The old king of the sown field, whose feast turns the year's darkest week golden.

Saturnus is a Roman god of sowing and seed, remembered as the ruler of a golden age of peace and plenty in Italy before recorded time. His temple at the foot of the Capitoline, among the oldest in the Forum, housed the aerarium, the treasury of the Roman state. His feast, the Saturnalia, began on the seventeenth of December and ran for days of lamplight, gift giving, and the loosening of everyday order, when masters and the enslaved set aside their usual roles. The Romans identified him with the Greek Kronos.

The identification with Kronos is a Roman interpretation of an older Italic god whose original character is only partly recoverable.