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From: kallis@pen.DEC
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: Saturn
Message-ID: <2555@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Jun-85 16:11:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.2555
Posted: Fri Jun  7 16:11:23 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Jun-85 02:41:48 EDT
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>No one knows why Saturn was named for the Roman god of the harvest.

There are some pretty good guesses.  The Romans borrowed their gods pri-
marily from the Greek.  Thus, Zeus = Jupiter, Hermes = Mercury, etc.
The Greek equivalent of Saturn was "Kronus."  He was pictured with a
sickle not so much as the god of harvest as (due in part to a linguistic
pun) as the god of time (chronos).  Kronus was famous for eating his
children (as time does to us all) and, er, cutting down his father (so
to speak) with a sickle.  He was Zeus' father (Zeus was saved from being
eaten and was hidden from Kronus until he grew up; Zeus then overthrew
his faher and did to him what he'd done to *his* father).

Saturn/Kronus was the slowest moving of the "classical" (naked-eye)
planets, which was also a good symbol for time.

For more on Saturn/Kronus, you can get a Bowdlerized version in Bullfinch
or more complete versions elsewhere (such as Larousse's Encyclopedia of 
Mythology).

Steve Kallis, Jr.