Chronos

Chronos (Ancient Greek: Χρόνος, "time," also transliterated as Khronos or Latinized as Chronus) is the personification of Time in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature.

Chronos was imagined as a god, serpentine in form, with three heads—those of a man, a bull, and a lion. He and his consort, serpentine Ananke (Inevitability), circled the primal world egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky. He is not to be confused with the Titan Cronus.

He was depicted in Greco-Roman mosaics as a man turning the Zodiac Wheel. Chronos, however, might also be contrasted with the deity Aion as Eternal Time (see aeon).

Chronos is usually portrayed through an old, wise man with a long, grey beard, such as "Father Time". Some of the current English words whose etymological root is khronos/chronos include chronology, chronometer, chronic, anachronism, and chronicle.