Cronus2.0010_Panofksy

Anonymous, "Father Time", ink-sketch advertisement of the Bowery Savings Bank of Manhattan, before 1939; in Erwin Panofsky (1939), Studies in Iconology: humanistic themes in the art of the Renaissance (Oxford University Press), p. 69.

"A simple specimen of its kind", this image of fleeing Father Time is recognizable by his grizzled beard and the scythe. These attributes belong properly to the mythological iconography of Cronus (Saturn) who wielded curved blade to castrate Ouranos and thereby establish the oldest race of the gods, the Titans. When Cronus himself was deposed by his son Zeus, the old Titan was banished to Hesperia and a life of agricultural pursuits (putting the scythe to practical uses).

Because the Greek proper noun for Cronus (Kronos) is a near homophone of a common noun for "time" (chronos), purposeful punning and occasional confusion in Greek writers. Plutarch (fl. ca. AD 100) first noted that "many thinkers suppose that Cronus means 'time', but time discovers the truth." (De Iside et Osiride 32) So, even in antiquity there was awarness of the interplay that led to conflation of Chronos and Cronus.

The sketch to the right is symptomatic of an age-old re-interpretation of the iconography of Cronus whereby the father of the Olympians becomes Father Time.