The New Student's Reference Work/Saturn (mythology)

Sat′urn, an early Italian god who presided over farming, his name coming from the word meaning to sow. He most resembles Demeter of the Greek deities, but was later identified or confounded with the Greek Kronos. According to the Greek myth, Kronos the son of Uranos (heaven) and Gæa (earth) is the youngest of the Titans. He married Rhea, by whom he had several children, all of whom he devoured at their birth except the last, (Jupiter), whom his mother saved by a stratagem. The motive of Kronos was his hope of bringing to naught a prophecy which declared that his children would one day deprive him of his sovereignty, as he himself had done in the case of his father Uranos; but fate is stronger even than the gods, and when Zeus had grown up he began a ten years’ war against Kronos and the Titans, ending in their being hurled down to Tartarus and there imprisoned. Other myths added that after his banishment from heaven Kronos went to Italy, where Janus gave him a share in his sovereignty. In this way Zeus’ conquest of Kronos, a Greek myth, became the Roman myth of Jupiter’s conquest of Saturn. Saturn thus became a divine king, who with fatherly mildness ruled the Italian natives and taught agriculture. Hence the whole land received the name of Saturnia or Land of Plenty, and his reign was that golden age of which later poets sang. Saturn’s temple in stood at the foot of the Capitoline hill.