine daimones who were the shepherds of the various species
and herds of animals, and each was entirely sufficient for those whom he
shepherded. So that there was no wildness nor eating of each other, nor
any war, nor revolt amongst them.... In those days God himself was their
shepherd.... Under him there were no governments nor separate possessions
of women and children. For all men rose again from the earth remembering
nothing of their past. And such things as private property and families did
not exist, but Earth herself gave them abundance of fruits from trees and
other green things, spontaneously, and not through husbandry. And they
dwelt naked in the open air, for the temperature of the seasons was mild.
And they had no beds, but lay on soft couches of herb which grew abundantly
out of the earth. Such, Socrates, was the life of men in the days of
Kronos.'
Plato seems conscious that, in the days of Kronos, the ruler of
each department was more herdsman or shepherd than king. The
ancient Basileus was indeed, as already has been hinted, a person
half daimon, half man, essentially a functionary, and almost wholly
alien to our modern, individualistic notion of king. Given that
Kronos was such a daimon king, it is clear that he rules over the
early earth-born race, that his kingdom is in quite a special way
of this earth. He stands for the Earth and her seasonal year
rather than for any cycle of Sun and Moon.
The etymology of his name is not quite certain, but the ancient
guess which connects it with the verb icpaivw is probably right.
1 Supra, p. 240. 2 Paus. i. 18. 7.
:i 271 e, 272 a.
4 Plato, op. cit. 272 e kclI to yyivov ijdTj irav avfikuTo yevos, iraaas €k6.