Did Cronus get mutilated?

Question

I came across a peculiar phrase, which I can't interpret in a straightforward way. I emphasized the part of the sentence I struggle with.

"The separation of sky and earth is certainly reduplicated in the Theogony, in a fully mythopoeic form, in the story of the mutilation of Kronos".

This sentence is from 'The Presocratic Philosophers' by G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven from pg. 28.

I can interpret the bold parts in two ways:

1. the story of the mutilation done by Kronos.
2. the story of the mutilation done on Kronos.

The second interpretation seems to make the most sense to me based on the sentence alone. Yet it doesn't hold up considering the fact that Kronos didn't get mutilated in Hesiod's Theogony.

Answer 1

It's the subjective genitive vs. the objective genitive. If it helps, just change "of" to it possessive case, and it's much clearer: Cronus' mutilation [of Uranus].

This ambiguity is not limited to just English, by the way, but extends to Latin and Greek, too. Fortunately, Kirk must mean the subjective genitive here, since in Hesiod, as you note, it's not Cronus getting mutilated, but Uranus, a Greek word indicating the heavens, and so, the hypothesis goes, it's his being mutilated by Cronusv that marked the separation of the heavens from the earth.