Sea of Cronus

The Sea of Cronus was also referred as the Gulf of Rhea[1] and was what today is called the Adriatic Sea. By the Latinized name 'Cronium Mare' it appeared on many 17th century maps.

Sea of Cronus
Argonautica Map from 1624 by Abraham Ortelius
Argonautica Map from 1624 by Abraham Ortelius

Apollonius Rhodius

The gulf mentioned by the Sea of Cronus was one of the seas traversed by the Argonauts in Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica.[2]

Ovid

In Ovid's Fasti the author mentions the ancient idea that Saturn (identified with Cronus), after Jupiter (identified with Zeus) had dethroned him from the celestial realms in Olympus, had wandered through the seas on a ship until he came to the Tuscan river. Hence the peopled were called Saturnian and the land Latium (from latente).[3]
From this it may be that the gulf became known as the Sea of Cronus.

Recent authors

In Ignatius Donnelly's Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882) the author mentions that the Romans referred to the Atlantic as the 'Cronian Sea'.[4]

Notes
  1. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 836
  2. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, IV.327
  3. Ovid, Fasti, I.227
  4. Donnelly, Ignatius; Atlantis: the Antediluvian World; p. 331

References
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