Cronus

Cronus was the youngest of the twelve Titans, the children of Uranus and Gaia. When Uranus kept pushing his children back into Gaia's body, Cronus took the flint sickle his mother made and cut off his father's genitals, freeing his siblings and taking the throne.

Hesiod says Gaia and Uranus warned him that one of his own children would overthrow him. So when his sister and wife Rhea bore their children, Cronus swallowed each one: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon. When Zeus was born, Rhea hid him in Crete and gave Cronus a stone wrapped in cloth to swallow in his place.

Zeus grew up, made Cronus vomit up the swallowed children, and led them in the ten-year war of the Titanomachy against Cronus and the Titans. Zeus won with the help of the Cyclopes, who forged him the thunderbolt, and the Hecatoncheires. The defeated Titans were thrown into Tartarus.

In another tradition, which Hesiod mentions in the Works and Days and Pindar picks up, Cronus rules the golden age of humanity, a time without toil. In that tradition he is released from Tartarus and rules the Isles of the Blessed. Romans identified him with Saturn, and the Saturnalia festival recalled that age.