Iapetus ("the Piercer") is the one Titan mentioned by Homer in the Iliad (8.

47881) as being in
Tartarus with Cronus. He is a brother of Cronus, who ruled the world during the Golden Age. His
name derives from the word iapto ("wound, pierce") and usually refers to a spear, implying that
Iapetus may have been regarded as a god of craftsmanship, though scholars mostly describe him
as the god of mortality.
Iapetus' wife is normally a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys named Clymene or Asia.
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 describes how "audax Iapeti genus/ Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit"; "The bold
offspring of Iapetus [i.e. Prometheus]/ brought fire to peoples by wicked deceit".
The sons of Iapetus were sometimes regarded 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; enduring Atlas, excessive daring; and arrogant Menoetius, rash
violence
As I have already related, the boundary between Megalopolis and Heraea is at the source of the
river Buphagus. The river got its name, they say, from a hero called Buphagus, the son of Iapetus
and Thornax. This is what they call her in Laconia also. They also say that Artemis shot
Buphagus on Mount Pholoe because he attempted an unholy sin against her godhead.
Buphagus is a tributary of the river Alpheus, Thornax is a mountain between Sparta and Sellasia,
and Pholoe is a mountain between Arcadia and Elis.
Stephanus of Byzantium quotes Athenodorus of Tarsus:
Anchiale, daughter of Iapetus, founded Anchiale (a city near Tarsus): her son was Cydnus, who
gave his name to the river at Tarsus: the son of Cydnus was Parthenius, from whom the city was
called Parthenia: afterwards the name was changed to Tarsus.
This may be the same Anchiale who appears in the Argonautica (1.1120f):
And near it they heaped an altar of small stones, and wreathed their brows with oak leaves and
paid heed to sacrifice, invoking the Mother of Dindymum, Most Venerable, Dweller in Phrygia,
and Titias and Cyllenus, who alone of many are called dispensers of doom and assessors of the
Idaean Mother, the Idaean Dactyls of Crete, whom once the nymph Anchiale, as she grasped
with both hands the land of Oaxus, bare in the Dictaean cave.
Iapetus has (for example, by Robert Graves)[4] been equated with Japheth ( (
) , the son of
Noah, based on the similarity of their names and on old Jewish traditions, that held Japheth as
the ancestor of the Greeks, the Slavs, the Italics, the Teutons, the Dravidians etc. (see Josephus,
Antiquities of the Jews). Iapetus was linked to Japheth by 17th-century theologian Matthew
Poole[5] and more recently by John Pairman Brown.[6] Similarly, Ham, son of Noah, was equated
with "Jupiter Ammon", i.e. the Egyptian god Amun.[7][8]