Ana Teresa M. GONÇALVES and Ivan VIEIRA Neto

Uranus, Cronus and Zeus: Greek mythology and its differents conceptions about time

Uranos, Cronos e Zeus: a mitologia grega e suas distintas percepções do tempo

Published in The Time and the Eternity in the Ancient and Medieval World

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Reality of Time is an abstract and intuitive concept. Temporality can be experienced and understood, but cannot be felt. Even the experience of Time becomes ambiguous if we think in natural time (as eternal and unchanging) and human time (as changeable and finite) as two distinct instances of a common reality. Depending on this perception, Time is simultaneously, as defined by Mircea Eliade, “sacred” and “profane”: eternal and recoverable, historical and irreducible. In this article, we intend to examine briefly the figures of Uranus, Cronus and Zeus as symbolic representatives of these two different conceptions of Time in the ancient Hellenic imagination.