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Divine Lineage
Ἰ

Fate

Iapetos

ἸαπετόςRoman: Iapetus

Father of the four Titans who each got a different punishment.

1
epithet
0
cult sites
2
offspring
0
unions
1
recorded birth

Vitals

Kind
Titan
Generation
1
Domains
mortality, the ancestry of humankind
Accent
Fate — allotment, law, retribution, prophecy
Sacred symbols
the spear, the shattered chain
Principal cult sites
No cult attested

What they were called

  • Ἰαπετιονίδης

    used of his sons, the Iapetionids

Lineage

See in the tree

Offspring in this roster

ChildAtlasChildPrometheus

Notable myths

  1. Four Sons, Four Sentences

    Hesiod runs through Iapetos's sons as a set. Atlas stands at the western edge holding the wide sky on his head and hands. Menoitios, over-bold, is blasted with the thunderbolt into the dark. Prometheus is bound to a pillar with an eagle eating his liver. Epimetheus, the slow-thinking one, accepts the woman the gods send and brings evil to men who eat bread. The passage is a catalogue of the ways defiance can be punished.

    Hesiod, Theogony 507-616

The account

Iapetos does nothing himself and produces the four figures in whom the Titan generation's defeat is worked out in detail. By the Okeanid Klymene he fathers Atlas, Menoitios, Prometheus and Epimetheus, and Hesiod deals with each in turn: Atlas holds up the sky at the edge of the world, Menoitios is struck by the thunderbolt for his violence and sent to Erebos, Prometheus is chained with the eagle at his liver, and Epimetheus takes Pandora into his house and ruins things for everyone. Four sons, four different ways of being on the losing side. Because Prometheus makes and defends humankind, Iapetos ends up positioned in later thought as an ancestor of mortals, and Greek writers occasionally use his name that way. He goes to Tartaros with his brothers after the war. The interest of the entry is entirely in what comes out of it.

Ancient sources

  • Hesiod, Theogony 132-138
  • Hesiod, Theogony 507-616

Where a line reference is not given, the work is cited without one rather than guessed at.

Image credit

No classical portrait of this figure survives, so the mark on this page is generated from their Greek initial and their domain accent rather than taken from an artwork.