Iapetus
Mythology[edit]
Iapetus ("the Piercer") is the one Titan mentioned by Homer in the Iliad as being in Tartarus with Cronus. He is a brother of Cronus, who ruled the world during the Golden Age but is now locked up in Tartarus along with Iapetus, where neither breeze nor light of the sun reaches them.[8]
Iapetus' wife is usually described as a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys named either Clymene (according to Hesiod[9] and Hyginus) or Asia (according to Apollodorus).
In Hesiod's Works and Days, Prometheus is addressed as "son of Iapetus", and no mother is named. However, in Hesiod's Theogony, Clymene is listed as Iapetus' wife and the mother of Prometheus. In Aeschylus's play Prometheus Bound, Prometheus is son of the goddess Themis with no father named (but still with at least Atlas as a brother). However, in Horace's Odes, in Ode 1.3 Horace writes "audax Iapeti genus ... Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit" ("The bold offspring of Iapetus [i.e. Prometheus] ... brought fire to peoples by wicked deceit").
Hesiod and other Greek scholars regarded the sons of Iapetus as mankind's ancestors and as such, some of humanity's worst qualities were said to have been inherited from these four gods, each of whom were described with a particular moral fault that often led to their own downfall. For instance, sly and clever Prometheus could perhaps represent crafty scheming; the inept and guileless Epimetheus, foolish stupidity; the enduring, strongest and powerful Atlas, excessive daring; and the arrogant Menoetius, rash violence.[10]
Iapetus as the progenitor of mankind has been equated with Japheth (יֶפֶת), the son of Noah, based on the similarity of their names and the tradition, reported by Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews), which made Japheth the ancestor of the "Japhetites", i.e. the Indo-European speaking peoples. Iapetus was linked to Japheth by 17th-century theologian Matthew Poole[11] (and more recently by Robert Graves)[12] and by John Pairman Brown.[13]